Pure Reason Revolution headed to Manchester on Friday night to reprise their debut album The Dark Third on its twentieth anniversary as part of a short series of dates that saw them reunited with former members Chloe Alper and Andrew Courtney before playing a second set of career-spanning highlights.
The first seventy minutes of the show before they take a well-deserved break is dedicated to The Dark Third, Pure Reason Revolution's debut album. The line-up for the first set features the return of Chloe Alper, an original member who hadn't performed live with the band since 2019 due to her duties with James, as well as drummer Andrew Courtney, reunited on stage with his brother Jon as well as Chloe's replacement Dutch vocalist and keyboard player Annicke Shireen and founder member Greg Jong.
Looking round the crowd, there's a real sense of anticipation and appreciation for The Dark Third, a record that takes the listener on a psychedelic journey through different musical styles and restlessly refusing to stand still at one of them. Moments of quiet introspection where you can just hear a solitary keyboard to full-on prog rock onslaughts sit side by side, often in the same song and the barriers between the songs are often blurred. The potentially awkward situation of Chloe and Annicke performing together is dealt with by the masterstroke of them singing all their vocal parts together, similar enough for it not to sound wrong but with stylistic differences that give the songs life and energy and contrasting perfectly with Jon and Greg's.
Out of the moments of dark industrial sound there's sections where the audience sing along, particularly on The Bright Ambassadors Of Morning, or clap along in time to music that's made for much bigger rooms than the intimate basement setting of the Club Academy. Such is the ambitious scale of The Dark Third that its ultimate failure to break through into the mainstream rather than just the consciousness of those who came across can be attributed to the fact it defies categorisation and being put into the boxes so beloved of the music industry and press. Live, with the addition of two tracks from the bonus second CD, it reveals itself as a sprawling masterpiece, delivered by a band that feels like the record is an extension of their being. It's a breathtaking journey.
After a short intermission, they return, without Chloe, and perform four tracks including Useless Animal from their most recent record Coming Up To Consciousness, the first on which Annicke took on vocal duties. Andrew Courtney is also replaced by current live drummer in Ravi Kesavaram for the second set. This section also includes Silent Genesis and Ghosts & Typhoons from 2022's Eupna which Chloe performed on in the studio but never live, so the line-up for this section feels appropriate and allows Annicke chance to shine.
Chloe returns for the final part of the show, featuring the trio of Black Mourning, Deus Ex Machina and the magnificent AVO. The latter features a section where Jon encourages the crowd to singalong in Latin to its album's title Amor Vincit Omnia, itself the title of a Baroque painting by Caravaggio, so not your usual crowd-pleasing finale to the show, but one very much in keeping with the ethos of Pure Reason Revolution over the past twenty years. They finish with both drummers on stage for an encore of Fight Fire that's almost thrash metal in intent, an astonishing wall of noise as they venture down another oft untravelled path before leaving to a huge ovation from the Manchester crowd.
Pure Reason Revolution played :
Set 1: Aeropause, Goshen's Remains, Apprentice Of The Universe, The Bright Ambassadors Of Morning, Nimos & Tambos, Voices in Winter / In the Realms of the Divine, Bullitts Dominæ, Arrival / The Intention Craft, He Tried to Show Them Magic! / Ambassadors Return, In Aurélia, The Twyncyn / Trembling Willows
Set 2: Silent Genesis, Dead Butterfly, Useless Animal, Ghosts & Typhoons, Black Mourning, Deus Ex Machina, AVO, Fight Fire
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