The Anatomy of a Great Summer Festival Set looks at how music and entertainment become more rewarding when you listen for detail instead of just chasing the newest release.
For festival pacing, the useful question is not whether something is fashionable this week, but whether it holds attention after the first impression.
The best notes often come from pacing, texture, arrangement, and the way a performance changes a room. Those details help a playlist, album, or scene stay memorable.
Open with something familiar, but not the biggest song.
Use one cover or deep cut to reset attention.
End with a run of songs that rewards casual listeners and loyal fans.
Use this as a starting point, then return to the track, record, or score in a different setting. Good music usually gives back more when the second listen is slower.
On her first UK tour since the release of her critically-acclaimed debut album, Nubya Garcia’s complex jazz creations were finally given time and space to be explored in their full glory, aided by a stunning trio of supporting musicians that might have even outshined Garcia herself.
It’s been a while coming, but as my friend Emma and I rocked up at Gorilla on a non-descript weekday night in Manchester, my concert-going muscle memory started to kick in. For obvious reasons, my gigging habit had previously stopped almost as soon as it began. I started by catching Parcels at Brudenell Social Club in 2018 (I was luckier than I realised; 3 years later and they’re one of my favourite bands of all), and managed to fit in American rock duo of mom jeans. and Prince Daddy & the Hyena before the world ended. Now with another half-dozen under my belt – including a scream-along special with Declan McKenna in Newcastle and an incredible, enthralling night with dodie in Manchester – I’m starting to feel like a bit of an old pro. At Gorilla it didn’t take long for me to suss out the bar and the messy hubub of thirsty people that it attracted in an undefined queue, and the staff were relatively efficient in supplying my usual pint of Coke and some disposable earplugs (much unlike my nightmarish experience at nearby Victoria Warehouse a few months ago). Then was the uncomfortable task of finding a satisfactory spot to stand in the crowd. For this, Emma proved to be an expert, and effortlessly weaved her way through the bodies, miraculously reaching a spacious spot an arm’s reach from the stage edge. There’s nothing quite like getting a spot so close to the stage you can practically worship the feet of the musician in front of you, especially when the musician in question is enigmatic jazz keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones.
As a keyboardist myself, Joe inevitably got much of my attention for the night, but a more obvious performer to venerate was the woman on the ticket: Nubya Garcia, one of the headline artists amongst the much talked-about vanguard of contemporary British jazz. With a Medusa-like splay of dreadlocks and a wide stance, she was an admirably powerful figure on centre stage, wielding a tenor saxophone – alto’s musclier, more serious big brother. Ever since her debut EP Nubya’s 5ive was released in 2017, it seems like the general excitement around her ability to inspire a generation of new, young jazz fans has only grown and grown. Even the supporting players in that EP – Moses Boyd and Femi Coleoso on drums, Theon Cross on tuba – have also become major players in the new genre, bringing their own extensive range of bands and solo projects. Start researching and it’s easy to get lost in the proliferation of new, British (but, let’s be honest, mostly London) jazz, and as a young jazz player myself, it’s thrilling to watch. On walking into Gorilla, however, we were reminded that for all the growing momentum of UK jazz, it’s still far from the mainstream. Gorilla can only handle up to 700 jazzheads and the flickering LEDs behind the band hardly screamed high-budget. UK jazz is still jazz after all, with all its challenging harmony and abstract improvisation, and Garcia’s particular brand is hardly aimed at converting Ed Sheeran fans. Instead, her music digs into long and often noisy solos powered by splashy, busy drumming and colorful injections of dissonant harmony. Heads often only have slightly less improvisation than the solos themselves and hooks, while undoubtedly present, are hardly abundant.
With an audience of fans that get it (unlike Garcia’s recent televised performances at the BBC Proms or with Jools Holland), Garcia rightly had no hesitation in fully exploring every tune with epic solos and fluid song structure. Absorbing opener Source was a perfect example: the 12-minute studio version may be a bit much for some, but on the night it became a 20-minute jazz odyssey. Thankfully, it was difficult to get tired of the sticky, heavy dub reggae groove it its centre, underlined by a Daniel Casimir’s bubbly basslines and Tom Jones’ snappy sidestick. All four performers had plenty of time to make their introductions. Armon-Jones’ solo was captivating, segueing from a brief section of precise samba to a dense cacophony of glissandos and cluster chords. Daniel Casimir’s double bass solo was both the most succinct and successful solo of the bunch, adding more character and groove into his plucking than I thought was possible. A final, stupendous riff was greeted by a stunned applause, with Garcia noticeably reluctant to take back the lead.
As you can imagine, time went quickly and the band only had time to fit in a streamlined selection of six songs to play for the whole night. Garcia delivered some light-hearted and fun chat in between each tune. She had a tendency to get lost on a tangent about the origin of a song or the experience of playing her first tour post-lockdown, but even so it was lovely to see the obvious joy that performing her music to a crowd brings. “I’m in a good place right now,” she earnestly told the crowd at one point, to which we all cheered. If Queen Nubya was happy, then so were we.
The Message Continues followed a thought-provoking chat about Garcia passing on the ‘message’ of her heritage, which she encouraged us all to do too. The sparkling groove – one of Garcia’s most immediate and memorable – nods to her Guyanese and Trinidadian roots with a cumbia-informed bass riff and lightly shuffling drum work. Afterwards, Pace delivered a whole different world for the musicians to play in: a frenzied and overwhelming solo section was intended to mimic the stresses of constant touring and socialising with no rest. The eventual mayhem was made all the more impactful by what preceded it – a total bass solo from Casimir, for which the others left the stage completely. He was more than worthy of owning the stage for a few breathless minutes, each melody more beautifully adventurous than the last. I don’t think any of us wanted it to stop.
Another moment of surprising solace came with Stand With Each Other, a sparse combination of solo saxophone and tasteful afrobeat drumming. Here, Garcia’s outstanding tone was on full display; breathy, soulful and immaculately controlled. The saxophone really did seem to morph into a fifth limb – no longer merely an instrument, but a second voice through which to speak volumes more than words ever could. There was a spine-tingling sense of awe in the room as Garcia effortlessly faded out a long final note into silence.
Daniel Casimir’s solo at the start of Pace was one of the highlights
For all Garcia’s technical brilliance, it would be going too far to say her performance was flawless. Even Emma – an even stronger supporter of UK jazz than I am – admitted that her solos could get formulaic. Gradually building chromatically to ever higher, ever louder long notes seemed to be Garcia’s go-to game plan and, unlike Armon-Jones or Jones, there were few times we were wowed by her technical dexterity, even if her tone and command of her instrument is immense. A brief sortie into the squeaky and impressive-sounding altissimo range of her instrument during Pace was only partially successful, and certainly the more foghorn-like lower end of her tenor range had more impact during the big moments.
That said, Garcia doesn’t have to be John Coltrane to be an exciting artist, and seeing her and her friends create art in front of our eyes was a thrill unlike any of the over-rehearsed rock and pop concerts I’ve attended recently. As with most jazz performances, Garcia and her band of outstanding musicians were intent on creating something unique and impossible to replicate. Even Garcia’s chats were free-flowing and improvised, and the atmosphere in the room benefitted as a result. The venues and audience may remain relatively small thanks to the inaccessibility of her boundary-pushing style to the average listener, but Garcia deserves praise to sticking to what she loves. In an industry of Tiktok-pandering overnight millionaires and the same old chart-storming pop idols, a night at Gorilla was a pleasant reminder that this corner of fast-moving jazz well outside the mainstream isn’t going anywhere.
In a belated end to his UK tour, Oscar Jerome had enough strong material and bewildering virtuosity to compete with the very best of his UK jazz peers. It’s unfortunate he was let down by a patchy setlist, limiting instrumentation and questionable sound design.
For a moment I questioned whether I’d ever actually see Oscar Jerome in Leeds as we suddenly found ourselves at the front of a lengthy queue outside Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen. It wasn’t the first time; this gig in particular has been toyed with by the pandemic. It was postponed twice from its now quaintly ambitious original date in October 2020 and a third attempt a year later tragically coincided with a city-wide venue boycott amidst a completely seperate, equally uncontrollable epidemic of syringe spikings in nightclubs across the country.
It was only once we had been let in to the chic yet understated Belgrave Music Hall that reality set in for me and my friends Emma and Fionn. Despite arriving at a leisurely 8pm, we really had benefitted from a quirk in the queuing system, and sauntered up to a gloriously quiet and queueless bar like royalty before taking our pick of standing spot in front of the stage (in the middle, right at the front, of course). At one point Oscar himself even walked across the near-empty audience space (just a few feet away from us!), prompting palpatations. Shadowy in a trench coat and with his two emmaculate mirrored locks of hair, we had to check with each other our anticipation for the gig hadn’t led to hallucination. No, Emma’s astonished face confirmed, it hadn’t.
To add to our pleasant surprise, it wasn’t particularly long before the man himself was just a few metres in front of us, with his trench coat now cast aside to reveal a playful striped t-shirt behind a chunky Ibanez guitar. I’ve spent good chunk of the 18-month build up to the gig daydreaming about just how good inevitable opener Sun For Someone would sound and feel live. That purring bassline paired with Ayo Salawu’s nimble jazz-funk drumming could surely be nothing but electrifying in the flesh. Indeed it was, especially after meditative solo guitar musings of Searching for Aliens, which worked well as a calm before the blissful storm that followed.
In truth, I felt some niggling disappointment as Sun For Someone segued into the decidedly less exciting Coy Moon. The levels were all off. The kick drum and that bass line – however competently played by Tom Dreissler – swallowed up both Jerome’s guitar and vocals, leaving the melody often noticeably warped and the need for a bit of wishful thinking in order to hear one of Jerome’s finest tracks in its full glory. Whilst it was a recurring frustration on the night, on balance I think the main cause of the issues was in a lack of gigging experience from me, Emma and Fionn. In our front-of-the-queue giddiness we had inadvertently selected sonically the worst spot in the house, resulting in a face full of kick drum whilst Jerome’s dulcet tones were directed into the space behind us by speakers beside the stage. We might have been close enough to examine the glossy sheen on Jerome’s faintly dyed hair or assess whether he needs to trim his nose hairs (he doesn’t), but in return the sound would never quite feel professional quality throughout the night.
Somewhat consolingly, it wasn’t just us. I overheard talk about the haphazard levels immediately after the gig had finished, and even in the middle of the set there was evidence that there was issues for the performers too. Jerome requested his mic to be turned up during and after Sun For Someone; Dreissler needed time to fiddle with his bass between songs later on and a misbehaving kick drum mic was a repeated concern for both Jerome and Salawu, at one point completely taking the limelight from a blistering Richie Smart conga solo. Whilst I’ve learnt my lesson that the front row isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I’m sure there’s more the sound engineers could have done to make it a less significant drawback on the night.
If the jazz fans around me were annoyed by the sound issues, they didn’t show it. The mood in the room was one of celebration, with Jerome humble enough to engage with every slightly over-eager heckler. There was the obligatory marriage proposals (“I will if you can get me an EU passport,” Oscar offered) and an accepted request for happy birthday from a very possibly intoxicated fan. One man even managed to buy Oscar a pint and hand it up to him between songs. The resulting chant of “chug! chug! chug!” crossed a line. “I don’t do shit like that anymore,” Oscar laughed before taking a grateful sip.
Just as it had done for Declan McKenna, Orla Gartland and Nubya Garcia, the pandemic has created an unusually big gap between the release of Jerome’s strong debut album Breathe Deep and a subsequent tour. As a result, Jerome caved into temptation to devote a good deal of the gig to unreleased songs from the upcoming follow-up album. It’s a risky, and in my opinion a little impatient, decision to take, and the four new songs aired on the night proved to be a mixed bag. Groovy and hooky Berlin 1 was the pick of the bunch, but Feet Down South also provided a great opportunity for an arresting bass solo from Dreissler. Sweet Isolation, on the other hand, was the flattest moment of the whole evening: a drab, meandering track that did little to inspire movement from the audience beyond a polite nod of the head. Devoting so much time to new songs also meant less time for tried-and-true hits. Give Back What U Stole From Me and Fkn Happy Days ‘N’ That – both highlights from Breathe Deep – were the two most obvious set list casualties.
As the sound levels improved, the highlights came with the songs that relied most on Jerome’s guitar virtuosity. Joy is You, a heartwarming ode to his newborn nephew, saw Jerome have the stage all to himself yet still provide ample soul and colour with some dextrous plucking. “As the past slips through the window / The joy is you” he sang with a smile, revealing some tender vulnerability that was well recieved by the crowd. By contrast, sophisticated and dynamic Gravitate was powered by Salawu’s brilliant, stumbling drum groove, but still saw Jerome improvising at his scintillating best amidst sumptuous melodic bass playing from Dreissler. An extended guitar solo was the only opportunity Jerome had to display his full jazz solo prowess, developing a seed of an idea into an all-consumming spectacle before kicking into one last chorus.
Jerome’s lack of saxophonist was not as fatal as Orla Gartland’s lack of keyboardist a few months ago, but certain songs did lose a good deal of their original detail as a result. 2 Sides and fan favourite Do You Really sounded simply incomplete without the great hooks that had been offered by saxophone and backing vocals on the originals. The three of us certainly tried our best to fill in the melodic gaps with our own voices on the latter, but there was only so much we could do. That said, sax or no sax, Do You Really remains a career highlight for Jerome, and a strong chorus was rapturously recieved by the crowd, prompting demands for an encore, with which the band happily obliged.
There was mock horror just before the start of the gig when we spied on the setlist taped to the stage floor that underwhelming recent single No Need was scheduled to be the final song of the night. We were in for shock: No Need was easily one of the best tracks of the night, taking us from rapid swing to hypnotic funk and back again and at last turning Belgrave Music Hall into a proper dancefloor. Salawu’s tastefully played real drums and Jerome’s rhythmic guitar made perfect replacements for the studio version’s drum machine and wishy-washy keys, and the transition from jazz to dance was executed with a thrill lost on the original song. To my huge relief, Jerome assured us that the concert was being recorded; I’m already desperate for a second listen.
As he bid farewell with No Need‘s slap bass and pounding kick drum, I was reminded that Jerome, for all his outstanding musical ability, is still in the early stages of a very promising career. With little more than an album’s worth of material at his disposal, conjuring up a five-star set was always an uphill battle, and dealing with less experienced sound engineers at the smaller venues may just be par for the course. Even so, after having had a brief chat with him after the gig, the post-gig high was very sweet indeed. The three of us practically skipped through central Leeds and back to the car, jubilantly singing Do You Really with a tote bag full of signed vinyls swinging from my shoulder. At last, there was no gig left to postpone, no songs left to wishfully daydream. The long wait had been worth it.
The much-hyped band crowned a breakout year with a bangers-only 45 minute blitz in Leeds, packed with mammoth riffs and thunderous bass lines. Even the band’s photographer couldn’t resist the pull of a vintage mosh pit.
Twilight on a moody November evening by the canal in Leeds, and the leaking locks are hissing harshly behind a gloomy row of trees. At 8 p.m. it’s still just about bright enough to make out the passing clouds, oddly glowing with light pollution against navy skies. I’ve only just arrived, but I already feel exhausted – with the murky recent weather, a cold going round and a certain election result, I can’t have been the only one approaching Project House feeling weighed down by November blues. I walked towards the reassuring thud of live music – the muffled sounds of what turned out to be a rather dreadful support slot from Truthpaste – hopeful the music might provide some catharsis.
As it happened, few bands do reckless, enthralling catharsis quite like Fat Dog. Like Black Country, New Road and Black Midi, they were borne out of the fertile left-field music scene centred on the legendary Windmill venue in Brixton, making a name for themselves in recent years solely through notoriously wild live shows. Fat Dog’s unique sound is charged with an impulsive energy that makes it easy for audiences to be swept away by it all even without prior exposure. Remarkably, one scant album into their career, Fat Dog have already carved out a distinct stylistic niche – aggressive industrial dance music with thunderous unisons riffs, scuzzy saxophone and yelped, barely coherent vocals about impending doom. Think somewhere between Madness and Daft Punk, but with more lyrical references to slug invasions. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before.
You could forgive Fat Dog for being exhausted themselves – they’ve essentially been on tour for their entire career so far, including a marathon four performances on various small stages at this year’s Glastonbury. Emerging onto stage to a volley of drums and a tremble of deep synth bass, frontman Joe Love was a wonderfully enigmatic figure, his eyes barely open beneath a canopy of curly locks and a white Stetson. Vocally, he made no sense either, producing a manic yelp of “It’s Fat Dog baby!” at the start of the concert, sounding more menacingly deranged than comical.
Such is the unique appeal of Fat Dog, a band who on paper sound jokey – drummer Johnny ‘Doghead’ Hutch has a penchant for performing in a German shepherd mask, sadly not donned in Leeds – but in reality sound like credible harbingers of the apocalypse. It didn’t take long for the audience to start colliding with each other to the sounds of Vigilante, an album opener which brilliantly pairs a mammoth hook with a haunting, vaguely Eastern European folk melody. Gone were the intricate details of the studio recording – most notably a melodramatic spoken word passage, and a gigantic-sounding string orchestra carrying the hook – but in Leeds an additional percussionist was let loose on an arsenal of bongos and cymbals, more than plugging the gap. The result was an intoxicatingly heavy three minutes that had an instant, drug-like effect on the audience, who duly threw their arms – and beers – up in the air.
Joe Love’s performance was intimate for those in the front row.
It was enthralling – but then again I’m bound to say that, since Love spent a majority of this brief gig right next to me, close enough I could have nicked his hat. He leaned against the barriers for song after song, singing directly to his devotees like a young Nick Cave, only with less heartfelt hand-holding and more woofing into the microphone. It was a thrill to be in the mix of bodies with their arms reaching up towards him, but I doubt the people a little further back from me – spending most of the gig looking at a largely empty stage – would have agreed.
From my fortunate vantage point amidst the mosh, the only possible downside of Fat Dog’s set was that each song was almost too exhaustingly compelling. Seven-minute opus King of the Slugs was a marathon of industrial beats, particularly in its propulsive second half where the tempo was ruthlessly dialled up a notch. Wither similarly took off like a rocket, Jacqui Wheeler’s restless bass riff and Love’s oddball intonations of “You better wither, baby, before you die” whipping up a frenzy in the crowd. The bedlam was so irresistible that, in one exquisite moment of rock ‘n’ roll, even the hired photographer camped out beside the stage in front of me felt compelled to down tools and leap into the crowd, practically landing on top of me. A few seconds later I watched her drift off to the dim recesses at the back of the venue as Morgan Wallace’s saxophone squealed like a wounded pig.
Even I Am the King, the unconvincing ballad lodged in the middle of the band’s debut album, sounded gripping in Leeds, the shimmering backing of strings given new urgency by Hutch’s rapid hit-hats ticking away like a time bomb. “I am the king… and it means nothing at all,” Love repeated again and again with rising desperation, the swirl of synths rising around him like floodwaters. Yes, Love has penned plenty of silly lyrics (his first words in his debut album are “Granny’s tights on my head”), but this was a moment of genuine artistry and the evening’s only opportunity for pause and reflection.
It all came to ahead with an electrifying rendition Running, a stupendous single and one of the very best songs from any band this year. It’s a masterclass in tension and release, evident in Leeds when it triggered not one but three mosh circles (where fans clear an area of the floor then rush into the space when the chorus hits). The lengthy bridge in particular was excruciatingly tense, and by the time the eventual payoff came – a panoply of winning hooks, all neatly foreshadowed earlier in the song – bodies were circulating in the crowd as if swept up in a fast-moving lazy river.
An encore of noughties rave classic Satisfaction – a perfect riff for Wallace to attack on her saxophone – wrapped things up before the clocks struck 10 p.m.. Too early to call it a night perhaps, but I’m not sure if I had the physical fitness for much more, and the revellers around me looked like they’d been worked to exhaustion too. In the end, the crowd simply barked in unison instead of asking for one more song – if Fat Dog had indeed imbued their strange music with some sort of magic potion, it had worked a charm.
Some gigs feel bigger than the room that holds them. You can see the low ceiling, the scuffed floor and the cables taped down near the monitors, yet the sound seems to push past every physical limit. That kind of show is not only about volume. It is about compression: the crowd, the band and the room all sharing the same pocket of air.
Proximity changes everything
In a small venue, there is nowhere for the performance to hide. Mistakes feel human rather than catastrophic. A drummer adjusting the tempo, a singer laughing between songs, a guitarist stepping back from a pedalboard with relief after nailing a transition: these details become part of the night rather than interruptions to it.
That closeness also changes how songs land. A quiet bridge can hold the room still because everyone can feel the restraint. A chorus can feel explosive because the audience is not just hearing it through a system; they are physically inside the reaction. The best small-room gigs use that intimacy instead of fighting it.
Energy beats spectacle
Large shows often rely on production to create scale. Small shows have to find scale in momentum. A well-paced set can make a modest venue feel enormous by moving from tension to release with purpose. The opening song sets trust, the middle run builds heat, and the encore only works if the room has already become part of the performance.
That is why a small-room gig can stay with you longer than a polished arena date. It is not perfect, and it should not be. Its power comes from the sense that something temporary happened in exactly one place, with exactly those people, and could not be repeated in quite the same way.
Playing to a sparse crowd in Belgrave Music Hall, Girl Ray’s undercooked hour of straightforward disco-pop had highlights but suffered from a muddy mix and was ultimately upstaged by their support act.
To be fair to me, the passage from the neon-lit buzz of Belgrave Canteen to the upstairs Belgrave Music Hall isn’t immediately obvious, particularly upon arriving relatively early on a Tuesday night. Not for the first time at this venue, I accidentally managed to skip the queue via a promising unmarked door next to the pizza stand, and located a toilet before approaching the security guards, receiving a slightly mean chuckle when they pointed out I had toilet roll stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Once in, I did at least have first dibs for the bar and for Belgrave’s limited seating, plus unfettered access to the merch stand. It wouldn’t be manned until after the gig three hours later, but I made sure to leave the venue sporting a bright red Girl Ray tee nonetheless.
Twenty minutes later came that sinking feeling that comes with watching a support act take to the stage to a nearly empty room, and tonight was a particularly tough draw for Kuntessa, whose audience numbered around 20 for her opener. She did at least seem to have three dedicated fans supportively bobbing up and down to the beat near the front, until I realised these were of course the Girl Ray trio willing on their friend. Astonishingly, the Italian electronica songwriter seemed unfazed, posing and preening joyfully across the stage and hilariously introducing zany songs that ranged from rants about her time as a bartender, her love of Kylie Minogue prosecco and a showstopper about wanting to become her crush’s bike saddle – all from her recent Pussy Pitstop EP, as she was at pains to remind us. It was a showing easily profane enough to prove the crudeness of her stage name is no mistranslated coincidence.
Support act Kuntessa played to an almost empty room. I positioned myself at the front during the final build up to Girl Ray’s set and had expected the wide empty space behind me to fill up with latecomers. Instead, there remained a six-feet radius around me and I ended up uncomfortably feeling like part of the show, feeling too exposed to slip back into the crowd; I was closer to frontwoman Poppy Hankin than any other audience member. It was perfect for dancing, yes (and it had been no problem when a similar thing happened for Los Bitchos last year), but also mildly embarrassing.
It was a shame, because this has been a big year for Girl Ray. Mirroring Jessie Ware, although on a much smaller scale, the trio has pivoted from serviceable indie pop to energising disco through their rewarding recent album Prestige, which presented a sort of raffish charm that suited a genre accustomed to not taking itself too seriously. Faultless pop tunes like Everybody’s Saying That and True Love have no doubt already fueled wild nights in Girl Ray’s familiar North London haunts but, like a hungry young football team contemplating an away day to Stoke, could they deliver the goods on a drab night in Leeds?
The answer was, sadly, not really. Opener True Love immediately fell flat when Hankin’s crucial rhythm guitar was rendered inaudible by a messy mix, and over the course of the next few songs the balance hardly improved even when Hankin repeatedly asked the sound engineer to turn her up. Unlike Kuntessa, Girl Ray seemed understandably a little deflated by the poor turnout on this, the penultimate night of a sizeable UK tour. The gave it an admirable good effort, but lyrics like “baby, get down with me,” simply don’t work without maximum gusto.
In the end, that was what condemned this brief gig: Girl Ray’s performance was never simply bad, just consistently unremarkable. Solos were unambitious, never venturing far from the original recording and lacking any sort of technical dazzle needed to wake up a tepid crowd. Hankin’s vocals sound endearingly rough and ready on the record, but here they just sounded ordinary and slightly held back, like a shy friend delivering a relatively impressive showing at karaoke, good enough for a few raised eyebrows, if not quite a free drink.
Nonetheless, there were highlights to be found once the worst of the mixing issues had been resolved. Tell Me was easily the band’s most exciting song and provided a workout for Sophie Moss on bass plus Girl Ray’s most pleasingly silly couplet: “baby, we were hot like a cigar / but here I am crying in the back of my car”. Hold Tight arrived with a bouncy electronic drum beat from Iris McConnell at the back of the stage and Hankin’s acoustic guitar strumming was buoyant and peppy, even if it seemed to take perhaps a little too much inspiration from George Michael’s Faith.
Give Me Your Love, Prestige’s 7 minutes, 43 seconds closer and arguably the only song in Girl Ray’s catalogue to show some genuine creative ambition, closed the set. I had found it underwhelming on the record but was hopeful it would come alive in person. The entry of a severely overblown kick drum, engulfing all other instruments with every beat, put a swift end to those hopes. It was so deafening it even seemed to startle the three band members at first – good for clearing out my sinuses, less good for closing out a pop concert. It was fitting for this gig that a final, potentially interesting crack at the vocoder from Hankin was almost entirely lost to the din.
I had hoped to meet one of the band at the merch stand afterwards, but having lingered for ten minutes I settled on telling Kuntessa how much I admired her confidence before attempting my exit, trying a door I’d been through on previous visits to Belgrave for investigative purposes. I quickly turned around when the same security guard as earlier told me in no uncertain terms that I had to leave the same way I came in. Feeling sheepish, I decided a bus home would be a solo adventure too far this time and called an Uber. For me as for Girl Ray, sometimes it’s just not your night.
After releasing the best album of their careers last year, the Beths are reaping their rewards with bigger venues and an ever more affectionate fanbase. Improved on all fronts since their visit to Leeds last year, all that this gig needed was a bit of extra bite.
The ceiling lights in Manchester’s swish New Century Hall are so remarkable it wasn’t long before they were a topic of extensive onstage conversation from four-piece Kiwi rock outfit the Beths. Each of the perfectly uniform bulbs were framed by thousands of geometric slabs of smooth matte metal, creating an impressive array of shapes and shadows that could pass as one of the less noteworthy works in a spacious gallery of Tate Modern. “Does anybody know how many there are?” bassist Benjamin Sinclair wondered, to which an overly lubricated man beside me shouted “at least 12!”. But authoritative guitarist Jonathan Pearce – who radiates the musical expertise of a man who knows his vintage Fender Stratocasters from his Gibson Firebirds – had done the maths. 1,250 according to his assessment, having divided the ceiling into smaller, countable subsections. When he cued a “special message” written in the lights for one night only I’m convinced I wasn’t the only one that looked up with complete faith in his abilities.
Liz Stokes and Benjamin Sinclair of the Beths, with Tristan Deck behind on drums
The Beths can be forgiven for getting a little carried away with a venue as glitzy and capacious as New Century Hall. It’s been little over a year since frontwoman Liz Stokes was getting self-conscious over a poorly angled mirror above the bar at Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, a decidedly more intimate venue that seemed to underplay the quality of her songwriting. Tonight they’ve graduated Leeds and are now filling out one of the trendiest venues in the city’s big brother to the west, an expensively refurbished hall that once played host to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees in its heyday. 2022’s exemplary third album Expert In A Dying Field is surely driving the surge in support; an album that more than makes up for a lack of the cutting-edge with a glut of indelible chorus hooks and some of the most brilliantly crafted guitar solos of the year. As the crowds gathered ahead of the Beths’ entrance in Manchester, it was reassuring to see that good music can simply propel good bands onwards; for all the complaints about modern music’s “industry plants” and stadium-filling megastars pumping out one lazy album after another, a feeble musical meritocracy still stands firm.
A Passing Rain followed the hard rock formula to a tee: four good chords, played loud and fast, over and over.
Filling out the heart of the band’s set this evening, it was that batch of fresh material that provided many of the gig’s highlights. Head In the Clouds‘ wonderfully choppy bridge gave way to an anthemic chorus that had the crowds pointing to the ceiling bulbs in euphoria; lilting delight When You Know You Know had Stokes dusting off her acoustic guitar for the most exquisite chorus melody she’s ever penned. Given deserved late billing in the set list, all-rounder Expert In A Dying Field was greeted by the audience like an old friend.
Of course, this performance necessarily extended beyond all the great new songs, and the old essence of what first made the Beths worth listening to remained. It was telling that Future Me Hates Me – the title track from their debut album – was chosen to open the show ahead of recent, more obvious options. It worked well as the band’s introductory theme song, those four words in the title nicely encapsulating Stokes’ relatable lyrical style of half-serious self-deprecation. An endearing routine with the band members introducing one another in turn also remained, giving a sense of their individual personalities and providing a golden opportunity for Sinclair to plug his travel blog, which he sheepishly took.
At other times the Beths were perhaps a little too sheepish. More a musician than a performer, Stokes was not the sort of frontwoman to dictate any crowd participation beyond a knowing smile at any organic audience-clapping and moshing was out of the question. Sure, jumping around like a maniac has a time and a place, but there were a few songs that were heavy enough to deserve the full monty, not least A Passing Rain, which follows the hard rock formula for success to a tee: four good chords, played loud and fast, over and over. It didn’t help that Sinclair’s bass – used judiciously in this song to make its eventual impact in the second chorus all the more earth-shattering – felt weedy and undercooked, and the crowd seemed indifferent to the track as a result. It was this mixing issue that held back the Beths when delving into the punkier corners of their discography, with killer single Not Getting Excited also lacking crucial bite.
Each of Pearce’s guitar solos was a phenomenon, the crowd hooked on every twang and twiddle.
Even Pearce’s countless guitar solos felt a little restrained as a result of their conciseness, but wisely so. A majority of tracks were graced with his solos, each one its own phenomenon teased out one by one to a crowd hooked on every twang and twiddle. A lesser guitarist might be tempted towards directionless improvised shredding over such a juicy bounty of solid rock tracks, but Pearce’s guitar solos were meticulous and intelligently crafted, each one neatly wrapped up the moment before Stokes’ vocals rejoined. A refreshingly ingenious yet humble lead guitarist, it was Pearce that shone as this band’s outstanding talent.
Backed by a giant inflatable fish head, Jonathan Pearce’s guitar solos were consistently remarkable.
By far the evening’s most memorable moment came late on with Dying to Believe, which saw audience member Abi supplant Sinclair after the band spotted her banner requesting to play bass for a song. She performed it with complete conviction, and the audience erupted. There was something joyful about witnessing a person seize the moment with such aplomb, and a confidently delivered bass solo towards the end had the crowd rightly giving one of the biggest roars of the night. Sinclair somewhat amusingly became a spare part, microphone still in hand as he watched on. “I discovered quickly that I don’t know any cool ways to hold a microphone,” he would later write on that blog.
By the end of the night, it seemed confirmed that the Beths will never be the sort of rock band gunning for stadium-sized gigs as a result of their relatively lowkey and conservative approach to indie rock. And nor should they be: Stokes’ introspective lyricism doesn’t deserve to be lost to a melee of chucked beers and wayward limbs. The utterly heartbreaking acoustic encore track You Are a Beam of Light provoked a dumbfounded silence and stillness from the audience that was as emotionally potent an experience as any mosh pit. There is evidently still a space for subtler displays of emotion in today’s indie music, and the Beth’s trajectory remains upward; it was a symptom of their success that their latest album necessitated a cutting of some fine material from their live set (Whatever, Uptown Girl and River Run: Lvl 1, all highlights of last year’s gig in Leeds, have since been culled). Still, there’s work to be done. “They’re Australian, right?” I overheard one concertgoer ask a friend as we left the venue and almost tutted. These New Zealanders have come so improbably far already, but you get the sense there’s still a little more room to grow.
Every song was a showstopper for a celebratory final night of Couch’s debut international tour in an ambitious show packed with unrelenting funk-pop grooves, countless glorious solos and the best Harry Styles cover money can buy.
Tema Siegel stands centre stage, clad in a leather jacket with her microphone aloft in one hand, mug of coffee in the other. She’s reached the crux of Saturday, and slowly tilts her head back and shuts her eyes as she lets out an authoritative long note above a whirl of funky synths and guitars. A moment later and the entire song disintegrates when the band simply stop playing and Siegel switches from that momentary bliss to the neutral stance of everyday life in a moment. The song’s ending is met by an almost comic ripple of applause from the half dozen audience members, all of whom are loitering in a dark corner of Band On The Wall. For a song like Saturday clearly designed to whip up audiences into a frenzied party, it all feels shockingly flat.
The good news is the party hasn’t started yet. In fact, the six audience members are myself and the group of friends I’d travelled to Manchester with plus a sound guy. Through something like the dark arts (or, more specifically, some smooth direct messaging with Couch’s Instagram account), my friend Thomas had scored us ‘VIP’ access to the soundcheck, as well as a chance to personally meet some of the eight band members. We stood there at the back like sheepish starstruck superfans doting on the musicians’ every word as they ironed out fiddly issues with in-ear monitors and song transitions before hopping off stage and closely listening back to a recording just in case any mixing decisions needed tweaking.
Constant movement injected Couch’s set with fun.
Cut to three hours later and that careful, diligent preparation was invisible to the crowd as the eight excited musicians promptly kicked into their opening number. Since the low-key soundcheck, Band On The Wall – an impressively decked out and fresh-feeling venue in Manchester’s fashionable Northern Quarter – had transformed from a dark, empty void to the place to be in the city, with the most intense buzz of pre-gig anticipation I’ve felt since Sam Fender. The big draw of Thomas’ arrangements turned out not to be the soundcheck or even chats with the band but the early access itself, which meant we could snag an ideal spot at the front of the crowd, close enough to examine Siegel’s choice of trainers and directly hear the harsh parp of Jeffrey Pinsker-Smith’s trumpet before it was routed through the venue’s sound system. The thrill of such close contact with the stars, with the possibility of catching brief eye contact with a restless Siegel as she delivered her unwavering lead vocals, never wore off.
Almost every song featured a face-scrunching solo worthy of spontaneous yelps of support from the crowd and bandmates alike.
The proximity no doubt intensified the experience for me and my friends, but everyone in the room seemed blown away by the breathless opening set piece from the Bostonian band, who are riding high on the wake left behind by Vulfpeck, a funk band so spectacularly successful they’ve inspired renewed interesting in retro, jazz-informed pop amongst the young generation the world over. A brief rendition of the Wii Sports theme song set the tone for a light-hearted evening (and took a leaf out of Cory Wong’s playbook) before a sublime transition into the tumbling first chords of Fall Into Place, a song that instantly had the band – and therefore, the crowd – bobbing along to the groove enthusiastically. It was sounding surprisingly tight despite all the passionate moving and shaking onstage, ending with the first of many spine-tingling belted vocal moments of the night, aided by more than one flashy organ glissando. Immediate follow-up I’m Leavin’ (The Na-Na Song) continued the momentum with a masterclass in how to transform a lazy, grating chorus into an instant crowd pleaser on the night by way of punchier crescendos, noisier solos and a healthy helping of light choreography.
The best aspect of Couch’s performance, and also arguably the only weakness, was the fact that the high energy pop bangers started with Fall Into Place and virtually didn’t stop for the next 100 exhilarating (and exhausting) minutes. Almost every song featured a face-scrunching solo worthy of spontaneous yelps of support from the crowd and bandmates alike, and even the seemingly quiet tracks invariably wound up with a gobsmacking finale led by the indefatigable Siegel, her long notes often bridging dramatic stops in the accompaniment. The best songs were often simply the ones with the most ambitious climaxes. Earwormy Poems tailed off into the stratosphere even more than most, propelled onwards by a key change at an opportune moment. Still Feeling You, a perfectly crafted pop song and head and shoulders Couch’s best recorded track, was always destined to be a highlight, even if the knotty horns-led instrumental bridge inevitably frayed at the edges now played outside the comfortable surroundings of a recording studio.
Every band member got their moment in the spotlight.
An interesting selection of covers filled out a marathon 21-song set, all of which were Couch-ified with immaculately rehearsed details of group synchronicity, plus the trademark barnstorming final chorus. A zestful rendition of With A Little Help From My Friends was well received, and a smooth transition into Something milked the Beatles patriotism in the room for all it was worth. Billy Joel’s Vienna provided the sort of robust blues melody that Siegel eats for breakfast, and Pinsker-Smith was not one to pass off on an opportunity for a squawking muted trumpet solo. A less purposeful rendition of Sex On Fire, by contrast, felt surplus to requirement. It may seem like a cruel backhanded compliment for me to list the cover of Harry Styles’ somewhat bland, radio-primed filler Late Night Talking as the evening’s biggest highlight, but Couch’s reimagination of the track is so brilliant it’s already earning its own reputation in the States as one of the group’s niftiest showstoppers. Every corner of the song was masterfully slick and self-assured, from the chorus’ finely tuned vocal harmonies to the delightful yet well-restrained fresh flashes of trumpet and saxophone. It culminated in Danny Silverston’s breathtakingly funky Stevie Wonder-style clavinet breakdown (a surefire way to Undertone‘s heart), before Siegel reintroduced each instrument with a joyful campness (“Willy, where’s that bass at!?”). This was the sort of cover that will forever render the original a disappointment.
Chants of “we want more!” were instant after Couch left the stage; Siegel could only manage a few seconds hidden backstage before bursting back out to her adoring fans with a smile.
Couch proved themselves to be great musicians, but they were even better performers. From song one, movement onstage was constant and engaging, and rarely did all band members start and end a song in the same spot. Leading the pack, Siegel was particularly bubbly, often crouching down a few feet in front of us and looking into the phone cameras of the rapt front row fans, my friends amongst them. Wireless microphones and transmitters were an essential piece of tech for Couch, allowing almost every band member to wander the stage freely, resulting in the sort of dynamic and authentically spontaneous performance you’re unlikely to see in your traditional four-man rock band. Eric Tarlin on saxophone was the band member that seemed to most relish this freedom, initiating games of rock-paper-scissors or handshakes with bandmates before particularly magnificent solos. He travelled so much that his hijinks found him playing keyboard at one point, as well as an entertaining stint as lead vocalist. His solos were equally playful and cheeky, his face tight with a smile behind the mouthpiece.
In fact, every band member had plenty of time alone in the limelight – Still Feeling You was followed by several minutes of solos on the same chord progression. It could have been tiresome had each solo not been somehow more spectacular than the last. Jared Gozinsky’s long drum break into standout Saturday was thunderous and bassist Will Griffin was Dart-like in his enthralling few minutes at the front of stage, but it was keyboardist Danny Silverston who produced the finest solo of the night with his otherworldly synth adventures on Let Me Hold You, the more promising of two unreleased songs.
Tema Siegel was an engaging frontwoman.
Countless more solos came and went by the time Siegel started saying her goodbyes. It had been a set admittedly lacking in versatility. The band’s formula of throwing the kitchen sink at the end of every song became a little too apparent after a dozen iterations and Siegel’s vocal performances, whilst commanding, lacked nuance. Fortunately, all the kitchen sink throwing was so passionately delivered there were few signs of tiredness amongst the celebratory crowd. Chants of “we want more!” were instant after Couch left the stage, and Siegel could only manage a few seconds hidden backstage before bursting back out to her adoring fans with a smile. Encore song Conjunction Junction gave the fans exactly what they wanted: unadulterated funk, complete with squelchy rhythm guitar, a sticky horns hook and lyrics that made good use of the word “funk”. To say the ensuing sax vs trumpet solo battle at the song’s climax tore the roof off would be inaccurate; Couch had metaphorically deroofed Band On The Wall several times already that evening.
The five of us left promptly and strode briskly back to Victoria station to catch the last train home, already eagerly throwing around “best gig ever” suggestions after our successful VIP experience. It was perhaps telling that whilst my friends exchanged video clips of the night’s highlights on the train, my first action was to find a row to myself, lie down and throw a coat over my head to block out the overhead lights. Couch’s show had been inconcise but potent, an adrenaline shot of high-octane pop destined to leave sore heads in the morning. Several band members had fittingly finished collapsed on the floor in the immediate aftermath of Conjunction Junction, and in many ways Couch were right not to hold back on their final night in the UK before flying back to the States. They had given it all, and it wasn’t just my friends’ special treatment that had made it a night to remember. That said, if Couch can be accused of bribery – giving away freebies in the hopes of praise from the esteemed tastemaker at Undertone blog – this time it worked magnificently.
Arriving at one of the grandest venues of her career to date, Self Esteem threw the kitchen sink at this performance at the Sage with snappy choreography and slick costume changes. Rarely was the show anything but utterly spectacular.
Something extraordinary happened about halfway through Self Esteem’s enthralling recent performance at Sage Gateshead. Amidst a chaotic screech of rising synths, Rebecca Lucy Taylor had snuck off stage, leaving us to gawp wide-eyed at the rest of the band, who were in the process of morphing out of their monochrome tuxedos and into blazing red head-to-toe body suits before our very eyes. Once her alien-like minions had fully materialised, Taylor returned in a blood red playsuit, an uneasy mix of playful and dominant with her huge, feather-brimmed cowboy hat. “I am not your mother,” she chanted with venom amongst the swirling clouds of smoke, storming around the stage during a particularly strenuous stretch of choreo. For several gripping minutes the room was awash with a chest-rattling kick drum and siren-like synths, before Taylor eventually climbed up the centre-stage plinth to have a bash of – or more accurately, abuse – a drum of her own. Cue a magnificent transition into the no less venomous How Can I Help You?, and the chaos continued unabated. As an artistic sequence, this was Taylor operating at the peak of her powers, providing a visceral, compellingly ugly spectacle. It set the tone for an evening of bold, inventive and ultimately uplifting pop.
It’s songs like How Can I Help You? – a no nonsense alt-pop monster – that had critics’ ears pricking up in the wake of Self Esteem’s latest studio album Prioritise Pleasure, which got a deserved Mercury Prize nomination and recognition as the Guardian’s Album of the Year in 2021. Since then, her live shows have only been getting bigger and bolder, and the imposing arena of Sage Gateshead’s main auditorium was a new high water mark that seemed to shock even the popstar herself. “A lot of Taskmaster fans in Newcastle,” she tried to jokingly justify to herself at one point, although it was obvious no one was here simply because they had spotted her on the New Year’s special episode of the TV show.
You Forever had the rowdiest fans below me almost jumping on their seats in ecstasy
It’s not just the sheer size of the Sage that makes it a difficult place to perform (it’s big but, admittedly, UK concert venues can get much bigger). With its many rows of seats and elegant wooden sound boards, the Sage is less of a venue, more a temple of listening, and performers have little hope of painting over unsatisfactory music with crowd pleasing visual flourishes in the same way they might do in less formal surroundings. Support act Tom Rasmussen battled admirably to make an impact with flashy dance music, but even their most dynamic tracks struggled when confronted with 1,600 people settling down in their padded seats with a freshly baked scone from the foyer cafe. Subsequent performer Mega got similarly swallowed up by the room, unwisely pitching up with just a guitar and cajon to support her.
Staging and lighting added potency to exhilarating How Can I Help You?
For Self Esteem, however, there was hope. Not over reliant on dance grooves or shock factor, her distinctive pop provides plenty for the attentive concertgoer to listen for. Her lyrics and not just frequently witty but fierce and unwaveringly earnest, and sonically her songs match abrasive pop trailblazing with a pained tenderness; on the night, How Can I Help You?‘s uncompromising stomp was balanced by achingly bare piano ballad John Elton. If the seating arrangements limited dancing, Taylor was at least sure to provide plenty of reasons to cry. In fact, in the end all the seats didn’t matter at all – the wealth of pop bangers on parade had the entire ground floor seating area on their feet for virtually the whole gig, not to mention the overenthusiastic group of tipsy women booked in the seats next to me.
With such an unusually interesting catalog at her disposal, Taylor could be forgiven for simply doling out the hits in Gateshead. Instead, this was a deeply intentional, meticulously detailed performance. Beyond the three costumes and their effortlessly slick transitions, razor sharp choreography from Taylor’s three hard-working backing singers offered a fresh visual dimension to the songs. In stormier sections the group often served shocking moments of synchronicity, their aggressive punches and kicks adding even more heft to Mike Park’s hulking drum beats. In other times, when Taylor’s mellow vibrato floated over subtler backings, the group produced heart-rending tableaux, linking arms or physically supporting not just Taylor but one another. Sonically, Self Esteem offered the full package, too. Bassist and purveyor of keyboards Sophie Galpin seemed at risk of being overworked, but she managed every room-filling synth hit and wild, sudden change of musical direction with miraculous ease. Taylor herself delivered with her powerful, hearty vocals, sounding just as comfortable belting out the apex of a beautiful ballad as she was snarling about misogynistic men in no uncertain terms.
Most musicians will spend an entire career reaching for artistry as exquisite as I Do This All The Time
It was a set packed with almost too many winning set pieces to mention. Punchy funk number Moody came repurposed as a glorious Y.M.C.A.-style dance-along, and sparkling You Forever was even more joyfully energetic, leaving the rowdiest fans below me almost jumping on their seats in ecstasy. Stirring slow burner The 345 was rightly billed as the big singalong tear-jerker at the business end of proceedings, but an earlier performance of Just Kids was even more emotionally penetrating. “Remember we had it all when we were just kids?” the gospel vocals soared as melting, bracingly artificial strings pierced through the track. It was The 345 that marked the start of the descent into hell by way of red mist and a cowboy hat, with the most fiery corners of Self Esteem’s released (and unreleased) material condensed into a blistering 15 minutes that hit like a shot of vodka. The conviction in which Taylor spluttered out her lyrics, utterly incandescent, was almost frightening. “I’m a truly hideous person but I’m very charming on telly,” she told us in her endearing Sheffield drawl after the dust had settled, briefly relishing in her own villainy before digging in once more with a propulsive performance of standout Girl Crush.
Rebecca Taylor performed closely with her hard-working backing singers
From the outset, we all knew this gig was only heading in one direction, namely I Do This All The Time, Taylor’s career-defining moment of genius, part determined hymn to healing, part poignant piece of heartbroken slam poetry. It may take some of its cues from Baz Luhrman’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen), but Taylor’s song is much more than just vague life advice in pretty packaging. Instead, everything in this song cuts straight through to the soul – the empowering group vocals, the devastating strings melody, Taylor’s endlessly quotable nuggets of wisdom, which are delivered with the crushing nonchalance of an artist on the verge of giving up. Most musicians will spend an entire career reaching for artistry as exquisite as I Do This All The Time. In Gateshead, Taylor forgetting the bulk of the first verse (“please don’t ask for a refund!”) was a fly in the ointment, but as that final gospel rush arrived, with Taylor earnestly linking arms with her backing singers in genuine camaraderie, the sheer amount of humanity on the stage made it difficult to hold back the tears.
It had been an evening of such variety for both eyes and ears it seemed unfair to ask for any more from Taylor, who no doubt will end this tour both physically and emotionally exhausted. That said, a live strings section was the one thing that could have elevated I Do This All The Time (and several other songs) even higher, and the two person backing band ended up feeling inevitably lacking for all Galpin’s multitasking heroics. Relatively unremarkable Still Reigning also marked a peculiar comedown after the aforementioned showstopper, and there was a sense that the audience was simply too exhausted by the previous emotional bulldozer to sing along with much volume. Make no mistake, though, Taylor’s live show is an artistic triumph, and by the sounds of the new material aired at the Sage, she may still be yet to hit her creative peak.
Like many others around me, I felt emotionally battered by the time the house lights came up. Shirley Bassey’s terrific disco hit This Is My Life was an inspired choice of exit music, her powerful refrain perfectly mirroring the intense joy left behind by Taylor’s art yet with a distinct undercurrent of melancholy. As I left the still dancing crowds below, I felt as I do after all the best gigs: deeply satisfied but heavy with sadness from the knowledge that experiences like these can never truly be re-lived. The one-time-only thrill is of course exactly what makes live music so special, exciting and often transcendent, but I have a habit of realising how precious the moment is just as it ends. Some of Taylor’s final words were still ringing in my ears as I made my way back over the Tyne Bridge and looked across to the beautiful light show on the rest of the city’s great bridges. “I will never forget this,” she had told us, voice wavering as the crowd’s standing ovation grew ever louder. Plenty of artists have said similar things at dozens of gigs I’ve seen across the country in the last few years, but this insistence of Gateshead’s specialness felt different. This time I could sense she really meant it.
Critically acclaimed punk rocker Jeff Rosenstock marked his return to the UK with an explosive, sweat-drenched performance in Leeds, packed with clever changes of pace, raucous singalongs and underlying anti-capitalist rage.
16 Undertone gig reviews deep, no act I’ve seen thus far has taken to a stage quite like Jeff Rosenstock did at Leeds’ Belgrave Music Hall. For most acts, their grand entrance onto the stage is hammed up as one of the most thrilling moments of the night. Be it dodie‘s gentle organ hum, Sam Fender‘s static fuzz or Jungle‘s interminable sirens, some sort of lavish musical fanfare usually marks the end of the hours-long wait for the artist on our tickets. Even less well-known artists like Larkins or The Beths dimmed the lights and donned facemasks to remain anonymous as they set up their own equipment onstage, attempting to save the big reveal for the giddy few seconds before the start of their first song. The Beths even had their own hoodies with words like “guitar tech” written on their backs in an attempt to fool the audience (stood right at the front and with prior knowledge of just how unusually tall guitarist Jonathan Pearce was, I wasn’t buying it).
It was a surprise, then, when Rosenstock and his band practically stumbled onto stage minutes after the phenomenal Fresh had wrapped up their supporting set. I once again found myself right at the front and within touching distance of the great man as he taped a scrawled set list to the monitor in front of me and wrestled with a mic stand that had become entangled in cables. When one of Rosenstock’s songs happened to come on as background music, him and his band even started briefly jamming along to the disbelieving delight of the crowd.
The lowkey start was indicative of punk music’s general lack of self-importance, and Rosenstock’s humility in particular. Before digging into furious thrash metal of opener NO TIME, Rosenstock announced that he was here just to play some songs. For a pop gig this might have sound like an admittance of creative laziness, but for Rosenstock’s endearingly homegrown brand of rock, “some songs” was all the performance we needed.
Rosenstock performing on his replacement guitar
It helped, of course, that Jeff Rosenstock happens to have one of the most lauded discographies in rock today. Since his solo debut in 2012, he’s released one outstanding project after another, peaking with 2016’s immaculately-paced WORRY., which gladly took up a significant chunk of the set list in Leeds. His latest effort, 2020’s bitter and cathartic NO DREAM, came to define the pandemic summer for me and close friend Ewan, who, just like me, was hardly able to contain his excitement as we waited near the front of the queue outside Belgrave Music Hall. I had donned my NO DREAM t-shirt whilst Ewan’s giant Rosenstock flag remained proudly hung up in his bedroom at home.
Despite the night being Rosenstock’s first UK performance in many years, he was in no mood for gentle reintroduction. Choppy Nikes (Alt) had fans pogoing early on, as we screamed about “staring down the barrel of our shitty future” and “looking for a dream that won’t morph into a nightmare”. Scram! – the finest single on NO DREAM – was just as thrilling, and there was something vaguely touching about a group of (mostly) millennial men coming together in a room to sing about how desperate they are to run away from all the myriad personal problems in their lives. Musically, the climax of Scram! is extraordinary, with a barrage of kick drum hits that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Slipknot track, before eventually giving way to a rollicking garage rock payoff.
Rosenstock held nothing back in his performance of every last song, convulsing and twitching towards the microphone during his most pointed lyrics, turning around and keeling over his guitar in the ecstatic pain typical of loud rock music during many vocal breaks. It was scarcely more than 15 minutes in by the time he started to get visibly sweaty, and another 15 minutes later I could feel the occasional speck of lukewarm sweat splatter onto me whenever Rosenstock got overly energetic in his dancing; such is the visceral experience of being at the very front of a Jeff Rosenstock gig. His poor guitar got so drenched that he had to swap to his ‘backup’ guitar halfway through, telling us a story about how he apparently sweats much more than the average person. We all believed him.
Fun and goofy-sounding up-tempo numbers like Hey Allison! and Monday at the Beach were even faster in the flesh, almost to a fault, although seeing Kevin Higuchi smack the snare drum at such a rapid tempo never got old. Festival Song was a clearer highlight of the night, with its bounty of singalong riffs and propulsive final chorus, elevated by the screech of Mike Huguenor’s guitar. Majestic You, In Weird Cities should really have closed the entire night, but it was still rapturously received much earlier in the set. Rosenstock’s saxophone antics of the song’s live version had Ewan and I excited, not least because keyboardist and guitarist Dan Potthast had been occasionally playing a tenor throughout the night. In the end we didn’t quite get the saxophone solo we had been hoping for, but an a capella singalong of the song’s awe-inspiring final hook nonetheless felt pretty special. f a m e, NO DREAM‘s grandest moment, was the only significant set list casualty of the night.
The hits continued with the restless N O D R E A M, which was a good excuse for Ewan’s first stagedive of the night to the ire of the Belgrave security guards and general approval of fellow revellers, although no one quite had the boldness to do any crowdsurfing of their own for the entire night. The absurd sight of my friend’s limbs coming in and out of view in the melee beside me enhanced the giddy excitement of Rosenstock’s noisiest tracks. After that first stagedive I wasn’t to see him for a good 30 minutes whilst I clung on to my spot at the very front, wary of crush injuries from the occasional mosh pit surge. I was close enough to Rosenstock for him to confer with me in bafflement when the inevitable “Yorkshire” chants arrived before the encore.
Rosenstock connected with the fans on the closing tracks
And what an encore. To the delight of Ewan and I, it was mostly devoted to the final five songs of WORRY., which are woven together beautifully into one remarkable ten-minute long rock opus. Every chorus set the mosh pit on fire, and in quieter moments Rosenstock was almost entirely drowned out by a crowd intent on screaming every last lyric. Exhausted, Rosenstock lay down on stage towards the end of the segment, dozens of hands pouring at his shoulders and willing him to push himself out above the heads of the audience.
It had been a show with little fanfare and little space for sentimentality, but at the very end Rosenstock gave us a morsel with the calming cooldown of We Begged 2 Explode. “All these magic moments are forgotten,” we all chanted as Rosenstock waved goodnight. If we had bothered to listen to the words we were screaming, we may have realised how fleeting emotional highs like these really are.
