{"id":5061,"date":"2015-08-26T15:31:14","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T20:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=5061"},"modified":"2015-08-26T16:09:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T21:09:43","slug":"failure-play-sold-show-metro-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=5061","title":{"rendered":"Failure Play Sold Out Show at Metro in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Christopher David<\/p>\n

The measure of a great band can, at least in part, be noted in the scope of their influence after they\u2019re gone. Some obvious examples come to mind \u00ad The Beatles, Pink Floyd (at least in the classic sense), The Doors \u00ad and the 1990s alternative rock boom saw its share of visionary artists along those same lines who, sadly, were buried in the rubble of ineffective or non\u00adexistent promotion, record label politics, drug problems, and who \u00adknows \u00adwhat else.<\/p>\n

The members of Failure can speak to all of those things. One of the more intellectually stimulating rock bands to come out the 1990s alt scene, the lush, spacey soundscapes that Greg Edwards and Ken Andrews (and later in the lineup, Kellii Scott) created over the course of three records were never really given their proper due at the time, and nowhere is this felt more now than in the culmination of that run: 1997\u2019s Fantastic Planet, an album now heralded by many far and wide as one of the best and most influential albums of that decade. As Failure disintegrated like so much space dust following the tour for that record and the members went onto to other stellar projects, the faithful patiently hoped for a reunion.<\/p>\n

2014\u2019s reunion of that lineup for the Tree of Stars tour (which really ended up being like a Fantastic Planet tour, version 2.0) brought the band back to the collective alternative\u00adrock conscious (as if they\u2019d ever really left) and gave the trio an opportunity to pick up where they left off, which they did, releasing a much\u00ad anticipated fourth album, The Heart is a Monster, in June.<\/p>\n

The tour for that record has been something of a revelation for long\u00adtime fans, and a brilliant introduction to one of the all\u00adtime great bands for those who had some catching up to do. Failure\u2019s return has definitively proven that the band exists outside of a specific genre or scene, and the crowd at Metro last Friday proved that the band\u2019s time may have finally come.<\/p>\n

Opening with a one \u00adtwo punch from Monster, openers \u201cHot Traveler\u201d and \u201cA.M. Amnesia\u201d worked seamlessly against classics like \u201cAnother Space Song,\u201d \u201cFrogs,\u201d \u201cSmoking Umbrellas\u201d \u00ad the list goes on. That Monster is a worthy successor to Fantastic Planet is a given from first listen, but seeing the new material mixed with old was a testament to the very specific chemistry shared by Andrews, Edwards, and Scott. Selections from Fantastic Planet anchored the set, and while some of the crunchier tunes from the new record were missed (\u201cThe Focus\u201d and \u201cSnow Angel\u201d would have been welcome additions), the ebb and flow of the set was hard to argue with as video panels behind each member gave the illusion of floating through space on epic single \u201cStuck On You\u201d and Planet favorite \u201cHeliotropic.\u201d (And let\u2019s be honest \u00adFailure fans are a fairly rabid bunch, and we would have been happy to see every damn record played front to back.)<\/p>\n

It took 17 years, but seeing Failure\u2019s return to the stage not just on the wave of a reunion but in support of a new album is something that most fans never thought they\u2019d see, and for 90 minutes at the Metro, it felt like they\u2019d never left. That\u2019s not easy to pull off, and it\u2019s even harder to keep nostalgia from doing the talking. Failure are clearly looking forward, and if The Heart is a Monster and the current tour are any indication, that\u2019s probably a good idea: their best work may well be in front of them.<\/p>\n

For more on the band, tour and music, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For photos from the show, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Failure, Metro, Chicago, IL \u00ad August 21, 2015 (setlist)<\/p>\n

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  1. Segue 4<\/li>\n
  2. Hot Traveler<\/li>\n
  3. A.M. Amnesia<\/li>\n
  4. Another Space Song<\/li>\n
  5. Wet Gravity<\/li>\n
  6. Atom City Queen<\/li>\n
  7. Bernie<\/li>\n
  8. Frogs<\/li>\n
  9. Counterfeit Sky<\/li>\n
  10. Saturday Saviour<\/li>\n
  11. Sergeant Politeness<\/li>\n
  12. Segue 1<\/li>\n
  13. Mulholland Dr.<\/li>\n
  14. Smoking Umbrellas<\/li>\n
  15. Solaris<\/li>\n
  16. The Nurse Who Loved Me<\/li>\n
  17. Stuck On You<\/li>\n
  18. Otherwhere<\/li>\n
  19. Heliotropic<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Christopher David The measure of a great band can, at least in part, be noted in the scope of their influence after they\u2019re gone. Some obvious examples come to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}