Embracing The Past

Rebecca and I recently witnessed a very disappointing performance by Embrace, the indie-guitar band from Huddersfield. The Alexandra Palace event was said to be Embrace’s biggest headline gig to date. The show featured a balanced set of new songs and older classics supported by plentiful material from the band's most recent studio album, Out of Nothing. I only know this much about the songs they played because I subsequently found a set list online. The gig was so dreadful that it drove us, and many others, to the exits after little more than half an hour.

The concert was billed as a triumphant return for a band that two years previously had found itself without a recording contract. Certainly it should have been a night of celebration for those band members who had once resorted to the dole queue despite a discography that boasts a magnificent debut album, three further solid albums, and a clutch of hit singles. However, although the band seemed to have a good time, many audience members did not.

For a professional band with ten years of touring experience this performance was a shocker. The sound was terrible. The vocals were loud and leery - simultaneously too prominent yet indistinct - and the other instruments were poorly mixed. At times it seemed that individual band members were playing different songs. Established, well-known tracks were barely recognisable, lost in the ponderous sonic soup being served up on stage. The new material was turgid and unimpressive. The lighting and visuals were amateurish and did nothing to enhance the experience.

Alexandra Palace has a reputation for offering indifferent acoustics and generally being a difficult venue to play. However, this cannot be an excuse for Embrace because only a fortnight earlier we saw Franz Ferdinand dynamically master the same space with an outstanding show featuring excellent sound, great visuals and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tubthumping energy. Moreover, reviews of other dates on Embrace’s current tour reveal a common theme of below-par performances marred by poor sound.

During their brief heyday in the late 1990s Embrace flirted with greatness. Their early repertoire, captured on their 1998 debut album The Good Will Out plus a series of earlier singles and EPs, featured mature songs, beautiful compositions and intricate arrangements. Soaring anthems such as All You Good Good People, Come Back To What You Know, and My Weakness Is None Of Your Business demonstrated breathtaking confidence, vision and ambition. Poignant and intimate ballads such as Fireworks, Dry Kids, and Butter Wouldn’t Melt indicated an emotional depth and delicacy of touch that most bands could never attain. Energetic up-beat tracks such as The Last Gas and One Big Family suggested that, amongst the tear-jerking sentiment, Embrace could also rock.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow, Embrace lost their way. After their third album, If You’ve Never Been, the band was summarily dropped by their then record label, Hut. The fourth studio album, Out of Nothing, released in 2004 on the Independiente label, was commercially successful but did little to progress the band’s sound and musical direction. Therein lies Embrace’s greatest problem. The band’s failure to revise and advance its style has left it musically and creatively bereft.

I don’t believe Embrace became a bad band overnight. Indeed, I suspect they were never quite as good as either I, or the music media, or, crucially, the band themselves believed. The main problem is that Embrace have been left trailing in the wake of a new generation of bands who are simply more innovative, more skilled, and more engaging. The Franz Ferdinand comparison is highly instructive here, as their energy and innovation allied with fantastic technical performances leaves Embrace looking like washed-up pub-rockers struggling to keep pace with recent musical developments.

I used to love you, Embrace, but not anymore. On a December night at Alexandra Palace you left me cold and sad. I bet you never expected to play a venue of the size and stature of Ally Pally. I certainly never expected to see you there. Perhaps me and you should have never got this far.

Undone
You're out of my system
Learning how to live with how it feels
And we tried
For so long
To reach eleven on a scale of one to ten
But we never get so far
Me and you
Should have never left the start
Me and you
Should have never got this far.

(Embrace, Dry Kids: 1997)

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