The Murder Capital's release week trip around the UK's record stores in support of their third album Blindness continued on Monday night with an hour-long set in the venue space at Rough Trade's new store in Liverpool. Performing the whole of Blindness plus three old favourites, the five-piece brought Blindness to vivid life.
As a band that made their reputation on the back of incendiary live shows around the release of their debut album When I Have Fears, it's essential to catch The Murder Capital live to experience the music in its true context. Seeing the whites of James McGovern's eyes and the intensity of the band (Gabriel on bass, Damon and Cathal on guitars and Diarmuid behind the sticks) delivering these songs paints pictures as bright and bold as the sleeve of their third album.
Kicking off with the album's opener Moonshot they set their stall out from the start, guitars on the edge of distortion and fast furious vocals delivered by McGovern with a raw edge and passion that you simply can't capture in the more sterile environment of a recording studio. With space at a premium on the stage, there's little movement from the other four, a stand-out characteristic of their live show as they lose themselves in the moment, but here it just adds to the intensity of the event. The Fall starts a mosh-pit encouraged by McGovern's command to "get fucking rowdy." Don't Cling To Life takes us on a brief look backwards, and despite some wanting to hear more old material, the audience is generally fully attentive to the new material that was released to the world just a few days earlier.
The singles off Blindness - Can't Pretend To Know, A Distant Life and Words Lost Meaning - have a harder steelier edge to them live, whilst the album's more restrained moments - Swallow, Trailing A Wing and Death Of A Giant - bristle with fire that comes right from the heart whilst Born Into The Fight steals the show with its brooding menace that bursts into furious life in the chorus as the reflective sound of the verses burst into a cacophony of guitars.
McGovern deals politely but assuredly with a couple of repetitive hecklers, one trying to hold conversations with him between songs and another who seems to scream the same word repeatedly. His natural charm dissolves any potential issues as well as his playful challenge to them to sing the first lines of the next song. He tells the story behind Trailing A Wing and praises Gabe for his appearance before turning it round and telling a story of Gabe's bout of self-inflicted food poisoning he gave himself during the recording sessions for the album.
Conscious of the challenging nature of playing an album in full that's only been in the shops three days they add in an impromptu Feeling Fades which sets the crowd off. However, tonight is about Blindness and the final duo of Death Of A Giant and the aching heartfelt Love Of Country are the perfect way to close the evening, the latter's questioning of patriotism crossing lines into xenophobia seeing The Murder Capital moving from the inward looking personal nature of their early work into more widescreen worldly concerns as they seek to reclaim the momentum that was cruelly snatched from them by the lockdown as When I Have Fears had them primed to take over the world.
The Murder Capital played Moonshot, The Fall, Don't Cling To Life, Can't Pretend To Know, A Distant Life, Born Into The Fight, Swallow, Trailing A Wing, Ethel, Words Lost Meaning, That Feeling, Feeling Fades, Death Of A Giant and Love Of Country.
The Murder Capital's official site can be found here and they are on Facebook and Twitter.
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