Australia & New Zealand Tour 2022
@ The Gov
Tuesday, 1st November 2022
Review & photos: John Glennie
The Sisters recently celebrated their 40th anniversary. Co-founder and vocalist Andrew Eldritch (above) is the only remaining member from the original line-up. The other longest serving member is Doktor Avalanche – their drum machine, keyboard “player” and bassist – who is ably assisted by full-time “nirse” Ravey Davey. The remaining two tour members are guitarists Ben Christo and Dylan Smith, both of whom are excellent guitarists and put on a real show for the enthusiastic Gov crowd.
Over the course of four decades The Sisters of Mercy released three, utterly brilliant and hyper influential studio albums scaling the charts around the globe. A surprise to me was that less than half the songs performed on the night were from those three albums! The majority were new to me – though they were damned good – and not ones even appearing on any of their compilation albums. Five of the first six songs were all “newbies”, kicking off with Don’t Drive On Ice followed by Crash and Burn. At least I knew the next one – Ribbons off their 1990 Vision Thing album – before three more new ones.
I could settle in a bit after that and, through the constantly smokie haze over the stage, enjoyed the spectacle of four more tracks from Vision Thing including an amazing 2-song medley comprising Doctor Jeep and Detonation Boulevard.
The last five songs of the main set were all new ones for me with Here, then an instrumental and finishing off with On The Beach, Summer and When I’m On Fire. After a 5-minute break, The Sisters returned to the stage for the encore and, no surprises here, we were treated to fantastic renditions of Lucretia My Reflection and This Corrosion from the 1987 Floodland album with Temple Of Love thrown in between those two great tracks.
Though the set list included a couple of dozen songs, The Sisters were only on stage for about 85 minutes. Despite this, overall it was a great night from yet another legendary British band. I enjoyed it and it certainly looked like the rest of the crowd did too!
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