alt-J is an English band. They came to play a concert in the Gasometer in Vienna on 16.02.2015, supported by Gengahr and Wolf Alice. It was a cool night.

I had heard neither of the supporting bands before the concert but when I heard who would play, I gave them a listen and pretty much immediately decided that Gengahr wasn’t my cup of tea. Since they were up first, puzzledpeaces and me decided to skip them and only caught the last song or so of theirs, which didn’t change my mind.

Wolf Alice, on the other hand, I fell in love with pretty immediately and I was really looking forward to their show. (puzzledpeaces less so, but she indulged me.) And they fully delivered with their music, even if there switches from soft-ish pop to punk-ish rock are not ideal for an easy concert mood.

Their show could still use a little work. Especially the audience interaction apparently doesn’t come so easily to them and sometimes it felt a little like they didn’t want to acknowledge that there was an audience there at all. But I still enjoyed it a lot – I’m only sorry that I didn’t discover them sooner so I could sing along with more songs.

Then it was finally alt-J’s turn. I also discovered them rather recently (in the fall at some point, or the end of summer or something. Just long enough to care when their concert was announced), but we hit it off immediately. Or I with them in any case. So I was really looking forward to their concert – and I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

Usually the great thing about concerts (or one of the great things) is that you get to celebrate music you love with other people who also love it, and you get to just revel in this communal feel for a bit. But with alt-J, for me, it felt somehow more private, despite the sold-out concert hall. As if they were playing in my living room, just for me (and suddenly Joe Newman’s voice was that much sexier). It was kind of weird and amazing (this happened to me once before, during the White Lies’ concert at the Frequency five years ago), and it meant that I was less bothered by the constant stream of people going on beer runs during the concert and all seemingly pushing past me.

alt-J, too, were not so big on the audience interaction though. Maybe because whenever they tried to have the audience sing on their own, the result was pretty damn atrocious. Granted, alt-J generally aren’t easy to sing along to. Their lyrics are mostly difficult and rather poetic and not easily understood. But that doesn’t excuse the utter lack of melody that I heard that night (and I’m not the most musical person myself).

What they were big on, though, was the light show. Apart from a couple of moments where they almost blinded the audience, it was very well done and with surprisingly simple means, making the concert feel wonderfully moody. In fact, the only time where I was really shaken out of the concert when they started to project an ad in the middle of the show. I don’t know if that was the concert hall’s doing or alt-J’s but it really should not happen again [since the concert hall’s catastrophic handling of the coat rack makes me doubt their competence in any case, I’m leaning towards the former]. But that couldn’t ruin the evening.

Summarizing: wonderful night.