Category Archives: Rock Gigs

Courting live at the Cluny review – indie’s next big thing has room for improvement
28
Mar

The Liverpudlian post punkers’ live offering is rough around the edges and their fixation with heavy-handed autotune grates – but they do possess the sort of roof-demolishing closing number most bands can only dream of.

The Liverpudlian post punkers’ live offering is rough around the edges and their fixation with heavy-handed autotune grates – but they do possess the sort of roof-demolishing closing number most bands can only dream of.

“Everyone sing the chorus!” Sean Murphy-O’Neill ventures spontaneously in the closing stages of his band’s visit to Newcastle, eyes glinting with a boyish cockiness that rather overestimates the passion for Courting in this small crowd of mostly inebriated university students who will jump up and down to anything resembling a drum beat. Most seem to be here for the more daring shout-along choruses of the band’s debut album Guitar Music, a record filled with ample angry rap-singing and meaty bass riffs perfectly tailored to the tastes of a mostly young male demographic up and down the country. Courting aren’t quite leaders of the post punk pack (that would be Leeds’ red hot Yard Act, followed by Do Nothing and Squid) and their latest album aims for a broader indie rock appeal, but there’s still plenty of bangers to be written in this thriving subgenre. That said, Courting has some way to go to reach the mainstream, a fact that Murphy-O’Neill is reminded when no one sings said chorus. Ego visibly bruised, he hastens back to the mic to blurt out the next lyric. He needn’t fear, though – it takes a few more repeats of the refrain for the eager crowd to get the hang of the hook and soon enough Murphy-O’Neill is grinning and pointing his microphone at Fosters-wielding fans like Freddie Mercury.

You can only get such intimate crowd interactions at somewhere like the Cluny, hands down Newcastle’s finest small venue and an ideal underground cocoon to witness fresh bands like Courting navigate the early stages of their development. Discuss indie music with anyone in Newcastle and the Cluny will come up – this is where bands build their core followings before promotion to O2’s midsized venues across the country, which is why the continued loss of such venues to the cost of living crisis is such a tragedy. Luckily the Cluny, like Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, seems to have enough word-of-mouth hype to keep it sustained for the time being, and the small dancefloor and seating area is packed by the time the five members of Courting are picking their way through the crowd and onto the stage (a wonderfully unceremonious entry you just don’t get at your local O2 Academy).

The ensuing 80 minutes is an odd mix of Courting’s contentious early punk and more recent, pop-facing indie rock tracks. Opener The Wedding is very much the latter, and despite a few earwormy lyrics (“oh, I’ve been a good boy on this track!”) never quite elevates beyond competent yet flavourless rock. The former, epitomised in a stroppy rendition of Tennis, was much better received, although had issues of its own – when there’s no melody for distraction, spoken lyrics like “You’re a night in the Holiday Inn / I’m a breakfast bar with an unusual toasting conveyor belt” just won’t cut it. What’s more, Murphy-O’Neill doesn’t even serve up a juicy Scouse accent. Instead we get the posh southern boy voice popularised by pre-2023 Black Country, New Road and, lacking that band’s immense musicality or lyrical genius, Courting end up sounding like a pale imitation of their Cambridge contemporaries.

Underpinning it all is an irritating penchant for incongruous autotune that is hard to ignore during a listen of Courting’s otherwise rewarding recent album, New Last Name. This is far from the first time Murphy-O’Neill has received this critique – earlier this tour he wrote on X that all complaints just prompt him to boost the autotune even further – but what Courting gain from the manipulated vocals besides some point of distinction from their contemporaries is unclear. They stand to lose plenty; most of the time it just sounds distractingly silly and only occasionally – like on the rousing The Hills – did the emotion in Murphy-O’Neill’s voice survive all that pitch-correction. Sure, robot-ified vocals can sound great on an electronic track, but accompanied by earthy electric guitars and a real drum kit it just sounds wrong.

Crowd work between songs was hit and miss. They introduced sparkly pop number We Look Good Together (Big Words) by asking the crowd to imagine a drunken night out in Tup Tup (after a quick poll established that Tup Tup was indeed to worst club in Newcastle) and managed to get couples to waltz during PDA (“More romantic! More romantic!”), which was just as well because the track was a clear dud that had been getting an unusually cold reception from the Cluny patrons. Less wise was a needless and unfunny attempt at improvising a story (each band member contributing one word at a time), plus the awkward silence when Murphy-O’Neill announced “we’ve only got one more song…”, the frontman not getting the consternation he’d clearly expected.

Other times, that touch of youthful insouciance injected some much needed fun to proceedings. There were brief renditions of Coldplay’s universally loved Yellow and Fun’s We Are Young (a little obvious given the demographic in the room yes, but I still wanted more), plus by far the best surprise of the night in a full cover of Olivia Rodrigo‘s riff-heavy rager Bad Idea, Right?. This rendition stripped away what little melody there was in the original and added nothing in its place, but the raucous crowd couldn’t care less – it was the track I had been waiting for to compel me into the mosh.

Bizarrely, a cover of a girly American popstar’s song would have been the highlight of the night had it not been for Flex, the undisputed jewel of Courting’s discography, which was rightly saved for the end. Murphy-O’Neill had rehearsed parting the crowd Moses-style before the song, presumably so he could get stuck into the mosh pit, but in the end he stayed onstage, perhaps surprised at just how dense and wild the crowd became. That was because Flex is a song perfectly designed for singalong hedonism, overflowing with simple, bulletproof melodies as well us some shrewdly placed quiet passages to let us catch our breaths. In its composition it deserves comparison to the ultimate indie anthem Mr. Brightside – like that Killers song, every note Murphy-O’Neill sings feels inevitable and timeless, even when the core refrain repeats rarely. Tonight’s rendition lacked the endearingly ragged trumpet solo of the studio recording, but the spine-tingling finale about partying the night away nonetheless summoned pandemonium. In the eye of the storm, I turned around to find myself surrounded by smiling faces of people celebrating their joy, their glorious freedom and, most of all, a shared love of really good indie rock song.

Flex left fans leaving on an enormous high not quite representative of the flawed songs and scrappy performances that made up most of the gig. They may still have plenty of room to grow, but there’s no denying that this band’s star is rising. Another of Murphy-O’Neill’s audience polls found that most of those in attendance hadn’t witnessed the band’s last visit to the Cluny a little over a year ago. A few more solid choruses in the vein of New Last Name and a little more (justified) confidence in their frontman and Courting will be all set to graduate the small venue stages. Let’s just hope that by the time they’re headlining O2 City Hall they’ve seen sense on the autotune front.

Squid live at Boiler Shop review – oddball post-punk casts a spell
3
Nov

Squid’s twisted, ugly brand of post-punk rock music was a perfect match for the industrial surroundings of Newcastle’s finest gigging venue for a set packed with interest and surprises, not least a theatrical twist at its climax.

Squid’s latest tour, in support of their critically acclaimed sophomore album O Monolith, begins with nothing but cowbells. Two rhythms weave immaculately together whilst drummer and frontman Ollie Judge gets comfortable on his stool, plinthed and silhouetted against a growing storm of technicolour stage lights. A buzzy, detuned synth loop arrives spectre-like, then an eerily off-kilter bass line and dizzying assemblage of dovetailing guitar lines. After a minute or two Louis Borlase lunges forward and unleashes a piercing guitar riff, his instrument scratching and screeching higher and higher, urging this monster of a song towards its startling finale. This is Swing (In a Dream), Squid’s fascinating set opener that serves as a head first dive into the strange, nightmarish underworld in which this band’s music resides, full of unhinged melodies and alien stretches of what can only be described as noise. It makes for unrelentingly challenging listening – unlike their similarly daring peers Black Midi, Squid aren’t tempted to throw in a delicate acoustic ballad just to keep the audience on their toes – but it is all utterly enthralling.

Ollie Judge’s endurance as both drummer and vocalist was impressive.

My friend Liam and I are in the thick of it. Despite arriving shortly after doors opened at Newcastle’s Boiler Shop, we’ve somehow secured the best spot in the venue, pressed against the barriers and right under the nose of a shadowy Judge, who is throned centre stage. With the masses of fans all behind us – Bristol group Squid have garnered a comparable cult following to the likes of Black Country, New Road in recent years – we can fully appreciate the perfectness of the venue, a bare and atmospherically lit former warehouse that seems built solely to recreate the dystopian future so vividly painted by Squid’s music. There’s plenty to look at on stage, too: five musicians and many more instruments. Borlase inhabits a small forest of synths on their stands; Laurie Nanivell makes use of a dedicated cowbell station when he’s not injecting songs with trumpet; Arthur Leadbetter has his own ring of synths, plus an electric cello for good measure. What’s more, it’s not all just eye-candy for music nerds like me; Squid’s ambitious compositions genuinely demand half the stock of the nearest Gear4music warehouse. It’s this vast choice of instrumentation that allows these songs to be so volatile, the band indulging in lengthy song transitions that veer towards the genre of ambient noise, full of indecipherable squeals of synth and undulating tides of electronic fuzz.

It’s in these off-script song transitions that Squid were their most daring and compelling. An early sortie in the preamble to Undergrowth was breathless, Judge emerging from a mist of guitar with a thumping dance groove that sounded like a warped version of Parcels in full nightclub mode. Then there was the song itself, with its heavy hip hop groove and sticky guitar hooks. “I’d rather melt, melt, melt, melt away,” Judge yelped in the chorus, competing with a honking trumpet amidst a superb, head-banging racket. Peel St. was another early highlight that emerged from experimental noise, the band miraculously turning what sounded like a jammed photocopier into one of the most lethal grooves they’ve ever dug their teeth into.

Louis Borlase played guitar and electronics whilst Arthur Leadbetter performed on electric cello.

It was all a bit too much for one man a few rows back from us, who used the few pauses in the music so impatiently shout the lyrics to Squid’s biggest hit, Narrator, at one point getting the crowd to clap distractingly during a quiet section of solo guitar. Liam and I saw him extricated from the crowd and awkwardly heaved over the barriers by half a dozen security a few songs later. “Sunday night… who would have thought it?” Judge mentioned quietly at one point, apparently in disapproval. Tellingly, it was one of the only things he said directly to the crowd all night.

It was a good thing that the five members of Squid were all far too absorbed in their craft to let a rude audience put them off. The crowd did at least elevate standout Documentary Filmmaker by singing along gleefully to a trumpet riff, then shouting along to Judge’s descriptions of a hot summer (“the sweat dripped off my plastic sheets”) during a suitably stifling climax. The biggest climax, however, was reserved for a deafening rendition of Siphon Song, which was helped by a more restrained use of the robot-like vocal manipulations that somewhat took the sting out of the studio recording. A patient outro that flickered like a dying ember gradually revealed Narrator, the track that many in the crowd will have been waiting for. It was a performance that was bound to fall short of the experience of listening to the original track for the first time – Martha Skye Murphy, whose blood-curdling screams in the finale make for one of the most disturbing pieces of rock I’ve ever heard, was of course not present at Boiler Shop – but Judge’s sheer vocal stamina in the epic crescendo was admirable, even if the song rather outstayed its welcome over the course of a nearly nine-minute runtime. Simultaneously drumming and singing (or, more accurately, wailing) for such a behemoth of a song was no mean feat.

Laurie Nankivell and Anton Pearson completed the lineup.

Whilst Squid’s sonic onslaught was sometimes overwhelming, they could never be accused of boring their audience. In Newcastle this was true right until the very end, with the awe-inspiring The Blades, which started with a clever reprise of the opening cowbell rhythms. Here lies perhaps the most memorable image of all Judge’s sinister lyrics: a drone operator sits alone and watches his screen that shows aerial images of people on the ground which he darkly reduces to “blades of grass waiting to be trimmed.” Judge repeated these menacing lyrics with increasingly uncontrolled yelps, as if playing the drone operator as he gradually loses his mind in the warfare, powerful trumpet melodies and wailing sirens exploding like bombs. It made for a violent depiction of mania that would be compelling even if it didn’t come at a time when war crimes are becoming depressingly common in the news.

Then came the twist. For the first time in the whole gig, Judge stepped out from behind his kit, untangled his microphone from its stand, and positioned himself at the very edge of the stage, almost within touching distance of Liam and me. “Back to bed / Another man’s hand on the joystick,” he almost whispered over dreamlike sustained guitar chords. He looked genuinely frightened, gazing nervously up to the metal rafters of the warehouse building while gradually tangling himself in his microphone cable. Judge – or, more accurately, his character – seemed defeated, lost, hopeless. It was a moment of intense theatre that would haunt me on the subsequent walk home and make me wish Judge had dug even deeper into the performance art that his evocative lyrics so easily lend themselves to. As the quiet final notes of this otherwise thunderous gig rang out, Judge stood alone centre-stage, incapacitated by his own microphone cord. The crowd had been rowdy all night, but something in Judge’s performance seemed to have genuinely struck a nerve. As the stage lights dimmed, all that was left of Squid’s concert was a stunned silence.

Penelope Scott & Lincoln live at the Deaf Institute review – agonisingly unprepared
27
Oct

A dejected, overwhelmed Lincoln set the scene for a thoroughly unprofessional showing from Penelope Scott, whose pitchy vocals and underwhelming songs made the hour feel like two.

Somewhere between Leeds and Manchester, the knot of anxiety in my stomach tightened. As the light outside the train window weakened, my apprehension of what was to come – namely a solo traversal of Manchester city centre by bus – strengthened. I am lucky to have travelled to far more exotic places than this, but something about the task of negotiating a ticket on the number 1 towards Wythenshaw from a no-nonsense Mancunian bus driver sent shivers down my spine. An egg sandwich bolted at a shady bus stop felt like battle fuel. Of course, as is almost always the case, there was absolutely nothing to worry about, although I had cut things finer than I anticipated, joining good friends Ewan and Isaac in the Deaf Institute’s bar queue with just enough time for hugs and Coke orders before the crowd cheered the night’s first performer onto the stage.

I wasn’t the only one feeling anxious that Wednesday night. Lincoln, a singer-songwriter from Ohio dealing in neatly packaged emo rock and painfully poetic lyrics, is the man responsible for what remains the finest EP I’ve ever heard, 2017’s A Constant State of Ohio. At five songs and 16 minutes long, there isn’t a single minute on Ohio where Lincoln loses his burning sense of creativity, with consistently thrilling songwriting and staggeringly stylish rock arrangements that belied the fact that it was his first – and for many years, only – official release, produced when he was still a teenager. It was this set of five tracks that caught the imaginations of 14-year-old Ewan and I, and we took to playing it in our high school’s only practice room, me bashing out the chords and bass lines on piano, Ewan playing guitar and singing along with all the heartfelt devotion that lyrics like these demand.

The fact that, somewhat out of the blue, Lincoln had booked a brief debut UK tour in support of Penelope Scott seemed too good to be true, and for those initial few minutes settling down in the beautifully restored Deaf Institute it still seemed ridiculous that this random American artist, adored by us and (more or less) us only, was just a matter of metres away from us. But there he was, plodding onto stage alone, head hung low and letting his now chest-length scraggly brown hair fall away in front of him, covering a wiry moustache that almost made Lincoln unrecognisable from the few, aged photos Ewan and I had seen of him online. Immediately, alarm bells were ringing. “There’s a lot of you here and… I’m not ready for this,” were his first tentative words, the crowd’s reaction gradually switching from laughter to intermittent cheers of encouragement as it became clear Lincoln wasn’t joking.

Right from those first words, it was obvious that Lincoln wouldn’t have the conviction to produce a satisfying support set, although circumstances didn’t help. Sat down and hunched over a guitar, he looked crushingly lonely on stage and needed other musicians not just for more visual interest but to beef out his songs – opener Smokey Eyes was a different song altogether without the spectacular drum fill intro that lights the touchpaper of the studio recording. Instead, Lincoln battled on alone, admirably pushing through what seemed like a genuine personal crisis but leaving little musical substance for the few fans like Ewan and I to cling to, even if Ewan proudly belted out every lyric in support anyway.

Lincoln had to battle through his set at the Deaf Institute.

Instrumentation aside, the lyrics remained extraordinary even if Lincoln often didn’t seem to enjoy delivering them. Lines like “quiet lies that you’re telling to those black and screaming skies” were appropriately spat out with disgust from the singer, as was Lincoln’s poetic assertion that “the sky is what we leave behind” on Downhill, which wrapped up this set powerfully as it did on the original EP. Not that Lincoln seemed at all aware of the effortless flow of his rhymes, instead rolling his eyes to the ceiling when they weren’t glued to his feet. He didn’t realise it, but they were songs that he had every right to be proud of.

It soon became clear exactly what he meant by “not ready”, too. Part of Lincoln’s apparent terror was the fact he had walked onto the stage without a plan, improvising a set list and often forgetting his lyrics. Every song seemed like a challenge to be overcome, and with awkward gap came the genuine risk that Lincoln might no longer be able summon the courage to continue at all. He needed the direct help of Ewan – easy to hear over a meek guitar intro – to find the opening line of Banks, a song that shouldn’t have been so difficult to remember; the stunning final four lines about the power and limitations of music and art in general remain etched in my memory since I first heard them years ago. As I would have the chance to insist on Lincoln later, if I was into tattoos, the lyric sheet of Banks would be my first point of call.

It wasn’t just Ewan unwaveringly powering Lincoln through this set, although they made up a big proportion of the most vocal supporters. Every song was cheered, every mumbled apology batted away with whoops and laughter and shouts of “we love you!” dotted around the room. When Lincoln cut his finger whilst strumming, one audience member even offered a plaster, symbolic of the band-of-friends atmosphere that had emerged in the Deaf Institute as we watched what felt like a mutual friend crumble in front of us. Of course, Lincoln declined the offer.

He finished the set with a subversion of the usual showman’s routine of lines like “I’m so sorry we’ve ran out of time” or “I can’t wait to see you all again soon!” Instead we got “I’m gonna get down off the stage. Can I do that?” It was a measure of the crowd’s sympathy that instead of the usual pantomime groans, the audience gave a loving, appreciative yes. With that Lincoln wiped his brow a final time, unplugged his guitar and slunk backstage.

Then something remarkable unfolded. Improbably, Ewan had acquired Lincoln’s personal email address in a thorough online trawl of the deepest corners of his elusive online presence in the weeks leading up to the gig, and had managed to persuade Lincoln into an exclusive interview for Ewan’s YouTube channel. After such a forlorn performance, the three of us wondered if he would appear after all, but sure enough Lincoln snuck out from a side door five minutes after leaving the stage, trailed by a lowkey stage manager. Venue security prohibited us from going outside, so the Deaf Institute’s atmospheric, gloomy stairwell would have to do for an interview venue. Lincoln Lutz from Cincinnati, Ohio is hardly Ed Sheeran, but meeting the creator of one of my most treasured works of art felt special. Ewan asked the questions (just as disbelieving as me), Isaac filmed and I positioned myself in a corner, trying to take it all in. Conversation veered chaotically from allusions to years of drug addiction and a sharp decline in mental health (about which Lincoln described himself as becoming “not a person”) to his newfound appreciation of the Manchester fruit juice delicacy Vimto. He was so addicted to nicotine that the transatlantic flight to the UK was a huge struggle, he would later tell me. When asked for wise words from Ewan, “don’t do crack!” was the half-jokey response, a sadness detectable in his muted laughter.

Ewan managed to grab a signature on their vinyl sleeve of Ohio before returning to the concert hall just in time for the appearance of the night’s main act, Penelope Scott. She is one of a new breed of TikTok star, unusual for having gained millions of monthly listeners with little to no mainstream coverage. Perhaps her wild success is down to just how much the Internet age dominates her music, which sounds like a corrupted, freakish video game soundtrack, restlessly lurching from punk rock to cutesy acoustic guitar to plodding 8-bit synths with a joyous disregard for the traditional rules of hit making.

There’s a limit to the mind-boggling numbers, though. The Deaf Institute, for one thing, is a humbling venue, housing just 250 fans at its capacity. Artists with her volume of streams – albeit largely coming from American shores – can at least aim for Gorilla’s 550 capacity, or perhaps even the 1,500 capacity O2 Ritz across the road (incidentally a venue which hosts the abysmally named Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs at the end of the month, a traditionally established metal band with a poxy 60,000 monthly listeners on Spotify). Alas, it seems streaming numbers aren’t everything in today’s gigging circuit. In fact, often they can be completely misleading.

Penelope Scott was in desperate need of a band to support her songs.

Scott’s lack of a backing band was perhaps even more underwhelming than Lincoln’s, largely neutering the tumultuous edge of much of Scott’s louder tracks. Feel Better, for instance, is home to Scott’s most impolite punk riff and was duly screamed in Manchester, but ended up sounding impotent with minimal support behind Scott’s vocals. More often the songs resembled a campfire singalong on a school residential trip, complete with awkward chat between songs and a proudly singing crowd that often drowned out Scott’s weedy amplification. The whiny vocals, invariably pitchy and occasionally nauseating, would have been acceptable from an overconfident middle schooler, but at a show like this were simply below the bare minimum required from a headline act. It was a shame there was no supervising schoolteacher to tell Scott that maybe it was time to give it a rest.

It didn’t help that the songs Scott was singing lacked much of Lincoln’s depth, often reading like stream of consciousness posts from a 15-year-old American girl’s Tumblr page. American Healthcare was typical of Scott’s general rage at the establishment without being able to pin down any specifics beyond scorn towards all those “corporate fucking pricks”. “I bet my shit all sounds the same to you,” she railed at an unappreciative ex on genuinely promising new piano number Cabaret, unaware that, at least when she restricts herself to plonky piano songs and flimsy mid-range vocals, the guy might actually have a point.

The real nail in the coffin, though, was the dearth of professionalism on show. Like Lincoln, although with a less obvious excuse, Scott seemed to have no plan when it came to a set list, nor even when it came to what key to play her songs in; at one point she completely restarted a song after deciding the starting note ought to be a bit lower. Instrumental sections were needlessly injected with lines like “just bear with me here” and “ooh I like this bit” as her tempos veered faster and slower like a bucking bronco.

The evening’s nadir came when Someone Like You began playing through the speakers after Scott left her laptop playing on shuffle after one backing track had finished. I say nadir – it might have been the musical highlight of the night had Scott just sat back and let the Adele classic ring out. Instead, she fumbled her way to the back of the stage and instructed us to talk amongst ourselves as she wrangled with her audio files for two excruciating minutes. As Isaac and Ewan pointed out, it was hardly Mitski-level artistry. With a bored-looking Soap, Scott’s set was over, an hour long reminder that sometimes TikTok success just doesn’t make sense.

The three of us lingered in the venue until security told us to leave. I was surprised by how much passionate Scott fans Ewan and Isaac agreed with my general disappointment. The gig had left a bitter aftertaste for us all given the toils involved in getting to Manchester on a Wednesday night in the first place. Ewan slipped backstage and bumped into both performers whilst Isaac and I waited outside, Ewan eventually emerging with a pizza-hungry Lincoln following behind. We stood in line with Lincoln at Domino’s – a genuinely surreal experience – before relocating to a shady bench where we chatted happily despite the growing chill and the unsettling number of beggars approaching us. We said our goodbyes to Lincoln at midnight and walked to Piccadilly still in disbelief. Ewan seemed dazed after a meaningful conversation with a deeply influential musical hero, leaving Isaac and I to be giddy on their behalf. The journey home would be gruelling, but discussing the most impossible events of the night – Lincoln referring to Ewan as a friend, the fact the embattled Lincoln had even agreed to chat in the first place – it was clear to all of us that this venture had been worth it, albeit for everything besides the music.

Theo Katzman live at Òran Mór review – Vulfpeck’s showman gets spiritual
16
Oct

On a damp and dreary night in Glasgow, Theo Katzman showcased his exemplary songwriting and impressive technique despite a set bloated with solos in one of those gigs overshadowed by my own circumstances.

Another gig, another nervous train journey. This time I was gazing out the window somewhere on Scotland’s central belt, the outside world so uniformly dark it was genuinely difficult to tell whether or not the train was passing through one very long tunnel on the way to Glasgow. I’d already had plenty of excitement for a Tuesday night – I sprinted in a failed attempt to catch an earlier train in Edinburgh, my overnight bag bouncing uncomfortably on my back – but the biggest challenge was to come: making it to the renovated church of Òran Mór in Glasgow’s West End before American singer-songwriter Theo Katzman took to the stage bright and early at 8.15 p.m.. Glasgow was damp and gloomy but jogging through the dimly glowing backstreets in search of the flat where my friend Fionn was waiting for me felt enjoyably like a movie, at least until I soaked my trainers in a puddle. I buzzed in to find a nervous Fionn, and understandably so. He’d had to buy a dodgy ticket online in the days leading up to the gig and was, crushingly, denied entry on the door. Neither of us had the guts to do a runner – this was, in truth, hardly a high-security venue – so we just stood there stunned for a few minutes, waiting for a solution to reveal itself which never came. Only when we heard the cheers heralding Katzman’s punctual appearance were we triggered to say a sad goodbye and part ways. Fionn made the 10 minute walk home alone whilst I shuffled into the already stuffy Òran Mór to find almost nowhere to get a good view. I settled on a spot just in front of the bar, my view of the main man largely obscured by pillars, and tried to focus on the music.

It was in these circumstances that I first saw Theo Katzman in person. His was the third name on my bucket list of Vulfpeck members to see live after prolific guitarist Cory Wong and fabled bassist Joe Dart, who happened to be stood right next to Katzman in Glasgow, the glints from his customary sunglasses dazzling even in the short glimpses I got from the back of the room. A guitarist, vocalist and drummer for Vulfpeck, Katzman’s showmanship instincts have sometimes felt squashed in that band by the zany presence of frontman Jack Stratton, but whilst Vulfpeck have taken an extended hiatus Katzman has grasped the opportunity to show the world exactly what he’s made of. Showing up tonight sporting a skew-whiff oversized baseball cap and loose, exposing denim jacket, Katzman has always felt a little different from the rest of the Vulfpeck gang, even if he can funk just as hard as the rest of ‘em. His distinctive take on country rock has only the barest resemblance to Vulfpeck, the link most clear in those moments he opts for a particularly perky funk bass line or indulges in a gleeful, improvised falsetto run. Lyrically, Katzman’s solo discography is so smartly written and heartfelt it makes you wonder what heights that Michigan band might have scaled if they chose to sing about something more stimulating than self aware ducks and whales with feet.

Katzman arrived in this damp Scottish city after, like many of contemporaries, having undertaken something of a creative (and, perhaps, personal) reinvention during the pandemic. He spent much of his chat during this gig discussing a formative year or two alone in the wild woods of the American midwest, doing little else than simply “thinking”. He cut himself off from the Internet for long periods, becoming self-sufficient and discovering the counterintuitive yet ever trendy hobby of extreme cold water swimming. It all amounted to a spiritual awakening that seemed destined to result in either powerfully profound or powerfully pretentious new material. A monologue played through the speakers as the band took to the stage in which a disembodied Katzman espoused the “universal law” that “everything in nature has a cost” and insisted that “we ourselves are nature,” dangerously teetered towards the latter, although in the remaining brief speeches that would pepper the rest of the gig Katzman came across as far more a humbly passionate advocate of spirituality than a self-absorbed ‘enlightened one’.

That said, Katzman’s latest album, Be The Wheel, is hardly a George Harrison-level musical departure from his earlier work, the change instead making itself clear in a notable decrease in the specificity of his lyrics. The title track and Hit The Target got things moving in Òran Mór, and although Katzman’s calls to “be the wheel” and “put down the pistol” seem indecipherable to anyone other himself, there was plenty to love in the consistently interesting composition, particularly than it came to the writhing retro synth in the latter track. 5-Watt Rock was an outlier in its directness – an endearing, self-aware tale about wooing a lover despite an underpowered guitar amp – but was tellingly one of the most enjoyable tracks of the night, the harmonised group vocals in that unforgettable chorus sounding even more glorious in the flesh.

Katzman performed to a sold out Òran Mór.

Katzman was blessed with a stellar live band, not least when it came to Mr. Dart, who is as far as I’m concerned one of the finest bassists active today. They were kept busy with a daunting quantity of solos – almost every song found eight bars to lend to one of the musicians who, whilst clearly very capable performers, occasionally struggled to justify every departure from the standard rock formula. At their best these improvisations were transformative – Dave Mackay’s blues blast on piano on Trump-bashing You Could Be President was a thing to behold – but other times, like on 5-Watt Rock, the solos added little to the original. At least Dart’s superfluous diversion on She’s In My Shoe added a degree of interest to an otherwise uninspiring plodder. Still, we were left wanting more – the cutting of a few solos would have been a small price to pay had Dart or one of his bandmates been given enough airtime to fully explore his instrument within a single song.

The new material may have its fair share of duds, but there’s no disputing what an exceptional songwriter Katzman is – unmatched by any of his Vulfpeck peers. The remarkable What Did You Mean (When You Said Love) is his best song and he knows it, drawing it out in Glasgow with a pretty yet convoluted piano intro followed by a stripped-back, overly theatrical first verse that showcased both Katzman’s expressive vocals and the song’s undulating harmonic foundations. Virtually every phrase was followed by an increasingly dramatic pause, culminating in a lengthy silence that verged on mick-taking before the band’s entry. “Do it, ya bastard!” one unmistakably Glaswegian man couldn’t help but blurt out from the back, somewhat puncturing all the romantic tension Katzman had worked so hard to construct, even if he had been playful about it. He did, eventually, “do it”, throwing in a jazz piano solo and rampaging electric guitar solo for good measure. The song came out perhaps a little overcooked, stretching out into a six minute epic, but if any Katzman song can withstand this sort of abuse, it’s this one. The Death of Us came as a welcome contrast, the sticky funk groove light on its feet yet still offering an electrifying extended jam that had these five musicians operating at the peak of their powers.

Katzman’s unwaveringly earnest inter-song talks about the new worldview he acquired during that forest retreat were hit and miss. A speech about bravery before You Gotta Go Through Me was genuinely compelling, Katzman urging us to take that crucial first step outside our comfort zones, starting tomorrow morning; cue a muted applause. “Yeah, that one never goes down that well,” he admitted. It was a pity that all the oration came as a prelude to one of Katzman’s sleepier numbers, but at least the song gave me a chance to make the most of my back row spot and get hold of a queue-free delayed Coke. There were also a lot of ‘prayers’ at play: The Only Chance We Have was “a prayer for listening”, followed by Corn Does Grow, which was both a “prayer for nature” and “a prayer for us”. Really, Corn Does Grow was just a rollicking country rock song, delivered in Glasgow without the excessive vocal distortion of the studio recording. Instead, there was the most head-banging guitar solo of the night and plenty of intense riffing – by the end, the temperature in an already stifling Òran Mór seemed to have gone up a degree or two.

Rip-roaring new tune Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day was the best surprise of the night, Katzman asking desperately “but how long did it take to fall down?” as chugging drums and guitars gathered pace around him. The other uptempo Rome-themed song in Katzman’s canon, As the Romans Do, would have made for a worthy finale but instead we got That’s The Life, a disappointingly middle-of-the-road choice of closing number but a neat encapsulation of the Katzman appeal, with lyrics about searching for life’s purpose set to the sound of a light-hearted hoe down. Heads bobbed politely in the crowd in front of me, but there was a sense that we weren’t quite seeing Katzman at his uninhibited best.

It was still drizzling when I found Fionn waiting outside for me, needlessly apologetic. I joked that it had been a rubbish gig anyway, but it was true that Fionn’s absence hadn’t been the only disappointment of the night. Katzman remains a consummate entertainer – his free-wheeling falsetto feats were so consistently remarkable it became easy to take them for granted – but it seems when he found himself in the woods he partly lost sight of what made his music so much fun – namely uncomplicated, joyous rock hooks. Unlike a good deal of his contemporaries, Katzman has plenty of worthwhile things to say, but on this sad night in Glasgow I was left wishing he’d let the music do more of the talking.

The Beths live at New Century Hall review – the sound of a band realising their potential
5
Sep

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.

boygenius live at the Piece Hall review – has Halifax ever seen anything like this?
3
Sep

On a first night in a glistening Piece Hall, the three individually lauded American songwriters brought almost unprecedented star power to humble old Halifax. Euphoric rock anthems and heartbreakingly fragile ballads had the superfans in raptures during a gig almost derailed by mass faintings.

For the most part, there was little remarkable about the list of boygenius’ tour dates this summer. For an act so widely popular – the trio may have only one album under the moniker boygenius but Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus each have well-established solo catalogues, particularly serial Grammy nominee Bridgers – the magnitude of the supergroup’s bookings is hardly surprising. There’s a few arena stops in Denmark and Germany, a healthy contingent of A-league festivals (Paris’ Rock en Seine, Belgium’s vast Pukkelpop) and a night each at expansive open air park venues in London and Dublin. And, in the midst of it all, there’s a two night residency in… Halifax? It looks like a copy-paste typo. The fact that these bona fide global superstars have any time at all for this West Yorkshire town of 80,000 is remarkable enough, but the fact that they are staying for two nights (the only repeat billing of the entire tour) seems utterly bizarre.

The only explanation is the Piece Hall. The historic Georgian cloth hall and enduring architectural marvel was only adapted into an eye-catching summer music venue last year and its wide courtyard, nestled amongst the looming Calderdale hills, has already attracted plenty of big names including Sting, Madness, George Ezra, Noel Gallagher and Jessie Ware, who said it was like playing in Venice. It seems she may have over-egged that one for the crowd – there are no Titian masterworks to see here – but still the sense of grandeur that comes with the Piece Hall has increasingly drawn the world’s biggest artists away from the traditional arena venues in adjacent Leeds and Manchester. Now with two sold out nights from boygenius wrapping up a summer of 21 headliners on the giant, Glasto-style canopy stage, Halifax is cementing its position on the global touring map and a tempting contender for any artist’s obligatory north of England date.

Fans lined the hilly streets of Halifax long before the band took to the stage.

It wasn’t just in the diaries of boygenius trio that this Halifax concert stood out. For me too, this was clearly one of my premier gigging fixtures of the year. Besides the remarkable venue and excellent company of my friend Isaac (who, like all the best concert companions, came to Halifax just as paralytically excited as I was) there was the small matter of the band themselves who, two releases into their joint careers, simply have yet to release a bad song. I have already waxed lyrical about Phoebe Bridgers’ intimate songcraft on this blog, but in boygenius she is only one third of the appeal. Bridgers’ silky soft vocals are complemented by Lucy Dacus’ sonorous baritone that purrs like a cello. Then there’s the punky flavour of Julien Baker’s contribution, whose vocals inveriably teeter between a vulnerable whimper and an embattled roar, best served on top of a thorny mess of electric guitars. If boygenius fans come for one thing, however, it’s not the music but the words. All three band members could double as poets and deal in lyrics that are both poignant and thoughtful but strikingly specific and direct. It scarcely takes a second listen for the full emotional weight of a boygenius song to hit home, perhaps surprisingly considering how bookish the three of them are; a trip to London a day before tonight’s gig wasn’t complete without a visit to Brick Lane Bookshop, where they emerged with tote bags bulging with Tolstoy and Camus.

As Ethel Cain’s rather one-note supporting set came and went, I clearly wasn’t the only one in the venue feeling overwhelmingly excited for what was about to unfold. The first fainting happened a short distance from us in a dense area of the crowd, forcing Cain to pause and wait for the medical crew to shoulder their way into the crowd just as she was going up through the gears of showpiece epic Thoroughfare. Perhaps there was something in the air: I consider myself quite well accustomed to a touch of pre-gig hysteria, but 20 minutes before the trio finally took to the stage I was shaking so uncontrollably I genuinely wondered if I’d be the next embarrassed visitor to the medical tent. At one point during the several hours of waiting a few spots of rain threatened to become a shower. “I would be here even if it was snowing,” Isaac told me with complete conviction.

Without You Without Them worked as a sort of pre-match national anthem, every last word bellowed proudly by the thousands in attendance.

At long last, at 9:20, the “boys” took to the Piece Hall stage to the sound of deafening screams. The trio could have hardly made a better start with a capella stunner Without You Without Them, sang into a single mic and performed just behind the stage curtain with a live video of the group beamed onto a giant LED screen. It was instantly sublime, the song working perfectly as a sort of pre-match national anthem, every last word bellowed proudly by the thousands in attendance, hands on hearts. A moving hymn to ancestry, here it was repurposed as a statement of intent, with audience and performers promising each other to “give everything I’ve got”. In a brief moment of calm before the storm our eyes were glued to the screen as Baker closed her eyes in utter concentration and Bridgers rested her head on Dacus’ wide shoulders in apparent bliss. No sooner had the final notes been sung did the camera jerkily follow the three women briefly through some backstage rigging and, lo and behold, boygenius stood before us, in the flesh. They ripped straight into earthy rock banger $20, a transition that sounded electrifying enough on their recent album. In person, it made for one of the most exhilarating opening one-twos I’ve ever witnessed. A swift switch into a thunderous rendition of Satanist, another of the band’s riff-heavy rock numbers, rouned off a breathtaking opening ten minutes.

Whilst the stream of rock anthems weren’t to last, what did endure throughout the set was the undeniable and frankly adorable chemistry between the three performers. Here was a trio so close to one another that they had no qualms releasing a song squarely titled We’re In Love, and it only takes watching one hilariously aloof interview with the three of them to realise just how much they mean it. In Halifax they were wise to avoid the temptations of any sort of script between songs, instead joking casually about Halifax being the lesbian capital of Britain (“so that’s why there’s so many of you!”) and gamely allowing themselves to be mocked when the usual “YORKSHIRE!” chant didn’t quite get through (“is that like a college or a state or something?” Baker ventured).

The chat was a necessary tonic to the introspective and serious songs, which only became more emotionally draining as the night went on. Cool About It, a tasteful interpolation of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer, was an early highlight, with the singers taking a verse each before finally joining in crisp harmony. Bridgers got the final and most tragic verse about taking a friend’s medication and realising just how bad things have got. “Now I have to act like I can’t read your mind,” Bridgers sang in near-whisper before being joined by a banjo and her two bandmates in a final crescendo as restrained and understated as all the secrets Bridgers seems to be struggling to hide. Emily I’m Sorry, another gentle heartbreaker with Bridgers’ songwriting fingerprints all over it, was similarly exquisite, her lilting melody ushered along by a comforting shimmer of electronic toms.

$20 made for a sensational curtain raiser

In fact, boygenius’ performances may have gotten a little too good for the obsessed fans near the front. It may have been the pristine harmonies and the countless tattoo-able lyrics that had audience members dropping like flies, or more likely the gruelling ten-plus hours of standing required for the best spots, but either way all the fainting stripped boygenius’ set of all its momentum on multiple occasions. Both Anti-Curse and breezy Souvenir had to be interrupted for several minutes, leaving awkward silences that even these three best friends struggled to smooth over with filler chat. Of course, stopping the songs at the first signs of distress is absolutely the right thing to do – post Astroworld disaster, artists can’t and mustn’t take any chances – but there was no getting away from the building disappointment for the average, adequately hydrated boygenius fan. There were unrelated sound issues too at one point when the band took a few minutes to realise their mics had suddenly cut off, and a promising up-tempo unreleased song came out muddy and thick, with vocals buried deep beneath an out of control kick drum.

Increasingly, it was a relief when a song was played in full, without incident. Mercifully, True Blue emerged unscathed, a shimmering slow burn love song led by Dacus that serenely flowed out and over the crowd like a warm summer’s breeze. The twisted indie rock of Bite the Hand also built with alluring patience. A song ostensibly about obsessive fans and the perils of parasocial relationships, it proved to be fitting for tonight’s audience and was smartly paired with live camera feeds of the front row fans passionately singing along. “I can’t love you how you want me to,” they chanted on the big screen, hanging on every word and yet not seeming aware that the song was about them.

Togetherness, connection, unbridled joy: Not Strong Enough is why I go to concerts.

A well-judged set list – although boygenius couldn’t go far wrong by playing every single song they’ve released, plus three more from their solo discographies – ramped things up as the darkness thickened over Calderdale with both the most intensely loud and quiet songs of the night. Fan favourite Me & My Dog was most definitely the former and saw Bridgers belt out some new high notes at the climax, thrillingly edging towards to the upper limit of her range in an exhilarating change from her trademark dreamlike whisper. Bridgers also led the way on that song’s far more delicate sister track Letter to an Old Poet, urging the crowd to put down their phone cameras just for one song and largely getting obeyed. It was a well timed request and helped crushing lines like “you make me feel like an equal / But I’m better than you” cut deep into the soul. With none of the glitz of flashing stage lights or a sea of paparazzi, Bridgers suddenly looked completely exposed, badly hurt but resolute in search of hope. “I can’t feel it yet, but I’m waiting,” she concluded, pausing for several seconds on that final word and leaving this delirious crowd of fainting fans in a precious stunned silence, if only for a moment.

Letter might have been the highlight of the whole show had it not been followed by Not Strong Enough, a belting, sunkissed country rock number and strong contender for song of the year. As that ecstatic chorus arrived, Isaac and I were lucky to find ourselves in a pocket of equally thrilled fans to jump up and down alongside. Suddenly it was as if we were staying still and it was the world that was bouncing along to the beat. The words had the sort of lines that we didn’t scream along with just because we knew them but because we believed in them too. The chorus’ subtly profound declaration of “I don’t know why I am the way I am” seemed to be echoed by thousands of fans all coming to the freeing realisation that not all of their flaws and idiosyncrasies have to make sense. Togetherness, understanding, unbridled joy: this is why I go to concerts.

A live audience cam was a clever addition to Bite the Hand

Perhaps at this point the three should have quit whilst they were ahead, taken a big bow and headed backstage to start planning tomorrow’s day trip to the Brontë Parsonage. There was still Salt In The Wound left to be played however, both the slowest and loudest track the three have up their immaculate matching blazer sleeves. It provided an over-the-top finish (stage smoke billowed, guitars wailed, two of the trio tried an uncomfortable looking crowdsurf) but beneath the showmanship the band seemed tired, especially Bridgers whose vocals frayed at the peak of the crescendo and who never quite gave all the gusto that a track like this demands. Still, it did the trick of unequivocally wrapping things up with smooches all round from the three performers, much to the delight of the disproportionately LGBTQ crowd.

You can imagine the designers of Halifax station didn’t have a boygenius concert in mind when they devised the narrow platform that Isaac and I soon found ourselves on along with hoardes of fans bound for Leeds and Bradford. As it happened, a slice of luck earned us two seats at the end of the next eastbound train, complete with good live entertainment of the sardine action whilst the driver lamented over the telecom that the platform was so choked with people he didn’t feel it was safe to pull away from the station. It seemed clear that – at least before the Piece Hall launched as a large venue last year – Halifax station has never seen crowds like this at quarter to 11 on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night. boygenius’ set had been occasionally extraordinary, but there was a sense that even better nights await for the newest musical destination in the north. Let’s hope next time these fans remember to bring plenty of water.

Couch live at Band On The Wall review – eight-strong funk group go all in
20
Jul

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.

Self Esteem live at Sage Gateshead review – left-field pop firebrand is the full package
16
Jul

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.

Prince Daddy & the Hyena live at the Key Club review – a hit and run blast of mayhem
1
Jul

Straightjacketed into a fleeting 45 minute set, this performance from the New York emo rockers was agonisingly defined by all the great songs they neglected. At least the berserk crowd didn’t seem to mind.

Standing in line outside the Key Club, it felt almost as if the pandemic never happened. Just like we did in 2019, me and my friend Ewan were discussing the latest developments of curiously named New York emo rock band Prince Daddy & the Hyena ahead of their performance a few hours later, shivering a little in the queue outside Merrion Street’s KFC. Seeing so many fellow fans of one of our favourite niche bands was still a thrill, as was the fact that Kory Gregory, a loveable frontman worth rooting for, was once again awaiting us somewhere deep within the building we stood next to. If it weren’t for my new Prince Daddy t-shirt or Ewan’s new hairdo it might have looked like nothing had changed at all in the intervening four years.

The Key Club brought a nice familiarity for us (we’d even both played an early Ewy gig on the Key Club stage) but it would perhaps be less welcome to Prince Daddy themselves, who have evidently made little forward progress in terms of popularity across the pond in recent years. Cosmic Thrill Seekers, a somewhat overambitious but nonetheless hugely rewarding concept album, felt like the talk of the town back in 2019 but in reality it struggled when it came to streaming numbers, perhaps due to the inaccessibility of an album made up of three through-composed opuses, each confusingly assigned three different names. Last year’s self-titled album was somewhat better received but the hard truth is that this band remains confined to the cosy Key Club, a suitably all-black underground dungeon of indie rock, with ceiling pipes low enough for crowd surfers to hang off during the most raucous performances. Even more humblingly, just as in 2019 Prince Daddy are still reduced to a split-billing for this evening’s show, this time playing second fiddle to labelmates Origami Angel (who haven’t even toured the UK before!).

(C’mon & Smoke Me Up )concluded with a deeply satisfying thump à la Beethoven.

A notably more excitable crowd than the group’s last visit to Leeds seemed to be the extent of their career progress. “You guys weren’t like this last time; I love it!” frontman Kory Gregory giggled early on. His surprise was understandable – the crowd this evening was remarkable. Virtually every song incited a riot: think limbs flying, mosh pits swirling, sweaty heads thrashing about in ecstacy. Even the slower songs gave fans the urge to climb up onto stage (refreshingly free of overscrupulous security guards) and leap outwards onto the hands of their comrades. At one point a mosh circle formed before Gregory had even started a song, before hilariously deflating when the song in question turned out to be the only slow ballad of the night. Plus, of course, there were plenty of garbled chants of “Yorkshire!”, seemingly shouted as much from Leeds tribalism as an attempt to confuse Americans for the fun of it (Jeff Rosenstock and cleopatrick have been similarly baffled on previous visits to the great city).

A boot to the head seemed the most likely injury during Prince Daddy’s blistering set.

Unfortunately for the average spectator, the main consequence of Prince Daddy’s recent mediocre self-titled album is that the big hits of their early albums are now spread few and far between in their live set. Ewan and I should have been worried when a fellow fan showed us the rumoured set list before the show: material from that latest album formed the bulk of a set, including several of the less remarkable corners of the Prince Daddy discography. Do we really need the forgettable, broad brush indie rock of Shoelaces or Jesus Fucking Christ? Did the utterly limp 90-second non-song Something Special really deserve a look in to an already selective set list? Sweeping ballad Curly Q was an inevitable inclusion but no less underwhelming, with a sickly sweet chorus so whiny and uninspiring it almost pacified the rabid crowd in the Key Club. Keep Up That Talk was the exception to the rule, boasting a whiplash-inducing finale that surely marks the most thrilling 40 seconds of guitar music Gregory has penned to date. It was that riff-filled rush that compelled me back amongst the moshers at the front after spending more songs than I would have liked waiting at the sidelines for a worthwhile banger to come along. Bouncing up and down in and embracing the chaos seemed the only way to properly enjoy a song that felt like hitting maximum velocity on a rollercoaster.

The problem for Prince Daddy wasn’t just that their set included so many middling songs, but that so many great songs were left unplayed. Only three songs from their debut album, I Thought You Didn’t Even Like Leaving, made the cut despite the fact virtually any song from that record could have maximised the bedlam in the Key Club. Expansive showpiece ballad Really? was featured somewhat grudgingly in abridged form, leading to palpable disappointment in the audience when the band swiftly moved on to another boilerplate cut from the latest album. I Forgot To Take My Meds Today still bites hard, but equally venomous sister tracks like Clever Girl, Pop Song or the delightfully named I Wish I Could Ctrl+alt+del My Life all were left neglected.

It had been barely 45 minutes, but the sweat-drenched faces in attendance resembled a few hours in the Amazon rainforest.

If anyone shared my disappointment in the room it didn’t show. It was lift off from song one, perhaps powered by the knowledge that the band would likely be gone for another several years in well under an hour. Enveloped in the mayhem, most of us were too busy to catch the detail of smartly constructed thrasher Klonopin or the even neater C’mon & Smoke Me Up, which concluded with a deeply satisfying instrumental cadence that landed with a thump à la Beethoven. El Dorado, lead single and obvious standout from the self-titled, was always destined to be compelling live, yet in Leeds the relatively sedate tempo – and awkward placement right at the end of the set – meant the crowd failed to ignite to Gregory’s punchy chorus. For a band with plenty of fiery candidates for closing number (not least two awe-inspiring album closers in Really? and Wacky Misadventures of the Passenger), this was a poor choice that left the crowd desperate for a proper finale that never came, regardless of how well executed El Dorado‘s breakdown was.

Virtually every song was greeted with stage divers.

By the time we had reached that muted end it had been barely 45 minutes, but the sweat-drenched faces in attendance resembled a few hours in the Amazon rainforest. To discuss exclusively the performance of the band is to ignore half of the experience – and probably the most important half. To a large extent, the crowd was the main spectacle at this gig. Stage invasions got so frequent that Origami Angel had to halt their subsequent set to instruct the fans towards an open space on stage so people would stop treading on Ryland Heagy’s guitar pedals.

What was most clear throughout was the kindness in the crowd running just beneath the surface. Rock naysayers looking in from the outside may see it as a brutal, angry mess of primal emotion. To some extent it may be, but the act of collectively lifting a stranger above your head feels more obviously an act of communal human love. Over the course of the night, fans of all shapes, sizes and genders found themselves surfing the waves of hands, each one of them eventually lowered down with care to the ground wherever they ended up and often congratulated by the strangers around them with broad smiles and enthusiastic hand horns. Even when simply jumping into each other in the pit, the first rule of moshing is to immediately lift up anyone around you who falls over – an intervention urgently required on a few occasions this evening.

It’s difficult to know what might have unfolded had Prince Daddy been at their propulsive best. Gregory may well have concluded in advance that the rip-roaring, deafening metal of the brilliant Hollow As You Figured would have likely led to some sort of structural damage to the Key Club foundations. That said, the disparity between the band’s humble billing and the eagerness of the crowd was baffling. With a fanbase like this, could the New Yorkers really not fill out this smallish basement on their own with a more comprehensive 90 minute set? It may well be another four years before we find out.

Florence + the Machine live at first direct Arena – cult queen reassembles her army
9
Jun

Florence Welch’s outstanding 2022 album Dance Fever dominated proceedings for a thrilling, theatrical Saturday night performance in Leeds. Knowingly the subject of cultish devotion, Welch’s return was a celebration of collective pandemic persistence.

Five songs passed before Florence Welch addressed the elephant in the room. “What the fuck is this?!” she asked, mimicking all the understandably baffled new Florence + the Machine fans in the room. “Is it a cult? Is it safe?” she bellowed with a distinctively melodious voice that has helped secure herself as a mainstay of British pop-rock for over a decade now. The confusion of the uninitiated fans she was gently mocking was easy to understand; virtually every other fan amongst the 13,000 that stood before Welch donned flowy dresses and delicate flower crowns that gave a certain Midsommar undercurrent to proceedings. The adulation in the room towards Welch was not the usual flavour of popstar devotion, but instead a deeper, softer sense of worship, with those that got a close brush with the star on her frequent jaunts off stage preferring to stare lovingly and intensely into her eyes rather than paw at her in desperation or lob a tampon à la Harry Styles. Often alone on the stage in a stunning, flowy white gown, Welch sang of grand Biblical images: resurrections, sacrifices, prayers, demons and societal collapse, her army of followers clinging on to every sharply crafted lyric. For all the new fans worried they’d signed up for some sort of indoctrination, Welch was quick to provide plenty of reassurance. “You’ll be absolutely fine as long as you do everything I say,” she informed us, letting a maniacal giggle slip out.

Experiencing such universal respect for one woman made it easy to forget that Welch’s cult didn’t form overnight. Since instant smash debut album Lungs in 2009, Welch (and it is, for all intents and purposes, just Welch – “the Machine” keep such a curiously low profile I didn’t realise they even existed before researching for this post) has been a regular in UK charts, her success powered by a handful of hits from that first album that hopped onto the broad late-noughties folk revival with its endearing hand claps and prominent harp plucking. Things turned up a notch last year in 2022 with the release of Dance Fever, a No. 1 album and probably her finest to date, with its gritty classic rock bangers balanced skilfully with introspective pandemic-era hymns.

Dozens of feathery white chandeliers rose about Welch during King

Much of the night was rightly dedicated to Dance Fever, the show opening with the fanfare-like chant of Heaven Is Here, Welch appearing with angelic spectacle thanks to the blinding white lights behind her. It was a spectacular start despite coming minutes after I’d assured my friend Isaac that the huge message of “CHOOSE LOVE” displayed on the screen beforehand was not just a message from Welch but the name of a second support act. Perhaps I still wasn’t mentally ready when spine-tingling album opener King kicked into gear, the soaring, earth-shattering finale not sounding as all-encompassing as I had hoped – at least from our perch at the first direct Arena’s third floor. It didn’t help that Welch’s mic cut out mid-song, shattering the sense of grand, serious theatre generated by Heaven Is Here. Welch of course had plenty enough poise to deal with the situation as a panicked stagehand rushed on to help – falling off stage and fracturing her foot didn’t stop her from finishing an entire show in November last year – but the gig had nonetheless got off to an unnervingly shaky start.

The dust of the unsure opening settled to reveal a beautiful, neatly choreographed 100-minute set. Perhaps most beautiful was the stage itself, which had been adorned with an elaborate gothic altar of feathers and bleached white flowers that nicely highlighted the golden sheen of Welch’s silky dress. Thin black sheets of fabric that descended from the roof to surround the isolated singer during Big God were less effective; not opaque enough for a sharp, backlit silhouette but thick enough to leave her peculiarly obscured from view and separate from the front row fans that so craved some sort of personal connection with their queen. It was Welch herself that offered the most visual drama, throwing up her fists (and enormous sleeves) with malice in time to the strobe lights in an awesome rendition of Daffodil or spinning around with glee on dancier numbers like appealing slow burner Choreomania.

It was the Lungs era hits that invariably got the crowd around me up on their feet with the immediate willingness of devoted followers

As enthralling as Dance Fever‘s melodramatic offerings were, it was the Lungs era hits that invariably got the crowd around me up on their feet with the immediate willingness of devoted followers. Dogs Days Are Over was the evening’s first real party starter, a gently plucked opening harp prefacing the stomping folk rock chorus to come. There was subtlety too, with Welch shushing the revellers just in time for a impressively elastic vocal delivery of that fiendish second verse. Isaac and I looked at each other in thrilled shock when original Florence megahit You’ve Got the Love made a surprise appearance later on, even if these days the song doesn’t quite have the same glorious freshness it had when it became a soundtrack to our childhoods. It was also a slight shame that You’ve Got the Love‘s inclusion came at the expense of recent stormy Fleetwood Mac-esque belter Cassandra, which formed the highlight of the latest live album with a bruising new extended cut.

The numerous louder danceable numbers were the most suitable vehicles for Florence’s barnstorming vocals. Hooky singalong Ship to Wreck was an early highlight, and good old fashioned blues rock stomper Kiss With A Fist refreshingly broke out of all the heavy religious imagery with a healthy dose of rock for rock’s sake. Dance Fever standout Dream Girl Evil reached its climax with an astonishingly long vocal note, Welch putting to bed any idea that her distinctive, soul-piercing wail is nothing but exceptional as slippery guitar riffs and a menacingly chugging bass engulfed her. It might have been even more powerful had Welch not spent the entire song holding hands with stunned front-row audience members – touching at first, but static after a few minutes, particularly for the guy watching from the third tier. Welch’s pained cry of “I am nobody’s moral centre!” demanded some suitably monumental shift in staging or lighting that never quite materialised.

Almost all of Dance Fever was given a long-deserved airing in an arena setting. Gently bubbling Free‘s chorus (“picks me up, puts me down”) leant itself nicely to some coordinated crowd hand movements. “You’re too sensitive they said / I said okay but let’s discuss this at the hospital,” Welch delivered with a knowing smile, ceding to the audience to scream those final words back at her in affirmation. An extended version of scintillating dance pop hit My Love turned out to be the highlight of the whole night, with Welch’s onstage dancing and gorgeous chorus melody both delightfully uninhibited.

Morning Elvis was so profoundly serene that one fan near the front fainted.

As strong as Welch’s voice may be, she offered an exquisite softer side too. We were, after all, encouraged to “choose love” and embrace the “collective experience” which, in practical terms, meant Welch imploring us between songs to put down the iPhones and focus on living in the moment. She was, of course, largely obeyed, and the result was an emotional intensity few artists can pull off. With thousands listening in intently, gentle ballad Morning Elvis was so profoundly serene that one fan near the front fainted. Welch’s framing of the song as a mid-pandemic prayer – a manifestation of the very 2020 fear that nights like these may never come again – understandably made the song too poignant to bear for one of us. What’s more, Welch had plenty more affecting ballads up her immaculate flared sleeves. We were encouraged to hold on to each other to absorb the stunning melody at the heart of June, while The End of Love offered a breathtaking strings section. By the time it came to the encore, Welch had to briefly halt proceedings as stewards lifted several stricken superfans over the barriers, cheerily waving goodbye as they left in total awe of their popstar.

It all culminated, naturally, in a mass sacrifice. “We are so well fed this evening!” Welch crooned as fans climbed onto one another’s shoulders as “human sacrifices” before a stellar blast through underrated early hit Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up). “Leave every last piece of you on the dancefloor tonight,” came Welch’s final dictum before a spine-tingling, arena-sized dance piano riff saw the concert home. Far beneath me, thousands of heads bobbed and hands clapped, enthralled and with their phones now long forgotten about. Even up with Isaac and I, many including myself pogoed along, our euphoria tempered slightly by the several-storey drop in front of us (one man near us had already taken a tumble a few feet down the stairs amidst the joy of You’ve Got the Love).

With a final flutter of harp Welch floated off stage, her spell successfully cast upon another arena of worshippers. In the few times she had broken her cult leader persona, Welch had powerfully reminded us that not so long ago this precious, quasi-religious gathering of like-minded souls we call a pop concert had been under threat, and even temporarily destroyed completely. Seeing the ease in which Welch spread a deeply human sense of belonging and loving connection around Leeds Arena reminded me just how important concerts can be in bringing people together. This Florence + the Machine gig had been an excuse to party, yes, but more importantly a chance to heal the scars of loneliness left by the pandemic for all in attendance. That is, all that could remain conscious for the duration.