Piners for the Citrus Invigoration,

Perth is a chaotic place to drive around, this is chaos is amplified when using a map that doesn’t feature all of the streets that exist in and around the town’s (they like to call it a city) treacherous one-way system – it sucks things in and spits them spinning out. The magnificent Perth Concert Hall was the destination. The event was an evening with Billy Idlewild.

I think Idlewild are a band that are held dear by an awful lot of people, I adopted them at the time of The Remote Part (the lyrics are just so introspective yet inclusive) but it was clear from the audience at last night’s gig that many appreciate the noisy, early stuff most. The new album, Make Another World, caters for both factions so everyone should be happy.

Having never seen the band live before, the setlist full of the “greatest hits” – mainly the singles – was played brilliantly and sung well. It might have been nice to hear one or two more from the new album but this is possibly an over-critical observation (This review isn’t very good but I don’t feel that I should have to explain who Idlewood are or what songs they sing).

This was the first gig (that wasn’t a festival) that I’ve attended where there was crowd-surfing, I must remark that it wasn’t me who was crowd-surfing – I couldn’t take the risk of that one of those uncouth ruffians would create a snag in my Fair Isle sweater. Maybe we can initiate this crowd-surfing malarkey at the next My Latest Novel performance.

The practice of recording footage or taking photos using cell phones was particularly annoying. Seeing the stage is a challenge when there are so many people, it’s made much more difficult when countless selfish people have their arms in the air intermittently whilst trying to capture poor-quality digital keepsakes. The videos or photos will never fully encapsulate the experience and it’s not fair to block the view of or elbow fellow aficionados. Proper gig etiquette should be followed strictly from the minute the people on the door slap on those wristbands.