Remember back in 2009 when the indie rock craze skyrocketed in the music world? The XX had just launched their debut album and had every hipster wearing skinny jeans, rocking a striped t-shirt and listening to “Islands.” Phoenix stole the indie spotlight in the same year with their freshman album, “Wolfgang Amadeus,” and almost everyone had “1901” downloaded on their iPod.
Then came Miike Snow, an indie pop group out of Stockholm, Sweden, who also emerged amidst the 2009 indie craze. The group blew up with their self-titled album, “Miike Snow,” and gained a following.
On a starry Monday night, the trio of Miike Snow made a stop on their 2017 Summer U.S. Tour at Tricky Falls. The group performed an electrifying, entertaining set to a near sold out El Paso crowd.
Opening the show for the Swedish band was local act, The Other Half. As more people poured into Tricky Falls, the alternative rock band delivered a hard-hitting opening set and got the crowd rallied for the main act.
By the time Miike Snow was set to take the stage, Tricky Falls was filled with fans for the show. The band opened with an impressive light show in the background that resembled a traveling subway. Miike Snow continued with psychedelic background visuals that spanned throughout the act, which was probably the most noteworthy feature of the show. They would toy with sentimental spotlights on singer, keys and front-man Andrew Wyatt, and then revert to using flashing strobe lights in the background for more up-beat tracks.
A treat for the audience was the fact that Miike Snow ventured through bits of all three of their albums – “Miike Snow,” “Happy to You” and “iii.” They opened with songs off their 2016 album, “iii,” performing “My Trigger” and “Genghis Khan,” which hyped up the crowd right off the bat.
It was the band’s early hits which stood out over the rest. “Burial,” which came as a surprise to some, played in the middle of their set and echoed nostalgia for the Miike Snow die-hards. A single light shined on Wyatt for the opening of “Silvia,” which then translated into a ferocious hook as he sang, “Circle ’round the room still/Have fun breaking my will/I know I can’t have you here/With someone else on your skin.” He capped off his early hits with “Song for No One” nearing the end of the show, which, in fact, sounded better live rather than through headphones.
After a seemingly predictable encore and a sub-par credits reel, the band closed the show with their notorious hit, “Animal.” The track, which debuted in 2009, had the couple thousand fans bobbing and singing along to every word.
Even if you had not been a Miike Snow fan for long or didn’t know too many songs, the band was very entertaining throughout the show. Although Wyatt and the group did not interact with the crowd much, it unfolded well for the group because the crowd was still attentively listening all the way through the set.
