Now seen New Model Army four times over the years: first time at Reading Festival in 1989; second time at Manchester Academy in early or mid-1990s; then a few years ago at Warsaw Stodoła; and last night at Warsaw Proxima.
So how was last night different from the previous times I'd seen New Model Army? Well, more than anything, the band did far more of their newish stuff than the old favourites last night, and this kind of had a fresh impact. From the newish stuff, there was a nice balance between hard crunchy (often experimental) tunes and more subtle mellow ones. As I'm now getting on in age, being nearly 48, I now have a liking for the more subtle mellow tunes so 'March in September' (well done to the good person who videod this at Sheffield below) from the new 'Between Dog and Wolf' album was right up my tree:
Having said this, I also really enjoyed the significantly crunchier title track from the 2009 album 'Today Is a Good Day':
Again, well done to the good person who put the video above from Nottingham Rock City on Youtube.
Thus, the New Model Army set was generally fresh and crisp, but the Proxima, a small student club, is far from the best place to see a concert in Warsaw, thus, there were, at times, a few inevitable problems with the sound, especially down near the front, because of the far from perfect accoustics of the place.
Anyway, as the 90-minute or so set drew nearer to the end, we started to get more of the old classics such as 'No Rest'; 'Stupid Questions'; '51st State'; and the final encore, 'The Green and The Grey'. Still, it would've been nice if the band had done my two favourite NMA tunes: 'White Coats' and 'Love Songs', but I guess you can't have everything in life, can you?
Still, one nice surprise of the evening was that I bumped into an old workmate, Steve, who I hadn't seen in about 3-4 years, probably since when NMA played Warsaw Stodoła 3-4 years ago.
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