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The 1975 Setlist
Pale Waves Setlist
Tour Dates
05/20/2017 Tinley Park, IL WKQX Piqniq 05/22/2017 Detroit, MI The Fillmore 05/23/2017 Rochester, NY Main Street Armory 05/25/2017 Ottawa, ON Canadian Tire Centre 05/26/2017 Montreal, QC Parc Jean Drapeau 05/27/2017 Allston, MA Boston Calling 05/28/2017 Glens Falls, NY Glens Falls Civic Ctr. 05/30/2017 Niagara Falls, NY Rapids Theatre 05/31/2017 Niagara Falls, NY Rapids Theatre 06/01/2017 New York, NY Madison Square Garden 06/03/2017 Columbus, OH Express Live! 06/04/2017 Cincinnati, OH Bunbury Music Festival 06/10/2017 Manchester, UK Parklife Weekender 06/11/2017 Aarhus, Denmark Northside Festival 06/16/2017 Belfast, UK Belsonic Festival 07/06/2017 Bilbao, Spain Bilbao BBK Live Festival 07/07/2017 Montreux, Montreux Jazz Festival 07/09/2017 Glasgow, Glasgow TRNSMT 07/14/2017 Suffolk, UK Latitude Festival Read More
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For at least this night, Prince got it wrong—
On a rainy, windswept night in St. Paul, a crowd 5,000 strong at a sold-out Roy Wilkins Auditorium didn’t party like it was 1999… they partied like it was The 1975.
The three-band-bill began with a brief set from London’s Colouring, who has a new digital single, ‘Heathen’, due on an upcoming EP (Interscope Records) as follow up to last year’s Symmetry. Like the headliners, Glass Animals and The XX, the band led by frontman Jack Kenworthy blends lush synths with traditional instruments and has a romantic streak in terms of lyrics. Unfortunately, due to a torrential rain/hail mix outside (akin to their song ‘The Wave’) and only one single-file, slow moving line as entrance to the venue, we could only hear their set from the outside, waiting patiently to get in.
Next up was Manchester, UK band Pale Waves, hailing from the same hometown as The 1975, and signed to their imprint, Dirty Hit, with the band’s Matt Healy and George Daniels recruited to contribute production on their single, ‘There’s a Honey’.
Their mix of electro-pop with jangly guitar is a similar fit as the night’s headliner and they like to also play in minimal lighting, with singer Heather Baron-Gracie looking a bit Robert Smith and sounding a bit Delores O’Riordan.
“You’re very welcoming” Gracie blushed halfway through their twenty-five minute set, happy to see fans clap a long to a band they’ve likely never heard of, prior. “I don’t know what’s going on over here” Gracie mused, looking at stage right and the throng pogo-ing with raised hands, “it’s like a dance party”, as the band finished with ‘There’s a Honey’.
Call it a victory lap for The 1975, returning to sold-out Roy Wilkins Auditorium still in support of their second full-length I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It (Dirty Hit/Interscope Records), which still has the longest album name since Fiona Apple’s last one, and has ever grown in popularity, thanks to its irresistible singles and still-expanding (mostly female) fan base.
Like previously seen, a droning hum (like a sound effect from ‘Lost’) grew louder and louder to then slowed to a halt as cheers went up and lights went dark, as the band took to the stage to ‘The 1975’ intro leading into the jangly intro of ‘Love Me’. Singer Matty Healy moved as lithe as ever, in platform shoes and a t-shirt that read ”Stop Glorifying Rats” (which can be politically interpreted a number of ways).
Visuals are always important with the band, with importance on color and lighting, and the stage was set with four vertical dividing pillars and three lit rectangular box shapes hovering above them. Most of the time, the lighting was dimmed low, with pastel blues, beige, and pinks awash over the band, sometimes television static, light-formed geometric shapes, dramatic strobing, and a cityscape.
We’ve loved and followed the band’s local trek over the last four years, smilingly watching them graduate to bigger and bigger venues, from the Varsity Theater, to First Avenue, to the Mall of America, Myth, and now another sell-out at Roy Wilkins, with arenas likely in their future, for their next local stop on a world tour.
Like many bands playing bigger venues, its core foursome (Healy, Adam Hann on guitar, keys; Daniel on drums; and Ross MacDonald on bass, keys) expands by a couple live players, including saxophonist John Waugh. But, the impressive thing was watching them return to their roots, playing the majority of the second half of the set, just as the original four-piece.
Healy kept conversation to a minimum, “this is like a greatest hits set, this evening” Healy mused before ‘The City’, sticking mostly to album cuts and not inserting B-sides live as we’ve seen before, or their recent version of a Sade cover, done to benefit the War Child charity.
Backdrop colors turned rainbow for ‘Loving Someone’, guitarist Hann (the band’s secret musical weapon) and sax player Waugh shone on ‘She’s American’, and the crowd hushed for the ballad ‘She Lays Down’ then shrieked with joy as radio hit ‘Somebody Else’ followed.
Once again, Healy stopped to talk to the crowd before ‘Me’, saying “Let’s not live retrospectively… let’s just be people in a room, no phones, for one song”. ‘Me’ was followed (logically) by ‘You’ and the one-two of ‘Girls’ and ‘Sex’ would wrap the main set amid a barrage of strobe lights and screams from the audience.
The three-song encore started downtempo with the soulful, gospel-tinged ‘If I Believe You’ with nice sax work by Waugh and Healy asking in its lyrics, “If I'm lost then how can I find myself?”. Ramping up with ‘Chocolate’, the loudest screaming and singing from the crowd, was reserved for the band’s final song, ‘The Sound’.
Like all shows in this aging venue, the sound was boomy, the air heavy and humid, and chairs small and uncomfortable, but no one seemed to mind as The 1975 rose above all of that for ninety-minutes with The Sound- those memorable songs that have caught, and stayed in the ear of a devoted and exponentially growing fan base, which was definitely in the mood on this evening, to celebrate it.
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The 1975 at Roy Wilkins Auditorium, St. Paul (17 May 2017) |
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Pale Waves |
Pale Waves |
The 1975 Setlist |
The 1975 |
The 1975 |
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The 1975 |
The 1975 |
The 1975 |
The 1975 |
The 1975 |
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The 1975 at Roy Wilkins Auditorium, St. Paul (17 May 2017) |
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