The Slow Readers Club - Live at Albert Hall (Manchester
17th March 2023
The cradle of emotions brought out its tears, making hearts sweat in the beautiful setting of the Albert Hall: the home favourites ravaged the air with a concert in which everything became a collective refuge of dancing souls, of working minds, in a state of complete adoration. Chills flew over heads and ignited the conviction that all the future lies in the wise hands of men now capable of sweeping away doubts and fears. A harrowing performance, bordering on uncontrollable physical pain, a continuous explosion that left crumbs of blood on the floor: with the Readers you don't mess around...
Giving, for the four knights of the epidermis in perpetual ecstasy, is a natural act of faith, with the intention of not veering towards self-satisfaction: they work to probe, to experiment, to throw salt and sugar on our cracked shells.
Song after song, in the sweaty atmosphere, you could witness the delirium smiling within the notes that inspired cuddles and kicks, seeds and fruit, boiling over, with the feeling that what is unique to them can be repeated. An amazing setlist, of course, did you have any doubts? But that's not the point, the most interesting part. What has become earthy magic are the details that have taken their place within the songs, proving that the best care is always to give new life.
And so one found oneself like enchanted mummies, facing one's own awakening, with new life flowing through one's veins. Nineteen blades with a smile, pulsating, made us gravitate to the mystery of this city, of the world not so far away, that Aaron and co. made us touch. Between one piece and the next, there was never silence: notes of keyboards glued the attention waiting for the next, like an act that did not want to be absent.
All the albums have found exposure, in a dance of respect that has been enthusiastically received: being devoted to this band should not allow any lacks, and the Readers first know this. Not a leap in time, but a walk that reminded us what they have sown, unveiled and what we have harvested in these 12, wonderful and intense, years with these boys who have become men.
In this way, we also felt our own passage, what we were and what we are now, in the time when we must modernise, in order to carry forward into the future every dutiful task that we cannot let fall away. We dreamed, as if the Albert Hall was a huge bed, and we had not a roof over our heads but a kiss to the sky. But it rained so much inside us, a cloudburst of emotions that melted in our chests.
There were no weak points, their sides were stainless steel, a tank that came down from the stage and pleasantly slaughtered us all, and we did nothing but welcome it, convinced that the best music is that which makes you die of joy
They sowed the seeds of sharing, made us kneel before God, made us ride the waves, in perpetual debt, without waiting for summer to return. They brought us beyond death by making us smile, we did not have to wait for the great escape: we were enveloped in the chaos that welds the first duty of a human being, which is not to close in on oneself.
We saw the ghost weld the shadows before our eyes, and all we felt was a flood of serenity that led us to give everything we had.
Dancing we found our feet on fire, like thoughts, and we entered the dimension of a madness that smiled at a soul we were ashamed to call Lunatic...
If a poem can have a sound and a thousand colours, then it had to be collected while everything became cloudy, turned into songs with an enchanted switch, always on like these butterflies in the stomach were on, because with TSRC, falling in love is a continuous, screaming, catatonic affair.
We have seen the sadness within stories that have left themselves in our adoring chants, suffered the blow, and surrendered, becoming a party that sanctioned the end of what the Lockdown meant: we have been living souls with the knowledge that Aaron, Kurtis, Dave and Jim have blown into our mouths love and joy for a future that will forever have the memory of this night to console us in times of difficulty.
When music is an unstoppable source of life...
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
18th March 2023
- Encore:
- Pics by Nena Dark
