Review: Ride at Metropolis Fremantle

Ride at Metropolis Fremantle
w/ Mercury Rev
Friday, August 16, 2024

It didn’t get off to a good start.

For plenty of punters, legendary Buffalo, New York psych-rockers Mercury Rev were the main attraction, and walking into a half-empty room with the balcony closed, the last-minute cancellation without a statement from the band seemed a little suspicious.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and Oxford’s second favourite, Ride, ponied up and delivered two sets to make up for it.

On the upside, this meant an additional 30 minutes of songs they otherwise weren’t planning on playing (other than Chelsea Girl, which was shoehorned from the encore to the start of the set).

This selection featured exclusively early material, and Drive Blind in particular was a huge standout. Displaying Ride’s instrumental range second track in, the monster breakdown saw guitarists Andy Bell and Mark Gardener interchanging atmospherics and made us wonder why it’s not on every setlist they play.

With a focus on their three EPs prior to their landmark 1990 debut album Nowhere, it nicely set the context for the mix of new and old to follow. Taste and the Joy Division-styled menace of Decay were further highlights before Nowehere (the song) stretched out with more dual guitar interplay from Bell and Gardener, an impressive strobe display, and even a rare shred solo.

Interplay is also the title of Ride’s latest album, and its six tracks during the main set made up a good portion of what was to follow. After some good-humoured banter (“Enjoy your night,” Bell laughed to finish the first set, before Gardener quipped “Thanks to Ride for supporting us” to start the second act), Monaco marked an impressive re-entrance, this time with video adding to the visual atmosphere.

Not every post was a winner, with Last Frontier as beige as it is on the record, and the crowd missed the memo to throw their hands in the air during Peace Sign, despite it perfectly encapsulating the dual vocals of Bell and Gardener at their best.

Their ongoing interplay was the central joy to behold all night, and whether it was the harmonies on an old fave like Cool Your Boots (one of just two songs from 1992’s Going Blank Again) or the more recent epic I Came to See the Wreck featuring both Gardener and Steve Queralt playing bass, this band, whose line-up has remained unchanged through breakups and reformations, plays well together.

Lannoy Point’s awesome electronic pulse recalled Ride’s work with producer/DJ Erol Alkan, while Black Nite Crash properly kicked out the jams. But it was the hits from Nowhere that really won the night.

Early that was Dreams Burn Down in all its ferocious beauty, while the main set’s closing one-two of shoegaze classic Vapour Trail into the frantic drums and bass of Seagull are reminders of why their sound remains timeless.

The encore provided even more sonic fireworks. The comparisons with post-rock have long been apparent in shoegaze’s most epic moments, and Light in a Quiet Room was much more than just one of Interplay‘s better songs, as it soared from quiet to loud with impressive intensity.

It all left the mighty Leave Them All Behind to close the set in all its droning, pulsating glory, a finale worthy of one of their genre’s most defining bands.

HARVEY RAE

Photos by Adrian Thomson