Live Review: Ceremony

Opening with the lead single The Separation from The L-Shaped Man, the crowd moved with the beat as Ceremony looked relaxed on stage. Moving into another song off their latest record, Your Life In France, they then picked up the mood with two songs off Zoo. This proved indicative of the rest of the night — the setlist overall consisted almost entirely of their latest post-punk release, and their previous album, the more punk rock Zoo. 

Ceremony sounded confident and were interesting to watch and to listen to, but the few moments that the crowd got a taste of hardcore, such as the beginning of their cover of Pressure's On, they moved like crazy across the room. The two opening tracks of the punk record Rohnert Park had the crowd move up to the front of the stage to loudly sing along with vocalist Ross Farrar. Farrar moved as if he was performing a hardcore show, despite most of the set consisting of laidback post-punk sounding music. The band started to play the intro of their most famous song Kersed, before guitarist Anthony Anzaldo whispered in the vocalist's ear and they switched songs, finishing with latest LP closer The Understanding instead. The crowd were obviously disappointed by this, a chant starting to play Kersed, the band ignored this and started packing up quickly.

The band obviously wanted to chill out instead of playing a more upbeat set. Whether that had to do with it being the last show of the tour, or because the eastern state shows were so packed, and the Adelaide was so empty. The band could obviously tell that the crowd, while enjoying their newer music, also wanted to hear their earlier material. It's not uncommon that bands treat Adelaide as a jam session.