Tom Odell live review. (Sheffield o2 Academy – 13/02/14)

After a really unlucky week back in October where I had the Arctic Monkeys and Tom Odell both postpone their gigs due to illness within days of each other, the time to go and see Tom Odell had finally arrived. The extra time spent touring since then does seem to have paid off though, and with his voice sounding better than ever I would say he was certainly worth the wait. 

I must admit that the dubious claims that he could be boring live had concerned me slightly, as it’s not often you go to a gig and not come out dripping with sweat from jumping so much, but I needn’t have worried.

Tom Odell has the type of voice I could stand and listen to all night, and seeing the passion he puts into his performance when he’s on that piano more than makes up for the fact his songs don’t warrant the audience to be constantly jumping up and down screaming.

They do however, prove great for a good sway and singalong. Kicking off the show with his debut album’s title track Long Way Down, Tom followed with two of his most well known tracks: Hold Me and Can’t Pretend, which certainly got the crowd excited and showed how powerful his vocals really are.

After playing a number of tracks from his album, it was clear that his fan base is still growing and it wasn’t just the singles they were interested in, with tracks such as Supposed to Be, Sense and Till I Lost also calling for major singalongs.

Returning to the stage for a five song encore, my only criticism of the show is that this mainly consisted of songs that I didn’t know (maybe i’m missing something but they aren’t on the album). He did however slip in a cover of Etta James’ I Just Want To Make Love To You, causing the girls to go wild and also played a brand new song ‘Parties’ which will feature on his forthcoming album, with a chorus so catchy the crowd managed to successfully join in after the first listen and it was still stuck in my head after the show had ended. 

Another Love

Frank Turner live review. (Nottingham Capital FM arena – 07/02/14)

It was only when I was browsing through last years Leeds Festival lineup that I thought to myself, why have I never listened to Frank Turner? So I checked out his albums on Spotify and soon enough I was hooked.

Following a brilliant set at Leeds, he soon announced his next UK tour so without a second thought I brought two tickets for myself and whoever agreed to come along with me. 

So now, 6 months on, I can safely say he did not disappoint. Myself along with newly converted Frank Turner fan – my dad, arrived at the Nottingham Capital FM arena at around 7pm and it was filling up quickly with a mixture of young and old faces and him certainly not feeling out of place. 

While it’s not like me to stay out of the crowd, my dad didn’t fancy pushing to the front and I couldn’t see a thing at the back. So we waited until the end of the first song and ran up to sit in 2 of the rare free seats. Thankfully the owners of these seats didn’t question us, just looked confused when they arrived 5 songs in and sat a couple of rows behind… (should have arrived on time shouldn’t ya) so from then on we had a brilliant view. 

Frank kicked off his set with the energetic Photosynthesis; a great choice to set the atmosphere for the evening with the whole arena letting loose and joining in to sing “And I won’t sit down, And I won’t shut up, And most of all I will not grow up” and from then on it simply got better and better.

Frank and his band The Sleeping Souls went on to play a 90 minute set of a variety of songs from his five albums. He performed a large chunk of his most recent LP ‘Tape Deck Heart’ with standout tracks being Plain Sailing Weather, The Way I Tend To Be and Losing Days, alongside a mixture from older albums such as clear crowd favourite If Ever I Stray.

He proudly stated halfway through the gig that it was his second biggest headline show ever, and despite having faced criticism for playing arenas he hit back via twitter with a witty “We’ve sold five rock cities of tickets for tonight. Seems more important to me that people can get in to the show.” So you go Frank, because I certainly would have been gutted had I missed out on this. 

Regardless of the fact he is now selling out arenas, Frank clearly hasn’t forgotten about the fans that have been around since his days performing at the Rescue Rooms, as he treats them not only to older tracks such as I Still Believe but also lesser known songs (but no less brilliant) like Wisdom Teeth and The Ballad of Me and My Friends. 

Towards the end of the set he challenged the crowd to what he described as “a crowd participation triathlon” which in other words was a combination of singing, clapping and jumping enough to beat the previous nights crowd, so for the duration of Recovery the whole room was bouncing. This was soon toned down a notch as he followed it with a passionate performance of Broken Piano, with the audience attentive as ever and holding on to every word.  

Ending the show on a high, back to the stage he came for an encore of I Still Believe, followed by Four Simple Words; in my opinion the perfect song to end on, giving audiences the chance to participate in what may have began as a heartfelt singalong by tonight’s 10,000 strong crowd, but soon turned into their last song to go crazy to, with moshing down on the floor and a good boogie at the very least if you were up in the seats.

All in all, for a man who “didn’t really write these songs to be played in a room this size and shape,” he has certainly pulled it off and there’s nothing to suggest he won’t continue to do so for a very long time.