Grizzly Bear @ The Palais, Adelaide Riverbank, Adelaide 7/3/2018
For a Wednesday night Adelaide was buzzing with so much good stuff going on from Adelaide Fringe, Adelaide Festival to 65,000 people packed in at Adelaide Oval to see some chap called Ed Sheeran. It’d definitely a great time to be in Adelaide and it really is awesome seeing so many people out catching shows.
Grizzly Bear were playing the second of two shows with the first one being sold out and this one not to far behind. Coming on very late at 11pm once all the action at Adelaide Oval had finished it was Brooklyn’s finest Grizzly Bear taking the stage the next seventy five minutes. I think we should consider ourselves extremely lucky to have been able to see this fine band in Adelaide, let alone two shows given the economics involved in touring and why bands don’t always come to Adelaide. Hats off again to the Adelaide Festival for this fine inclusion.
The tight curfew didn’t allow for an extended set or for the band to engage the crowd as the race against the clock was on. Opening with Four Cypresses it was hard not to be mesmerised and captivated by their musicianship. It was a fine display of their defining albums Veckatimist, Shields and the more recent release Painted Ruins. Their set was perfection and as pointed out in other Adelaide Festival reviews the setting is just sublime as you could let your mind wander with the music.
Favourites for me included the likes of Mourning Sound and Sleepig Ute. How good was Colorado? Holy heck! The biggest cheer and the most popular song of the set was Two Weeks for which Ed Droste (front man, super talented singer, song writer) thanked Triple J for playing that one proving to be a major breakthrough for the band in Australia.
It was a real treasure trove of riches as the band worked their way through the remainder of the set with While You Wait, Knife, Three Rings and one of the pinnacle and night shaping moments Sun In Your Eyes. I honestly wish I caught their performance the night before as well as they are that great and we can only hope we can see them back in Adelaide sometime soon.
Adelaide Festival Review by Rob Lyon
Tuesday was great, extended list with 3 song encore, audience engagement. Really chilled technically accomplished musicians. It would have been interesting to see if Ed Sheehan could have held his own jamming with this set!