Live Review: Wintersleep + Fake Palms @ The Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver – November 19th 2016

I got in a little late tonight for most of Fake Palm’s set, but was around for the last couple of songs. The room was jam-packed with happy fans, who have only had to wait about half a year since Wintersleep’s last trek through this iconic room. Banter was light, but singer Paul Murphy took the time to thank the crowd and comment on how warm it was in the room early on, and to rub in the fact that he got a helicopter ride over from the previous night’s show in Victoria while the rest of the band took the ferry. Well, it was his birthday after all. He was battling his monitor mix a lot through the night it seems, but from the front end, they sounded glorious. One big difference from the night before in a smaller Victoria club was the presence of screens on either side of the stage. These normally show sponsor ads and promotions for future concerts between bands, but tonight I saw them used in a way I actually never had before – to show visuals provided by the band. It was a short looping black and white sequence of synchronised swimmers, beautifully-shot, that played for the duration of the set. No matter what song they were playing, from the dreamy to the frenetic, the film seemed to work.