GIG: Tarja (Manchester)

TARJA - Until My Last Breath (Live in Manchester 2017)

This was our second time seeing Tarja as a solo artist, and after a very good performance at Rock City on the 'Colours in the Dark' tour, we were looking forward to this one.

We found the car park easily enough and walked around the block to the front of the Academy where we were greeted by the ever friendly security (that's not sarcasm by the way, super friendly doormen work here!).

We tootled over to the merchandise stall where the T-shirts were marked up as costing '50' and the CDs '30'. We thought this seemed a tad on the expensive side, but the girl serving assured as that actually the T-shirts were £25 and the CDs were £15. I'm still slightly confused as to where the T-shirts were '50' anything, since the Euro isn't that far off sterling (at least not yet anyway).

Rose decided she wasn't going to spend £25 on a T-shirt she could read a book through and we toddled up the stairs to the Academy 2 where (as before) a man with a pen scribbled a two on our wrists. You'd think they could afford some sort of stamp perhaps... but no, a scribbled two is good enough security apparently.

The support band had finished (thankfully) and it seemed we had a twenty five minute wait to endure, not too bad at all, and happily the venue was much less packed than when we had seen Delain here (which was ridiculous frankly). Well this 25 minute wait turned into forty minutes (just as the 11pm curfew would turn into an 11:10 curfew later on!).

Things started well with a track off the (not quite as good as the last one) new album, followed by '500 Letters', but after that it seemed to be song after song I didn't know... Rose probably knew them but I was clueless. It was okay though, Tarja gushed endlessly about her life and living her dream and claimed that music that had taken her to so many beautiful places (surprisingly no one in the room shouted 'and Manchester', sadly...).

Heartfelt as it may be, this got a little tiring after a while. We know you love us and how ecstatically happy you are to be here... but for God's sake don't play another slow song. Pretty please.... and for Heaven's sake stop throwing the horns and dancing awkwardly, it's embarrassing!

The low point of the set was undoubtedly the acoustic section. Nothing kills the atmosphere like the sight of six stools being arranged on the stage (insert your own joke here) and sure enough the next ten minutes or so were as painful as you'd expect, I even had a very drunk man tap me on the shoulder and apologize for the noise as he was trying to strangle himself.

When the acoustic waffle was over surely the band would lanch into something we ALL knew, something high energy, something to lift the set out of it's malaise. Sadly not, it was another slow song I didn't know, during which two members of the audience started having a row. There was lots of shouting culminating in the phrase 'You're a fucking twat' and then a security guard led one of them off to the back of the room. I'm pretty sure the guy came back and walked past me, stood watching for a few minutes and then hurled a bottle at the stage and then stomped off out again... why he couldn't have done that during the painful acoustic set I'll never know.

Camera phone wielding was taken to epic new heights at this gig, and at one point I looked at the screen of the miserable arse-wipe in front of me to see a very good view of seven or eight other iPhones and Tarja peering through the middle of the lot. What absolute arseholes these people really are, something needs to be done and Rose and I think the answer is clear, in future we will thrown Mint Imperials at them.

Tarja and the guys segued into a bit of Ghost Love Score at one point, which was too little too late frankly. 'The Ritual' was a high point along with 'Until My Last Breath', but generally the performance was a bit shoddy around the edges. I stopped hoping for 'Anteroom of Death' after a while as I stopped believing in their ability to do it justice. Thankfully they didn't play it, and eventually the show drew to a close.

It's fair to say the show wasn't as good as the Rock City show on the last tour, but it wasn't without it's good bits. Obviously the acoustic bit was utter toss and should be jettisoned with great haste, but overall it was okay. A bit too long for sure, and not enough 'hits', certainly not enough high energy tracks anyway, but okay.