Last night, Ed, Frans and I went to the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam to see the opening performance of the Sisters of Mercy Smoke and Mirrors European tour. I’m afraid that I have to report that it was a dismal performance.
It might have been the acoustics, it might have been the sound engineers or it could just be that the SoM are past their prime. It could also be that live performances are just not their thing. During the performance, I moved around in the large hall to try and find an acoustic sweet spot, but to no avail. I also stood by the sound engineers to make sure that I heard the music as they were hearing it: it was still quite disappointing. The melody was not really distinguishable and Andrew Eldritch’s vocals were terribly weak, although there’s no mistaking that voice. In spite of having listened to most of their work more times than I can count, I sometimes had trouble identifying which song they were performing.