The problem with driving out to the city, of course, is parking. Luckily for us, sorta, parking didn't become a problem until when we were leaving. Still, even with that problem somehow unexpectedly postponed, we still couldn't manage to get there on time and when we finally arrived, Machine Translation were already into their set.
First time visiting the venue, the security was using some fancy scanning thing for the tickets that I had never seen before. People were hanging outside for some reason, while a perfectly good band is playing indoors. The perfectly good band in this case being Machine Translations. A curious choice for support act, I consider myself a fan but I don't think it went down too well with the crowd tonight. They didn't do anything wrong, but they aren't about to wow PJ Harvey fans over either.
It was only when Machine Translations got off stage that the people came in and for over an hour we all just squeezed together and waited. A woman in the crowd began singing along to the classic hits played on the PA, much to the enjoyment of the rest of the crowd. Well, I thought she was entertaining.
Polly and friends come on, Polly not wearing her own tour merchandise and other wacky stuff she has reportedly been doing in other shows on this tour. Nameless, gothic looking backing band played without saying much. Harvey wasn't too talkative either. The range of songs played were sounding heavy and a lot more harder rocking than I was expecting.
This has got to be one of the most impressive rock shows I had ever seen.
I'm writing this nearly a year after the event, so sorry it's a bit weird and unfocused. Or even more weird and unfocused than usual. It was a crazy 24 hours for me as the next day there was a Homebake and my brain got fried from the level of fun and general awesomeness on offer.