Tonight's show, while not sold-out, drew quite a few people in... From metalheads to alternative or prog rock fans, Anathema's audience is varied indeed and has changed over the years. Still, while I think metalheads were less numerous than usual, they still formed the core of the fans here.
Mother's Cake
This Austrian band, who're accompagnying Anathema on the whole European tour, play some quite proggy 70's retro stuff. Well, not completely retro, as I felt they had a modern edge to their sound.
Technically, it was more than OK, as all the three guys were good - well... maybe the singing wasn't that great to be honest, a bit Robert Plant-y but not fantastic - but it wasn't to my liking. I'm not really into that retro thingie, plus some songs meandered a bit too aimlessly for their own good. But well, nevermind, most of the audience seemed to enjoy them (I know Collin did).
Interested? Their website is there!
Anathema
Once again, they were great and delivered an excellent show!
OK, now that the obvious is out of the way, what else to say?
Danny was relaxed and outgoing, while on the contrary Vinnie seemed a bit stressed for some reason. That doesn't prevented them both from talking to the audience, quite a few times in French. They've improved a lot, I must say! (and yes, we Froggies like to be talked to in French). Behind them, the drums / percussion duo (Daniel Cardoso / John Douglas, also in charge of keyboards) was quite demonstrative, and actually added a much more rock feeling to those recent "electro" songs (like "Distant Satellites"), who were indeed magnified compared to their studio versions. But that's quite usual with Anathema's live songs, right
?OK, one more proof, then. I still really don't like the song "A Natural Disaster", yet they play it every time. It's a good way to check Lee Douglas's progress in singing and charisma onstage, and this time was for sure the best one I've ever had the pleasure to hear! I remember the first times when she was quite shy and didn't really dare to push her voice to its fullest... But now, whoa... She's been awesome! It's really great to see her getting better through the years to reach this level!
The audience was really receptive, singing, lighting their phones during "Universal", everything when smoothly... Nothing to complain about for sure. Yet I do have a gripe with this show: the setlist. It was really, really, too centered on the new stuff, with Distant Satellites almost played in its entirety, and then quite a few songs from Weather Systems and less so from We're Here.... As for the classics, we only got "Closer" and "Fragile Dreams". And that's all - but not enough! Well, who am I to complain, after all they played more than one hour and a half - no mere feat!
Well well well... When all is said and done, I think that fantastic 2011 show was the best I've seen from them so far, because it had both quality performance - something you're anyway assured to have with Anathema - and a fantastic setlist featuring both new and old stuff... which wasn't the case this night. Anyway, let's be frank: this was once again a great evening!
Oh, I'm sure you want better pics than the crappy ones I put here. So, here's a link for some great photos!
Thanks to Fanny of Bleu Citron for the accreditation, and to my pal Etienne for a bit of inspiration!
I was surprised to see both drummers being used, Daniel Cardoso more on the new songs and Douglas on the old ones.
as long as I have at least one hour of classics, they can play as much as they want. And indeed, next time they play near home, I'll be there again. Definitely a great live band 
apart for the vocals of course.