Archive in concert at Paris Accor Arena - November 24, 2023
Archive and me
As explained in that article, I have been following Archive since 1996, which makes it one of the oldest bands/artist I am following - even before Radiohead! (which I started following in 1997).
I saw them a few times - and funily enough, I thought I only saw them once or twice before, but my Thunderbird calendar tells me that I saw them 4 times: 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2012.
So with the last gig 10+ years old, I was really eager to see them again!
Especially since this concert was initially planned for November 2022, but got rescheduled 1 year later because of Darius' illness:
D-Day
Empty pit!
I arrived at the Arena around 7pm - the doors had opened at 6:30.
I had a "standing" ticket, and was surprised to see that the pit was almost
empty, so I managed to secure a spot maybe at the 6th or 7th row:
Supporting Band
"October Drift" was Archive's supporting band. I didn't know them, and while I wouldn't qualify them as the best supporting band I've seen, they were energetic, their singer having a very specific way to play the guitar, and even went down in the pit during one of the songs, walking amongst us while singing, which was super fun.
Archive!
I had received an email from the Accor Arena giving specific timing about when the gig started: 8:45pm.
I was half expecting this not to be true, but in fact Archive showed up right on time!
They started with Mr Daisy, which is a pretty energetic song, and in my opinion a good way to start a show!
Darius stood on the left of the stage, with his keyboards, Dave Pen in the middle, and Danny Griffiths on the right of the stage.
Setlist
List
Here's the setlist (which I found on setlist.fm, as I have a very bad memory ;)
- Mr. Daisy
- Sane
- The False Foundation
- Vice
- Lights
- Conflict
- Daytime Coma
- Surrounded by Ghosts
- The Skies Collapsing Onto Us
- Take My Head
- The Crown
- Fear There & Everywhere
- Enemy
- The Empty Bottle
- Gold
Encore 1:
16. Fuck U
17. Bullets
Encore 2:
18. Again
Breakdown per album
Setlist.fm's "Songs on Albums" feature is still very nice, and gives the below:
=> Out of 18 songs, almost half (8) were from Call to Arms & Angels, 2 were from Lights, and the 8 other songs were spread across 8 albums.
How about the sound at the Accor Arena??
If you've read my previous article about the Vitalic gig last year, you'll remember that I had a very bad experience with the Accor Arena and its acoustics. So to say I was worried about Archive's concert not to be good because of that, would be an understatement.
I got very quickly reassured: as the supporting band "October Drift" played, the accoustics was really good.
Wrap Up
This really was a brilliant concert - while the group played a good chunk of Call to Arms & Angels, still there were some emblematic songs such as Take My Head, Again and of course Fuck U which made the whole show absolutely awesome!
Man, I missed Archive in those 10 years, and I will for sure see them again live in the future!!!
Tags: Music