Due to the smoke generated by fog machines at the show, Somara didn’t have any luck getting decent pictures of the concert. No luck with an autograph either because he has been ill on this tour. No bother, Thomas Dolby still put on an enjoyable show to promote his new album The Sole Inhabitant, a live CD of him performing songs from his previous five (or four) studio albums. The CD is nice, it’s like a souvenir of the show you just saw, give or take a song in the set. He did have a new tune and I’ll have to dig through his site to check for plans on an entirely new album. Dolby founded a functioning high-tech company long ago and he recently received a check from K-Fed (a story he explained at length with humorous results) so this tour isn’t one of those “I’m broke and Eightties nostalgia is peaking” type of affair.
He opened with one of my personal favorites, “One of Our Submarines.” There was also “I Live in a Suitcase,” “Windpower,” “Europa and the Pirate Twins,” “Hyperactive,” to name a few and obviously “She Blinded me with Science.” I was surprised he did “Hot Sauce” for the encore. While peforming the songs Dolby had multiple cameras showing the performance from his perspective or being superimposed on a large screen behind him. Sometimes there would be editing effects from the software or sequences from his old videos when MTV used to show them.
Overall, a decent time. Fortunately he opened and let us “older fans” leave to get to work the next morning, there was some other electronica act I didn’t “get.” I do hope this small-venue tour works out well enough for him to write an overdue sixth album.