In acknowledgement of the fact that no era of The Chemical Brothers truly comes into focus anymore until we see what kind of wild rave-whirligig they’ve whipped up for the concert halls, I’ve decided to forego an album review or setlist prediction in favor of a track-by-track assessment of this album’s prospects for the forthcoming tour (the three 2018 festival premieres excepted), followed by several mini-essays cataloguing my expectations and desires for the 2019 tour. Enjoy.
- They’ve literally already filmed the visuals for “Eve Of Destruction”, so unless Tom & Ed specifically want to make Adam Smith very sad that seems like a shoo-in. Who knows, maybe for the first time in awhile we get a track from the album they’re actually on tour to promote as the opener instead of just whatever their most recent hit to draw festival crowds in is.
(Important to note that this probably wouldn’t displace “Go”, just shunt it elsewhere in the set to displace something we hold even more dearly.)
- Maybe “Bango” at a stretch, if they’re really committing to “this is the No Geography tour” at the expense of something else, since it’s so good coming out of “Eve Of Destruction”.
- I’d personally like to see “No Geography” get some play - and especially see what Smith & Lyall could do with it visually - but they’ve also got the Michael Brownstein sample on its own trigger, which might suffice for them in a crowded setlist.
- “Gravity Drops” probably no, but *that snare roll* deserves at least a cameo somewhere in the set. Really that should be the new “Believe” teapot explosion moment.
- “The Universe Sent Me” deserves to mop the floor with audiences during the encore and I’ll be actively offended if Tom & Ed deny it that place of honor. This could be a keeper for the rest of their touring years if they play their cards right.
- “We’ve Got To Try” is a single, but then again so was “The Salmon Dance”. Let’s say 50/50 considering that.
(Really I envision this eventually making its way to the “Music: Response”/“Song To The Siren” breakbeat cameos spot regardless, it’s just a matter of whether it finds a place of dignity on the proper setlist first.)
- Maybe “Catch Me I’m Falling” gets amped up for a spot in the encore; all I know is that spot better not be the one that belongs to “The Universe Sent Me” by birthright.
Really I think the ideal spot for it would be that kind of chill-late-in-the-main-set spot they occasionally carve out for album cuts like “The Pills Won’t Help You Now”. Give it a modest backbeat rather than the full “Wide Open” amp-up treatment and let everyone bliss out for like five minutes during the typically-hectic back end of the concert.
If you even have those five minutes to spare, of course.
“Go” probably isn’t headed anywhere because it got into an NBA playoffs commercial, and that’s pretty much the ceiling for what The Chemical Brothers can expect in terms of popular success in the 2010s. Inasmuch as your average concertgoer is going to expect anything after 2002 when they come to a Chems show it’s pretty much this, “Galvanize”, and maybe “Do It Again” once it’s devoured some ambient goodwill from the never-getting-played “Salmon Dance” like a vanishing twin. If you want to know why “Go” was the one to get pushed to the front of the setlist with fancy new visuals, that’s the explanation.
To their credit Tom & Ed seem aware that it doesn’t quite have the sense of occasion to carry this level of focus on recognition alone, which is why they added the “Burst Generator” build right before all the “Edge Of Control Mix” drop stuff for their 2018 shows - it’s a hype moment for a set-opener that doubles as a kiss to the hardcore fans. If “Go” is staying around - and it almost certainly is - I’d like it if they committed just a bit more to that. I’m not asking for a full-on mashup or anything - although they are in the same key - but there’s a bit right before the build at 5:05 in “Burst Generator” that Q-Tip could easily be saying “everything getting harder to find” over at some point.
Still, that unlikely circumstance notwithstanding, I’d really appreciate if they at least put it, like, second in the setlist. If I were dreaming it’d start serving the job “Do It Again” has for a decade - even speaking as a devout evangelist for We Are The Night that song deserves a rest it’s probably not going to get.
The past few tours have seen the Chems experimenting with The Prodigy’s patented (and now, sadly, orphaned) “play one or two songs you haven’t done live in at least a decade to get a pop from the diehards while the rest of your set is concert staples and cuts from the new album” technique, with classics like “Got Glint?” and “Piku” feeling the benefit. Who could be next?
Well, first off it’s my hope that after testing the waters with exactly one performance at the start of the 2018 tour - a rare non-festival gig, which is probably why they abandoned it and hopefully why they’ll reintroduce it on a tour with some more concert halls - they’ll put “Let Forever Be” back in the setlist between “Believe” and “Chemical Beats”, “I’ll See You There” visuals or not. If nothing else it would provide a needed relief in the midst of what’s otherwise probably the grimmest continuous stretch of tracks in any Chems setlist. Like, for pretty much the whole of 2018 that part of the show was “MAH”, “Believe”, “EML Ritual”, and “Chemical Beats” all back-to-back. I’m not really a fan of the 7 minutes “Swoon” has taken up in every Chems setlist since 2010, but it almost seems medically necessary after a pummeling like that.
Otherwise it’s just a game of playing grab-bag with past setlists. Like, root for “Orange Wedge” all you want, but previous blasts-from-the-past tend to be tracks that had proven themselves in a live environment before, and by extension were probably considered era highlights by Tom & Ed. So if they’re feeling frisky we might get, say, the return of “Come With Us”, or maybe at a stretch something like “Come Inside” (I harbor a theory it’d work well coming out of “Free Yourself”, which should itself never leave the setlist because the live version of that song might legit be the highlight of the entire Chems discography).
Will they keep “Eve Of Destruction” as a vocal sample over “Acid Children”? Unlikely, it’s the lead-off track of the album they’ll be promoting and we’ve seen photos from a shoot for the visuals that clearly extend past what was used in the 2018 shows.
Use it as a setlist-opener? Possibly - and I’d like that - but when was the last time the Chems kicked off a tour with a new song as the setlist-opener (as opposed to switching midway like with “Another World”, and “No Path To Follow” vocal samples notwithstanding)? Come With Us-era?
Play the full “Eve Of Destruction” coming out of “Acid Children”? Not out of the question (and better than the key change into a different acid line on this dolled-up new version of “Under The Influence” they’ve got), but where does that put the songs around it? They’ve got a good thing going with “Acid Children” coming out of “Escape Velocity”, and that song’s never leaving the second half of the setlist.
What’s getting cut? Something has to be - we’re at least getting one or two more No Geography songs - but, also, the darlings that have to be killed to make room only get more and more darling as the amount of past the Chems need to service in a setlist accumulates. The rest of Come With Us has basically been sent begging because “Star Guitar” is never going anywhere and that’s sufficient representation at this point. “Do It Again” might feel extraneous to a lot of us but it’s still there on the assumption that it represents post-2005 Chems to someone out in the crowd. It hurts me to say, but if it’s not “Do It Again” I think we might - might - be losing “Saturate”. “Believe” has a new job now so it’s sort of orphaned on the front end; they’ve repurposed the drums at the end to go into “Elektrobank”-“Piku Playground” etc. but that bit of fanservice might also be on the chopping block. Just put the mid-setlist break on “Hey Boy Hey Girl” (or some new No Geography song after it) and I don’t think the average concertgoer feels the loss.
The stunt with real-life versions of the balls from the visuals bouncing around the crowd may keep it safe, because of course the Chems love their concert bells & whistles nowadays, but also they don’t do that all the time and they’ve still got the robots so it’s not like they’re short on logistical issues to worry about.
Also I imagine that “EML Ritual” isn’t long for this world, regardless of whether “Let Forever Be” comes back in its place. It barely made the cut last time, there’s almost certainly a No Geography song that’s going to need that space more.
It’d be nice if they could use some of this prep time to give “Block Rockin’ Beats” actual visuals, instead of just the pulp of sepiatoned bits from visuals that didn’t make the cut for this tour like they’ve been doing (especially since some of those visuals might be back on the cut with the new room offered for the encore).
Based on two factors - the recency of the 2018 festival tour, which was mostly just an expansion pack of the Born In The Echoes setlist with some No Geography trial runs and aforementioned Prodigy-esque fan kisses thrown in, and the relative strangeness of the album they’re setting out to promote, with its “listen to me as a whole” sequencing and sense that we might be getting a closer-than-usual glimpse at Tom Rowlands’ soul - suggest to me that they might get a little bit genuinely frisky with the setlist alterations. Of course what those might constitute are beyond the scope of my prediction, without getting into full-on self-indulgent concert fanfic territory. But I can nonetheless feel the iron grip of Q-Tip, Ali Love, and the Big Beat era slipping just a bit - will this finally be the year we see the return of “The Test” in all its glory?
(No! Because they programmed the Big Robots to say that one line from it, and once you’ve committed to the logistics of bringing Big Robots along on tour you could be doing two-hour poetry recitals and still find a spot for “Under The Influence” in the proceedings.
“I’ll take you along with me,” Tom says tenderly to one of the robots looming over him. He softly caresses it, just once. “I’ll take you along with me.”)
