Bear McCreary Live

 

So Sang We all

Bear McCreary Live
Themes & Variations Tour
Indigo at the O2
London
18th April 2025

It was Friday the 18th of April, a Good Friday in more ways than one it turned out, when I saw one of my favourite living composers, Bear McCreary, on the very first night of his new Themes and Variations Tour. And I was pleased it was a Friday night, for sure... meaning I didn’t need to get up early for work the next morning and so could dwell on the previous night (at time of writing, although this review will probably go up a few days later) without having to worry about post-concert recovery time, so to speak.

And it was a concert I was half expecting and half wasn’t, in terms of the size and sound. Seven men formed the band including McCreary himself, of course, helming guitar, keyboards, accordion, hurdy gurdy and, as all were, chipping in on some of the vocals. Included in this small line up was Morgan Sorne, who also had a short set as a supporting act before the main show. He did some amazing stuff with his five octave ranged voice, recorded in little bursts and then repeated electronically as he added layers of harmony and percussion. He’s pretty talented and I really liked the stuff he performed. I’d go all in and grab a load of his CDs but, alas for me, it looks like you can only get his stuff digitally these days... so I’m going to have to miss out, it looks like.

Then he was joined by ‘Bear and the gang’ as they performed a large variety of songs from Bear’s recent rock concept album The Singularity (which I finally bit the bullet on and bought a CD of from the merch stall at the show, accompanied by the supporting graphic novel of the same name, along with the obligatory Bear McCreary t-shirt, of course) and these very heavy tracks were interspersed with equally weighty interpretations of music from Bear’s various TV show and video game scores.

Now, I’ve been an admirer of McCreary since his Battlestar Galactica days but, most of the TV shows and games were ones I’ve not heard of (a programme with a set list would have been really helpful and would have got me to part with even more of my money) but I enjoyed them all none the less, tapping my fingers and stomping my foot as much as my somewhat gammy knee would allow for, sitting down at the front near this huge speaker, as the group of artists on stage tried to hasten the atrophy of my inner ear (it was awesome).

And for these various cues (numbers?) they also brought out their secret weapon, Bear’s brother Brendan McCreary, who not only screamed out the accompanying vocals in harmonic ways that perhaps the human voice was not meant to explore but, also, he was jumping, dancing and otherwise gallivanting back and forth across the stage in the most energetic manner I’ve seen since Voice Of The Beehive played Kentish Town back in the 1980s. This guy was so enthusiastic about his performance that he was, on his own, one of the primary entertainments of the show.

But, honestly, all musicians shone in this outstanding performance and, as I said above, I didn’t know a lot of it but I was so consumed by the energy and melodic harmony of the thing that it just carried me away. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen so many film composers live, often multiple times, over the last 45 years... such as Williams, Goldsmith, Barry, Bernstein (that’s the Elmer of the two ;-), Glass, Nyman, Mansell and too many to mention in such a short review but McCreary’s show was easily up there with some of the best of these, including modern favourites such as Brian Tyler and Hans Zimmer. This guy and his band were absolutely amazing... as were the animated visuals accompanying the show, one of which looked a little like something Rick Griffin might have designed in the 1960s at his most surreal. 

And what an encore... his cover version of All Along The Watchtower from Battlestar Galactica followed by his cover of Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla, which he transformed for his score to Godzilla - King Of The Monsters. I was really pleased he did these ones that night.

And that’s that. I shall leave this short review in awe now as my tired old mind is having trouble thesaurusing the satisfactory superlatives but I and my companions for the evening had an absolute blast with Bear McCreary’s Themes And Variations Live concert and we all made noises to the effect that we’d definitely jump at the chance to see him again, next time he’s back in good old London town... hope we don’t have too long a wait on that.