Sunday 21/09/2003 Alkaline Trio @ Academy, Manchester

The academy was heaving with too many people, who had been waiting for far too long.

At last, the lights went off and Alkaline Trio emerged to chants of "trio", onto an eerie, green-lit stage and some pretty dramatic music. Then, without introduction, or in fact any acknowledgement of the crowd, they opened with the first two tracks from their new album; ‘This Could Be Love’ and ‘We’ve Had Enough’.

The crowd was filled with enthusiasm, but guitar/vocalist Matt Skiba, who was suffering from a lung infection, seemed a little less than lively.

After a brief “why thank you” from Matt, bassist/vocalist Dan Andriano sang his first song of the set, ‘100 Stories’, during which it was impossible to ignore Matt mess it up. With his hands on his head he looked pretty uneasy as he turned to drummer, Derek Grant, before picking it up again a couple of lines later.

But, the crowd was clearly impressed as they began a speeded-up version of 'Armageddon', putting a tiny glimmer of hope back into their performance as the pit grew and Alkaline Trio even seemed to be close to excited.

The set then continued with more, all too similar songs from the new album 'Good Mourning', one of which, 'Queen of Pain', they dedicated to Hot Water Music, who had joined them on this tour. But, much to the disappointment of many mislead fans; they had left earlier that afternoon to start their own U.S. tour.

We were then serenaded with ‘Blue in the face’ before they ended with a rendition of 'Private Eye' that was easy to miss, with no time to breathe between the last two songs. A small “Thanks” was said and the band left. Maybe it was the lung infection, but you couldn’t help but feel that Alkaline Trio felt they owed us nothing.

After further chanting, an encore seemed inevitable, although yet again, the crowd was left waiting. The band slipped back on stage, with Matt claiming they had “forgotten a couple of numbers”. 'Bleeder' was first, which was dedicated to all the people throwing bottles - (clearly not taken very well).  The band were joined on stage for the encore by their “new friend” Nate, who they had met in Reading and was going to help them for the rest of their UK tour, due to Matt’s bad health.

The set was ended with 'Radio' after which, a last thank you was made to the crowd as they were informed that it had been a blast – an anti-climatic ending to what probably should have been an awesome gig.

Photo by Dave Kent