Billed as Homecoming, Ist Ist's biggest ever UK show at The Albert Hall in Manchester was the 28th and final show on the tour to promote their most recent album Dagger. A swaggering triumphant twenty-four song set confirmed their status as one of the most exciting and exhilarating bands in the current Manchester canon in front of an adoring hometown crowd. Support came from the well-received Desperate Journalist and The Youth Play.
The Youth Play have supported on the UK leg of the tour to rave reviews so there's a decent crowd gathered early for the four-piece playing on their biggest stage to date. It's not hard to see why the Ist Ist crowd have taken to them - they write and perform a heady mix of shoegaze and indie that connects from the start. Front man Diego has the voice to fill this cavernous space as well so rather than shrink, they expand to reach the corners of this beautiful space. Last Day On Earth is a particular highlight as is the moment when Diego dedicates a song to his brother who's flown in all the way from Mexico for the show. They're a tight-knit bunch and that very much comes across on stage as they leave a very positive impression.
Desperate Journalist are no strangers to this stage having supported Suede here three years ago and now almost veterans of the scene with over a decade of doing this, they're accomplished and seasoned performers. Over forty-five minutes they mix old favourites like Hollow and set-closer Personality Girlfriend with newer tracks from their last album No Hero that show they're still fresh and reinventing themselves. With new single White Rabbit teasing another album on the way, they go down a storm with the Manchester crowd, Jo's direct and intense delivery feeling very appropriate for the imposing setting of the city's most beautiful venue.
It is Ist Ist's night though. As the lights go out at 9 on the dot, Joel, Mat and Andy make their way onto the stage and kick into the extended instrumental intro to Encouragement which allows Adam to make a big entrance. It's immediately clear that once again Ist Ist have stepped up their on-stage presence, conscious of the need to not just play amazing music, as well as their whole lighting set-up as well. The sound, sometimes difficult in here, is absolutely spot-on, the detail coming through in both the set's quieter paced moments and when the four of them let loose.
The twenty-four set reads like a greatest hits set from Night's Arm, the first song they ever played at their first-ever gig at the Night And Day just over eleven years ago, and Emily, a song debuted shortly after that which has remained steadfast in the set and has the audience singing the guitar riff, to the highlights of the recently released Dagger - Warning Signs, Makes No Difference, Burning. It stops off at plenty of places in between two. Debut album Architecture is well-represented by audience favourite Black and the more intense brooding A New Love Song and Under Your Skin where Mat sits at the keyboard, a new development that also reinvents the glorious Mary In The Black And White Room and demonstrates Ist Ist's focus and commitment to creating a setlist that shifts in mood and pace effortlessly to suit the bigger rooms they're frequenting these days.
What's striking is how at home Ist Ist now look on these stages, having sold out the legendary Paradiso in Amsterdam earlier on the tour as well as sizeable rooms across the continent. There's moments where they orchestrate the crowd into clapping along, but for the most of the evening there's absolutely no need as the standing area and most of the seats are a sea of hands raised clapping along. For a band that had dark inaccessible roots based in making as much noise as feasibly possible across a bunch of songs that mostly never saw the light of the day in the studio, they now have a small army of fans that follow them religiously as well as an ever-growing set of admirers, drawn in by word-of-mouth in the absence of serious radio and festival support in the UK, and held by what they witness. They have the anthems - What I Know, Dreams Aren't Enough - and the euphoric headrushes - The Kiss, Lost My Shadow and the glorious You're Mine - and the ability to dial it down without losing the crowd. Around the room you see people mouthing along to every word, to new songs and old, and it hits home just how far the band has come from those humble beginnings to this size of space.
Their focus these days is laser-like, the attention to detail in the lighting and setlist choice, the clever merchandise, their recognition of the part their fans have played (they invited forty to a free soundcheck event beforehand when others see such things as a cash cow). For a band rooted in DIY, having built their own rehearsal studios, funding themselves through a stream of live bootleg and official recordings, they've become a very professional outfit, but what you see the minute they get on stage is a band still having fun, four mates who've struck lucky making a living from what they enjoy doing most. There's a beautiful moment during closer Stamp You Out where Adam and Andy, who'd played together in other bands before Ist Ist, bump each other, smile and laugh, that shows just how much this means to them.
For a band to get this far with so little industry support, the Official Chart Company even derailing their album campaign in release week denying them a rightful Top 20 placing, is some achievement. Hard graft, unswerving belief, but most of all music and live performances that connect and make people come back for more, is the hardest currency around though and Ist Ist's pockets are overflowing with it. With a summer and beyond of touring Dagger, sketches of album six in the works and the echo of fifteen hundred people ringing in their ears, Ist Ist's trajectory is still very much in the ascendency.
Dagger and previous records can be ordered via their website.
Digital versions of their previous limited edition releases and a number of live field recordings are available to download from their Bandcamp.
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