“What do you guys call boogers over here?” Marshall Davies, lead singer of Farewell asked the audience at Oxford Academy part way through their set. This question along with other comments built up the gaps between the songs as they grew more comfortable in front of us.

The set was opened with “Stay Pretty”, a song that has just the right amount of energy to get everyone to start dancing. The song was immediately followed with a typical American “what’s up?” and a small introduction of themselves with a big thank you to the audience for coming. From there they leaped into a lively set involving the audience and getting everyone moving.

As to be expected, there were was a plentiful dose of screaming teenage girls, but the Farewell lads took it in their stride and kept going - like all good gigs getting everybody hot and a little bit sweaty.

The half way point of their set was the track “Hey Heather” at which point they introduced the song by asking who was in the room that was called Heather. A few hands went up and from there the boys jumped into their song with the last words being “Well this ones for you then.”

From there, Farewell said they were going to do a slower track that was also on the album, and if we have the record, can we sing along. If not then “buy the record!” Marshall joked - though people obviously had been buying up copies as they were completely sold out before the group had even got on stage.

The penultimate song of their set was their latest track to be released: “Eighty-Eights” (out since 20th October); however nobody mentioned that it was their latest release. Despite having given the set their all so far, the lads kept going giving a bubbly rendition of the track followed by giving everything to the last track of the set: “First One On The Blog”.

For a band’s debut tour in the UK, Farewell have clearly built up a good following over the internet and by word of mouth as many of the people at the concert recognised them and knew the songs - despite mainly being there to see YouMeAtSix who Farewell were supporting throughout the tour of England. Their performance exceeded expectations however, this was probably down to the fact they’re well through their tour now and getting close to going home. If you can catch them before they hop back over the pond to America, I would.

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I’ve seen Friendly Fires before, at Hydro Connect just over a month ago, where I fell in love with them… since then I bought the album and last night finally got to see them again, this time headlining Oxford’s Zodiac Carling Academy, one of my favourite venues to see bands.

After the Justice-lite warmup from Dublin’s Jape, Friendly Fires bounce out onto stage, lead singer Ed Macfarlane sporting a bodywarmer which was quickly removed about 10 seconds into the first song, and by the 30 second mark he’d already started his rather exberant thrusting which would put most sex addicts to shame.

Blasting their way through their debut album, the songs feel as fresh as the day they were written - it may be the case that they’ve played them just about every day for the past year, but we certainly couldn’t tell.

Ending out the set with Paris before a two song encore, Ed went into the crowd, providing security with a small headache, mobbed by a mixture of teenage girls and sweaty old school ravers a bit past their best. This may have been the case, but he really didn’t care, blasting through chorus and verse as normal…

It may have been a Sunday night, but nobody had told the rather full Zodiac - come the end of their 45 minute set it felt as good as 4am on Saturday morning. This is how live music should be - it leaves you sweaty, stinking, covered in beer, and a smile on your face that you just can’t wipe off easily.

After the jump: Pictures, pictures and more pictures….
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This post appeared originally on the brilliant Four Oh Five, and is one in our continuing series of guest blogs from their capable team of authors.

Last night’s Reading Fest warm-up show was probably the last chance anybody here in England will have had to see MGMT in a relatively small venue before they return in November for a full tour, and my God was it worth the trek. Oxford’s recently converted and renovated Carling Academy is on nothing like the scale of their other venues (Brixton etc.), and the benefits of brand new sound and technical equipment are incredible. I only found out about this show at the last minute, and after getting exam results yesterday morning, I am definitely glad I made the effort.

I had total faith that MGMT’s performance would be impressive to say the least, but one thing I was slightly speculative about before the show was how exactly they were going to fill a full set with just one forty-minute album. Their lack of material was easily noticeable during the gig but they covered it well - not just playing but performing the entire album with an epic blend of instrumentals, along with two or three new songs towards the end, and a collaboration with the tremendously dreadful support band (I still don’t know what they were called because they were too drunk to remember to tell us..).

I thought I’d seen some bad warm-up acts before, and I’m usually pretty difficult to please unless I’m already a fan, but these guys were the crème de la crème of shittiness - I would have been less surprised to hear that they’d been dragged from the streets ten minutes in advance than that they’d actually been CHOSEN by somebody purposefully. Think homeless alcoholic tramps mixed with wannabe-rockstar dads and you’re about there. Still, they made MGMT seem even better.

It was nice to see MGMT look so thrilled at the reception they were getting from the crowd, which was made up of an unusual concoction of fans, from fourteen year-olds to forty-somethings, but they worked hard for it and easily deserved it. It was nice to see a band play around with their music for once, rather than just playing it exactly how it was recorded, and this really proved that MGMT are real musicians who know how to make music. And my oh my did they make it well - this show was explosive!

Both photos are taken from Pupkin’s flickr stream under the creative commons license. The top one can be found here and the side one here.