Live review: Seether – Wedgewood Rooms, 9th June 2008

Seether fans take the band pretty seriously, if the number of people who have ill-advised tattoos of the band’s logo is anything to go by. This evening’s close-to-capacity crowd is also replete with T-shirts emblazoned with tribal tattoo patterns or raised-middle-finger motifs, and biker merchandise being worn by people who, at a guess, have never owned or ridden a motorbike – this generation’s equivalent of the people you used to see at rock and metal shows in the nineties wearing those Amerindian spirit animal designs, perhaps. Tough on the surface, but fairly nice underneath.

Local support Contra made a decent showing of themselves, playing an updated take on nineties alt-rock that’s strong on hooks and low on pretense. There’s hints of Feeder and mid-career Manics, a little bit of punk and a little bit of Southern Rawk with a nice beefy sound. The crowd betray their concealed niceness by responding with an enthusiasm that support bands rarely receive; Contra aren’t quite ready for their own tour, but they’ve got a strong set of tunes under their belt already.

Once Contra are done, it’s a long wait for Seether to appear – I’ve gotten so accustomed to three-band gigs that when there’s only two I find myself with an embarrassment of time on my hands, which I spend counting Seether tattoos and watching a very tall be-dreadlocked roadie stringing Christmas lights on the mic-stands. Eventually the lights drop and the crowd starts cheering as Shaun Morgan arrives on stage, all Kurt Cobain shoulder-length hair and nail polish, wielding a guitar with “kill me now” inlaid into the fretboard and crooning his way into the opening track for a few bars before the rest of the band kick in.

After a few songs, a pattern is established; Seether songs have a tendency to build up to a point where you’re expecting an explosive release of tension which never quite arrives. Unashamedly drawing influence from the grunge legends of yore, it’s not surprising that the default tone is thick low open chords and baritone vocals, but the choruses never redeem or transcend the slightly dirgey feel. There are a few belting riffs that lean more toward the metallic end of the spectrum – “Needles”, for example, has a real driving crusher of a hook at its core – but they’re static and underdeveloped, threatening to smash the walls down but never quite living up to their promise.

Seether have come a long way as far as musicianship is concerned; their earlier albums were much more ragged, rough and ready in an authentically grungy fashion, but they’re a much more polished machine now. The rhythm section especially runs smooth and steady, and the addition of an extra guitar for the live situation fills out the sound and makes the newer material sound a lot less processed than as presented on current album Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces. Morgan has raised his game as a vocalist, too, but it’s a double-edged sword; he may have lost the slightly grating nasal whine of the past, but he’s traded it for sounding like Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. I’m not entirely sure it’s a trade I like.

The music itself is fairly polished, but Seether‘s stagecraft seems a little lacking; perhaps it’s been a while since they last played live, but there’s a lack of coherence and focus that could be mistaken for a case of going-through-the-motions, and there are too many meandering pseudo-instrumental interludes between songs. Maybe they’re tuning up, maybe they’re part of the show, but it serves only to drain what little momentum the set ever picks up. Meanwhile, Morgan’s lyrics give the histrionic emo set a run for their money in the Self-harm Buzzword Bingo stakes – guns! Cut! Knife! Suicide! Death! It’s no secret that Morgan’s life hasn’t exactly been a rollercoaster of happiness, but he surely likes to wallow in it with his songwriting, and the crowd lap it up uncritically.

And that could be the problem here. I’m passing fond of Seether‘s early stuff, but I’d never have considered myself a fan (no logo tattoos here), and the line between my experience of the show and that of the sing-along die-hards around me is plain to see. To them, Seether are belting out the Best. Nihilistic rock music. EVAR; to me, they’re warming over the chops of the grunge masters and adding very little of their own to the mix. Some bands make their name by forging an emotional connection with their audience rather than impressing with their songcraft, and it’s in that cabinet that Seether must be filed.

Point in case – Seether play two covers toward the end of their set, and the degree to which they stand out from the band’s own material is immense. Their version of Nirvana’s “In Bloom”, for example – possibly one of the most frequently covered songs of the last two decades – has all the dynamics that Seether‘s own songs never quite manage to capture, even when it is delivered with considerably less verve and bite than the original.

But the crowd are practically ecstatic; it matters less to them how well the the song is played than the fact that it gets played at all, and that pretty much sums up the Seether experience. I can’t deny there’s something about them which inspires the sort of admiration that provokes people to indelibly mark themselves with their name, but it’s not the music itself that does it so much as Morgan’s suffer-for-your-art persona; the crowd aren’t here for Seether‘s songs but for Seether‘s singer, and Morgan knows it well enough to give them what they want. I suspect that, just like them, his tough fucked-up exterior conceals a nervous nice guy trying to get out.