Note: These tickets were provided free of charge from WREK Atlanta, the student radio station of Georgia Tech.
This is the first time I’m writing about concerts on this site, so formats in the future might change or I may rewrite or do scoring differently. But for now, here’s what was on my mind for this concert.
I haven’t been to any concerts this year, so seeing M83 was a bit of a breath of fresh air. I haven’t been to The Eastern before so
So first, starting out with the venue: The Eastern. I’ve never been here before, and it was honestly one of the best experiences I’ve had finding a venue (besides the Atlanta traffic, but that’s not on the venue). Parking was right next to the venue and easy to find, although the $25 charge wasn’t the best, but for how close and easy it was, I can’t really complain. The venue is quite more spacious than expected with one large floor, and then a few upper balconies that can be easily walked up to. So we went down to the floor and at 8 the opener began!
The opener was much different compared to other openers I’ve seen. There weren’t any lyrics, just some very nice instrumentals. We all started out wondering “where was the singing? where was the drop?” but by the end of it, we all came to appreciate the nice music. The lighting was nice and peaceful (very cool note: Turns out I know the lighting director of The Eastern, and she ran this part!) and overall it was quite a calming, “palette cleaning” experience!
So after the quite peaceful opener left, after a pretty short 25 or so minute break, M83 started!
I went in only knowing around 3 of their songs, but overall, they are a very fun band to see. The lighting and effects were spectacular! The songs all had vibrant and syncing colors with plenty of different effects, for the relatively small venue size, this has to be some of the best lighting I’ve seen.
So now on to the sound. Personally I am not the biggest fan of extremely loud speakers, but I think at some point I just need to come accept that the volume will always be above 100 dB and I just need to wear more ear protection (another cool note: turns out AirPod Pros with Adaptive Transparency lower the volume just enough to be safer and still hear almost everything), but with loud volume comes a bit off a loss in detail. The band has a lot going on: keys, multiple guitars, a very loud drum set, and sometimes a saxophone. Unfortunately due to the loud volume, sometimes I was met with what was seemingly unintelligible, which was a bit unfortunate since I tend to like hearing all the small details of the music. Overall, their actual playing was quite nice was something different, but the volume just got to a point of where I couldn’t tell what was going on when the drums were being hit at full blast.
So when it comes to the order of the songs: they seemed to go through songs of their new album and some of their old stuff, and then they left the stage for a few minutes, saying “thank you” like the show is ending (we all now it really isn’t though), when they came back on they performed their hit “Midnight City” and a few other of the more popular ones, then the show actually ended. Overall, the experience was quite fun, with some audience interaction and some solos from various members.
Scoring: 0-5: terrible, 6-7: average, 8: expected/good, 9: great, 10: best I’ve seen
Overall:
Venue: 8/10
Lights: 8/10
Audio: 6/10
Performance: 8/10
If you have the chance to see this tour, I would highly recommend, since even if you don’t know much of the music, the experience is still fun and the crowd is energetic!