The great thing about Fly My Pretties is that you don’t go to their concerts just to listen to them play songs you’ve already heard. Sure, it’s nice to see artists up close and personal performing songs you love, but there’s something special about the kind of concert the Pretties specialise in. Theirs is the concert where you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen next; a formula their latest tour, dubbed an “audiovisual experience” by the program, thankfully sticks to.
Split into two sections, ‘The Story’ and ‘Encore’, the latest Pretties concert started off in fairly low-key fashion. Dick Weir, the first section’s narrator and the father of one Fly My Pretties founder Barnaby Weir, coming on stage and telling us of how Barnaby roped him into the latest concert. It’s not a very good story, and sadly, the one at the centre of ‘The Story’ isn’t either. Written like a children’s book and played out by some splendid animated illustrations on a screen at the back of the stage, there’s no doubt a lot of thought went into the tale, and it is a nice and decently-written story. However, for a section of the show that purported to “reflect on innocence, imagination and the solving of complex problems which might enable a sustainable future”, it’s sad that it only really had any success with the innocence and imagination parts. The show’s ‘reflection’ on the environment amounted to telling the audience to stop chemical waste being dumped in rivers. Furthermore, the dumpers were essentially pantomime villains in dungarees. This was definitely the show’s major flaw; a disappointing and rather patronising way to address an auditorium full of adults.
The Pretties more than made up for this by delivering on the musical front. There’s no doubt that the quality and sound of their work was a lot more refined than Live at BATS. The large cast meshed perfectly on stage, but for the occasional misstep (‘Mauri’ is oddly-written and surprisingly jarring for such a slow song; Paul McLaney’s ballad at the start of the ‘Encore’ section was a little dull). The majority of the songs in both sections were excellent, and definitely show some positive progression. Songs like ‘Heavy Weather’, ‘Run For Your Life’ and ‘All That Water Must Flow To The Sea’ were particularly good examples of this, being energetic and accomplished.
While the addition of a narrative to the usual Pretties formula wasn’t entirely successful – and there was far too little of Barnaby on stage during the ‘Story’ section – there’s a lot to like in the music. Besides, if the show did anything, it was securing an auditorium full of sales of their live album and DVD come August.