7 May 2023
Yves Tumor brought the freak to Montreal and played to a sold out crowd at Metropolis on Sunday night (I will forever feel weird calling it MTELUS).
I had tickets to see Yves in April 2020 and was super bummed when the early days of the pandemic shut it down. Slow forward three years, two albums later, et voilà, finalement, Yves en spectacle à la belle ville!
Touring in support of their biggest album to date, Praise a Lord who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds), Yves and bandmates came on stage ready to glam out and get the Sunday night party rollin’.
I started the show on the balcony, cozy on a stool, but by the third track of their set, “In Spite of War”, I ran downstairs and jostled my way through the crowd until I was close to the front. And it was perfect timing, because they played “Jackie” from The Asymptomatical World EP next, a track I love, and it seemed to be the moment when the show truly clicked for everyone on stage.
Yves has compiled one heck of a backing band to elevate their live show. Chris Greatti on lead guitar may have been the unsung star of the night, looking like 80’s era Eddie Van Halen up there, just shreddin’ with a smile. Bassist and vocalist, Gina Ramirez is Yves secret weapon, a double threat – she’s an awesome bass player, and every song she does backing vocals on is fantastic. Her voice on “Lovely Sewer” off of Praise a Lord, was a definite highlight, as was encore explosion, Kerosene! Her singing was a bit muted live, and could have been pushed up in the mix a bit overall, but I could say the same thing about Yves voice too, it was often muddled in all the distortion. But maybe that was the desired effect…
I know Yves is really trying to work the whole “rock star” thing, but I loved when they played “Noid” off of 2018’s Safe in the Hands of Love, which was the only song that displayed their more electronic and experimental side, and had Yves warbling through three different microphones all hooked up to pedals to great effect. I would have liked to hear more of that stuff too.
But they played every track off the new album that I wanted to hear, and for me the best stretch was “Meteora Blues”, “Interlude”, “Parody”, and “Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood” (which created a mosh pit in its end stretch). Overall, it was an absolutely fantastic live show, even if the sound was a bit wonky at times.
However, if I can make one (potentially salacious) critique: I was expecting more from Yves. I was expecting a larger than life freakshow persona, like the amorphous shapeshifter displayed on their album covers, a front person who is explosive, enigmatic, entrancing, and magnetic, but honestly in the end, I found Yves a bit wooden. Maybe it is supposed to be more high art, a strike-a-pose style vibe they are going for, but I couldn’t help thinking about their own lyrics a few times: “parody of a pop star … is this all just makeup?”
But at the end of the day, a minor complaint, I still loved the fuck out of the show, and as I’ve said numerous times on this sad blog, when an artist on Warp Records comes to town, you always know they’re going to turn it out.
Cheers!
INAUDIBLE 