This past Saturday saw our boys broadcasting from space after being abducted in part one of their Out Of This World concert series. Forced into performing Discovering the Waterfront by the alien overlords, they had little choice but to play the album in full. Unsurprisingly, like the week before, they absolutely nailed it.
Really clever with their production, they set their stage with crawling smoke and strobe lighting to create an otherworldly feeling. They then complete that shift by taking a completely different approach to filming. No longer slick and produced like the first week, they now have a more chaotic, almost found-footage vibe, that looks as if it was recorded on a handheld camera, because, you know, they’re in space. Yet, they never take themselves too seriously. Where a lot of bands would try to go dark and creepy, these guys keep it lighthearted and poke fun at the concept to bring in a bit of needed humour.
In terms of the set, Silverstein seem to keep leveling up. The harmonies on ‘Discovering the Waterfront’ are beautiful, vocalist Shane Told is an absolute powerhouse, nailing every single note, with bassist Billy Hamilton stepping up for backing screams that are super solid. Overall, this band is extremely tight and as time goes on, we see the members expanding their repertoire to not only push themselves individually but to also evolve the band as a unit.
Quite honestly, that’s one of the things that make Silverstein an evergreen band. They’re never content with the minimum. You often see artists going through the motions when they’re playing older songs, but Silverstein keep reworking material from decades ago to create even more dimension.
They’re also versatile as proven time and time again. On this album alone, you see incredible variation and sure, ‘My Heroine’ and ‘Call It Karma’ are the ones everyone’s chanting for at a show, but EVERY. SINGLE. SONG on this record demands your love and attention. So we were grateful to revisit tracks like ‘Three Hours Back’ and ‘Already Dead’. The latter being slightly reimgined on last year’s Redux.
Another very cool touch to this week’s stream was that they played the entire set in their ‘Smile in your Sleep’ coloured t-shirts, which felt like a nice easter egg for long-time fans. If you missed it, you can watch the video to jog your memory.
Ending the steam with ‘The Artist’ and ‘Bleeds No More’, we thought for sure they’d be set free, but sadly not. We don’t know where in space Silverstein currently are, but we can only hope they stay safe for the final stream next weekend.
Grab your tickets for the third and final date via https://silversteinstore.com