On Sunday night I ventured out to see the Last Shadow Puppets in concert at the Manchester Apollo. The band is the side project of Arctic Monkeys front-man Alex Turner and Rascals singer Miles Kane which resulted in their Mercury Music Prize nominated album The Age Of The Understatement.
The band is also notable because it contains the 22-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra.
On the record, the orchestra adds an extra, lush dimension to the songs, helping to bring out the 60s-fused melodies into the forefront. I was hoping that the live experience would be a similar affair but it was ultimately a disappointing exercise.
In their defence, the biggest problem was probably that of the venue; I'm sure that the cramped housing at the back of the stage and the acoustics that were more geared towards your traditional guitar/bass/drum did not help to bring out the best of the orchestral sound. At a more appropriate place, like the Royal Albert Hall or in Manchester, the Opera House or Bridgewater Hall it might have been pushed to the forefront a bit more.
In reality however, all that the orchestra did was provide an expensive and visually arresting piece of decor. It was a bonus rather than an integral part of the music, which is the usual way that pop music seems to treat its more sophisticated cousin. Even songs with beautiful orchestral refrains, like Standing Next To Me, seemed to be washed away by the energy of the guitars and the crowd, rendering it largely devoid. If they weren't so obviously stacked up at the back of the stage, you would not notice they were there at all. Perhaps more damagingly, they wouldn't be missed either.
In recent years, this fusion between the classical and the pop nearly always ends with the same result of a superfluous and largely without merit gimmick. The arrangements are usually dull and devoid of inspiration while in live performance, such greater prominence is given in the mix to the other core pop instruments that it hardly seems worth the bother.
The question of the performance, or the energy of the performance is perhaps just as important. It remains easy to whip up an atmosphere whilst playing a guitar that you can jump around with rather than the rather static positions that the violinists have to adopt, for example. The sit-down and observe nature of classical concerts is simply over-powered when put on the same stage as the pop performer.
The only example of the two styles merging successfully that I can think of recently was that of Elbow on their Mercury winning album The Seldom Seen Kid, where the orchestra had become the driving force of a number of tracks. The other instruments had become the secondary part of the makeup of tracks like One Day Like This or Friend Of Ours and this is what makes it work.
Perhaps it all boils down to the simple equation that there isn't enough room (both physically and aurally) for the orchestra on a pop stage.
The band is also notable because it contains the 22-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra.
On the record, the orchestra adds an extra, lush dimension to the songs, helping to bring out the 60s-fused melodies into the forefront. I was hoping that the live experience would be a similar affair but it was ultimately a disappointing exercise.
In their defence, the biggest problem was probably that of the venue; I'm sure that the cramped housing at the back of the stage and the acoustics that were more geared towards your traditional guitar/bass/drum did not help to bring out the best of the orchestral sound. At a more appropriate place, like the Royal Albert Hall or in Manchester, the Opera House or Bridgewater Hall it might have been pushed to the forefront a bit more.
In reality however, all that the orchestra did was provide an expensive and visually arresting piece of decor. It was a bonus rather than an integral part of the music, which is the usual way that pop music seems to treat its more sophisticated cousin. Even songs with beautiful orchestral refrains, like Standing Next To Me, seemed to be washed away by the energy of the guitars and the crowd, rendering it largely devoid. If they weren't so obviously stacked up at the back of the stage, you would not notice they were there at all. Perhaps more damagingly, they wouldn't be missed either.
In recent years, this fusion between the classical and the pop nearly always ends with the same result of a superfluous and largely without merit gimmick. The arrangements are usually dull and devoid of inspiration while in live performance, such greater prominence is given in the mix to the other core pop instruments that it hardly seems worth the bother.
The question of the performance, or the energy of the performance is perhaps just as important. It remains easy to whip up an atmosphere whilst playing a guitar that you can jump around with rather than the rather static positions that the violinists have to adopt, for example. The sit-down and observe nature of classical concerts is simply over-powered when put on the same stage as the pop performer.
The only example of the two styles merging successfully that I can think of recently was that of Elbow on their Mercury winning album The Seldom Seen Kid, where the orchestra had become the driving force of a number of tracks. The other instruments had become the secondary part of the makeup of tracks like One Day Like This or Friend Of Ours and this is what makes it work.
Perhaps it all boils down to the simple equation that there isn't enough room (both physically and aurally) for the orchestra on a pop stage.
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