Behind the Legendary Stage: Does Ancienne Belgique Live Up to the Hype

Until last year, those who talked about The The mostly talked about it as something legendary that stems from the distant past. That’s not surprising of course, because the band hadn’t released an album since 2000 and the last visit to Belgium also dates from that. Oh soul, the new album that was released at the beginning of this month, there was finally a follow-up to almost from another era Naked Self and that was also the perfect reason to connect it with a trip. The fact that Belgium had to wait more than twenty years for the band around Matt Johnson – our country was not one of the small group of countries visited in 2018 with the return trip – was compensated with a concert in the Ancienne Belgique and a concert in De Roma this Saturday.

The show at the Ancienne Belgique was divided into two parts, with the first including an integral performance by Soul and the second of the best ever released by the band. Around eight o’clock came the message to the speaker that smart phones should ideally stay in their pockets because Johnson would rather see all our sweet faces, followed by a band that had to build the tension with mystical drums and a touch of electronics. However, there was no great tension in The The’s first set, which largely flowed on, although most of the time in a pleasant and musically impressive way.

Opener “Cognitive Dissident” immediately did the whole AB to pick up the Brit’s deep voice after all these years and the ooh-oohs were infectious. The cinematic “Some Days I Drink My Coffee by the Grave of William Blake” immediately made the set a little darker and that was appreciated. However, that darkness was later confused with flatness and monotony, leading to the snooker “I Want To Wake Up To You”, where Johnson fancied himself a seasoned crooner and yet he didn’t quite succeed . The impetus for this came earlier with “Zen & the Art of Dating”, Johnson’s indictment against dating apps, when he himself left his guitar out. The song – like most of the first set – was accompanied by a projected dancing silhouette, which in this case with its sultry movements fit seamlessly with the theme of the song.

Fortunately, we were also regularly kept on track by the requisite guitar violence from Barrie Cadogan, who is also of course no less famous. The Brit impressed Morrissey, Liam Gallagher and Paul Weller, among others, and also showed the AB audience why he is a guitarist in demand. He gave a more than lovely solo to “Kissing the Ring of POTUS” on his Fender Jaguar, as he pulled a bow to squeeze out the craziest sounds from his guitar à la Jimmy Page during “Linoleum Smooth to the Stocking Foot”, and his recording in turn was driven by the bass. The guitarist was also charming during less bombastic or impressive pieces. The textbook example of this was the cool guitar riff of the beautiful “Risin’ Above The Need”, also complemented by a silhouette that danced as if it had just been released from need. We are more than willing to forgive Cadogan’s somewhat annoying background vocals during “I Want To Wake Up With You”.

Johnson had called the first set the ‘listening set’, while he referred to the second as the ‘dancing set’. After a fifteen minute break, there was indeed more movement in the room with “Infected”, although this was still scarce. The pace was much higher and that was really necessary, because a second set at the pace of the first would certainly have been too much. With the signature rocking drums, “Armaggedon Days Are Here (Again)” was ideal to further respond to the public’s need to move more to the music. However, the interaction between the audience and the artist remained quite moderate, although it was carefully expanded by singing to the last sentence of “Heartland”. Johnson then asked for a third time not to film or take pictures and addressed a fan who did, followed by the hilarious words ‘shame on him, he beat him up’.

The The still had many classics to perform and did so musically to a large extent flawlessly. However, we were missing some guitar on “The Whisperers” and had to catch Johnson doing his only vocal slip of the night during “August & September”. A solid “Icing Up”, with keys that simulate harmonica and melodicana, turned out to be one of the highlights of the show, just like the singing with “This Is The Day”.

As an encore, the band brought the audience into total ecstasy out of nowhere with “Uncertain Smile”. Each of the many piano solos – played on record by none other than Jools Holland – received even more cheers and applause than the previous one; just fine. The long “GIANT” closed the night and did so in style with some very cool bass guitar licks, a guitar riff sounding sharp and smooth, hands raised and ‘yeah yeah yeahs’ being sung.

The performance of The The The was memorable beforehand, if only because the band performed in Belgium for the first time in a long time and did so exactly thirty-five years after their previous show at the Ancienne Belgique. Perhaps the expectations were a little too high, but the British were not entirely convincing. Ar Soul there are some songs that simply don’t work well live and perhaps the complete performance of the record had already tired the audience a bit when the classics were yet to come. The concert didn’t really go that way and that was a shame, because musically there wasn’t much to criticize about The The – especially during the second set. Certainly a slightly shorter show – possibly with more lights and images than just silhouettes and similar projections – would not have harmed Britain’s performance.

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Set list:

Cognitive Dissonant
Some Days I Drink My Coffee by William Blake’s Grave
Zen and the Art of Dating
Kissing the POTUS Ring
Life after Life
I Want To Wake Up With You
Down by the Frozen River
Rising Above the Need
Smooth Linoleum for Stocked Feet
Where Do We Go When We Die?
I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget)
A rainy day in May
Infected
The Days of Armageddon Are Here (Again)
The Sinking Feeling
Heartland
The Whisperers
Love Is Stronger Than Death
August and September
Slow Emotion Replay
This is the Day
Icing Up
Hounds of Lust
Sweet Bird of Truth
Lonely Planet

An Uncertain Smile
GIANT