After a few years out of the spotlight while they were busy writing the follow up to their 2011 album ‘Junk of the Heart’, The Kooks are now back and with a very different sound. What better place to bounce back, than a not-so secret set at Glastonbury? (which I was lucky enough to be at). They certainly gave us a taster for what was to come with their new album, playing a number of new hits which involved a gospel choir joining them for recent single ‘Around Town’, and a much larger variety of instruments than the usual indie set up we are so used to.
Their new album ‘Listen’ is now out and the first single, ‘Down’ is catchy as hell – but also definitely shows more of an R&B influence than we are used to hearing from the indie rockers.
On a whole, I would happily predict that the new approach they have taken with their music after the less successful response to their last album will pay off. It is lively, and with Luke Pritchard’s vocals that most would recognise from anywhere, they are now accompanied by more than guitars and drum beats. Syncronized handclaps and drum beats are a recurring theme, appearing in tracks such as ‘Bad habit’ and appropriately named ‘Sunrise’ is summery and cheery with a lot going on but still just works. A more poppy/electro vibe comes out in ‘Are We Electric’, a track that reminds me more of The Klaxons than The Kooks.recurring theme, appearing in tracks such as ‘Bad habit’ and appropriately named ‘Sunrise’ which has a lot going on but still just works. along with brass and
Forgive & Forget is one of my favourites from the album, the one I’m struggling to get out of my head after a few listens to Luke belting out ‘Yeah, you say you need someone to love you, but it ain’t me’.
They do tone it down for a few songs, with ballad ‘See Me Now’ which is a personal tribute to Luke’s late father, and ‘Sweet Emotion’ where his softer side is shown. And for those looking for something more similar to what we have heard from them before, Dreams is easily the most ‘Kooks-esque’ with simply an acoustic guitar and lyrics which I can picture calling for a nice sing-a-long on their upcoming UK tour.
Stand out songs: Forgive & Forget, Sweet Emotion, Bad Habit
Since being announced as one of this years Glastonbury headliners, the pressure is on for Kasabian to deliver something that is worthy of such a privilege. After a few listens to their fifth album, 48:13, named after the total running time and due for release on the 9th June, I would argue that they have succeeded in doing so.
The first single from the album ‘Eez-eh’, is a great, upbeat track and I’m pleased to say that it’s only one of many from this LP that I can imagine going down well at such a festival. Other standout tracks include ‘Bumblebeee’, with it’s chant provoking repeats of “I’m in ecstasy” alongside ‘Stevie,’ and ‘Doomsday’, with the band insisting “What you see is what you get with me”, fitting with what Sergio recently said about how they had aimed to be more direct and honest with this album.
It is clear that Kasabian wanted to do something different this time around, with much less emphasis on their guitars and an increasing amount of indie disco style music creeping in to what before was more traditional rock.
Contrasting with the range of upbeat tracks however are those such as ‘Glass’, which starts off with a more mournful tone – with pleads of “save me from this world” and ending with a young persons spoken words that question where life is leading us with lyrics like “Are you running around in a circle, going nowhere fast? Cause when you look at the man in the mirror, he’s made of nothing but glass.”
Explodes, despite the title is another of the slower tracks. It has the potential for some excitement to kick in in places but it just doesn’t happen, the trippy sounds build up, but then bam, it’s back to more of the same, resulting in an ironically unexplosive track.
Ending the album is another risk taken by the band, which certainly pays off. S.P.S is an Oasis-esque ballad which would be the perfect addition to their encore, as Serge sings “Didn’t we all have such a good time? Didn’t we all have the greatest night, even though we know its wrong, I know there’s time for one more song.”
Last night Sheffield’s iconic music venue The Leadmill played host to the latest of the UK’s female pop singers to storm the charts – Louisa Rose Allen, known to most as Foxes.
After an energetic set by Glasgow based band Prides (who are definitely worth checking out), Foxes took to the stage looking as beautiful as ever, to a huge reception of screams from the crowd which consisting of males and females of all ages.
‘White coats’, the first real sing a long of the night, really portrayed how powerful her voice is – easily comparable to acts like Florence and La Roux who both show off similar tones and stage setups.
Another track which really stood out to me was ‘Beauty Queen’ – a balled consisting of powerfully belted out lyrics that question people’s judgement based on looks.
Halfway through the show we were treated to an acoustic cover of Pharell’s ‘Happy’ which soon kicked in to the livelier version we all know, and despite my initial disappointment that we weren’t hearing her Eminem cover of ‘Monster’, I was impressed.
One downside I think to the show is Foxes lack of communication with the crowd – but she can be forgiven for feeling slightly intimidated due to the massive success she has experienced in such a short space of time.
In saying this however she certainly makes up for it with her energy on stage! In ‘Youth’ Foxes sings, “don’t tell me our youth is running out” and whilst she dances around the stage and is clearly not running out of youth anytime soon, the crowd in the main were stood still. I don’t doubt for a second that they weren’t enjoying the show, it just wasn’t very lively as they simply watched, most likely in awe of her stunning voice.
Ending the evening on a high with the two most well known tracks – Zedd’s Grammy winning Clarity and her recent top 10 hit ‘Let go for tonight’ the audience finally joined Foxes in doing so; going crazy with appreciation for her brilliant performance.
Since she started as lead character ‘ Rachel Berry’ in Glee, it was only a matter of time before Lea Michele released an album and 5 years on, the time has finally arrived with her debut: ‘Louder’.
When speaking about opening track cannonball, a song co-written by Australian star Sia, Lea said it described her feelings about the past year perfectly, telling the story of her grief but how she is ready to open new doors and carry on with her life as she knew Cory would want her to.
‘Louder’ then goes on to portray a mixture of emotions, with standout songs such as the passionate burn with you and ballad Battlefield, which speaks of her experiences of love.
The album definitely contains its fair share of catchy pop numbers too however, with songs like the Kelly Clarkson-esque On My Way and title track Louder, both having upbeat choruses that you’ll struggle to get out of your head after a few listens!
Overall ‘Louder’ does well to prove her undeniable talent, especially in Thousand Needles; a darker track which allows Lea to showcase her vocals and you can really feel her emotion coming through in the chorus.
Closing with If You Say So; a very personal song which speaks directly about Coryand was too co-written by Sia, the album (despite ending with a tear jerker) still manages to portray the feelings of someone who is staying as positive as possible and knows it is all about the future now, so I look forward to what is to come for Lea.
After discovering a few new local bands I felt I should mention some musicians I can’t get enough of lately, outside of Sheffield. I have a pretty diverse taste in music so don’t be confused that you’re seeing rap followed by rock, etc…
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Seriously can’t get enough of these guys at the minute. The new track ‘Can’t Hold Us‘ is one of the catchiest songs I’ve heard in ages, and while it may start off too fast for me to sing along to, the chorus certainly isn’t and I can already picture the chants being shouted back to them at festivals. It’s an upbeat, feel good song and definitely one that I imagine will be huge this summer. I’ve only given their album The Heist a few listens at the minute, but so far so good. Check it out on Spotify.
Fall Out Boy ARE BACK. After disappearing off the face of the music world for quite a while, they’re back with a brand new album Save Rock And Roll. And it doesn’t disappoint. A lot of bands when they go off and sneakily write a new album come back with a completely different sound, but this is simply Fall Out Boy doing what they do best, with their alternative/pop punk sound. They’ve done a bunch of collaborations too, with the likes of Big Sean and even Elton John making appearances, with the latter joining the band for the album’s title track.
I never thought I’d get the chance to see Fall Out Boy live again after I did in 2008 (god that makes me feel really old) but I’ve just splashed out on a Leeds festival ticket so they are definitely on my ‘who to see’ list.
Imagine Dragons
It was a only in the Easter holidays when I was sat with the music channels on my TV and ‘Radioactive’ came on, and I knew I’d heard it before and really liked it so took note of the band singing it. Since then I’ve been listening to their album Night Visions non-stop and I’ve realised just how good they are. Full of festival ready singalongs such as ‘On top of the world’ these guys are gonna find themselves with an even bigger fanbase in no time.
Toning it down slightly for slower tracks like ‘Bleeding out’ and my personal favourite ‘Demons’, the bands front man Dan Reynolds certainly fails to disappoint with a voice like that.
Of Monsters and Men Their 2012 ‘My Head Is An Animal’ album is full of infectiously catchy choruses such as those in ‘Little Talks’ and ‘Mountain Sound’ that will instantly put you in a good mood. It’s also really nice to hear a band with a combination of female and male vocals too which is what stood out to me. Whatever music you’re in to, they have such a different but easy listening sound that I think they’d be hard to dislike. With such a wide selection of instruments to create such unique, melodic sounds and their contrasting vocals its hard to compare them to anyone else.
I might be a little slow jumping on the bandwagon with these, my reason for thinking so being that ‘Little Talks’ already has over 58 million views on YouTube, but if you haven’t listened to them before than I definitely recommend you do.
2013 is definitely going to be the year for this band, with them playing loads of gigs over the summer including V Festival and Glastonbury.
Okay so I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve been a McFly fan since they started out nearly 10 years ago. I’ve seen them live an uncountable number of times, and loved every minute. But I can safely say last night was the best fun I’ve ever had at a gig of theirs.
This was due to a number of factors. The fact I love their music, yes. The fact we were stood right at the front of the stage, definitely! And partially down to the vodka too I guess, which cost an extortionate price of £5.50, I repeat: FIVE POUNDS FIFTY. To our annoyance we also found that not once were our bags, or barely even our tickets checked once in the venue, so we could have sneakily brought our own drinks in for free.
But whatever, this was my view for the evening, so I certainly wasn’t complaining…
Being this close, we could have been conscious of the boys being able to see us singing our hearts out and dancing around like loons, but that didn’t stop us. And although we didn’t quite get dragged up on to the stage, or the marriage proposals that myself and Lottie were after, between us we did manage to get a plectrum plus Dougie’s water bottle. Well we stole that from the stage, cos THAT’S HOW CLOSE WE WERE.
So, I should get down to mentioning the gig itself. The tour was called ‘Memory Lane’, after the song from their 2005 album Wonderland, which is literally one of my ultimate favourite songs of theirs. And although at first I thought, oh yay another greatest hits tour, with this year being their 10th anniversary as a band it seems pretty fitting.
Support came from a band called ‘The Vamps‘, we didn’t manage to catch them as they were on quite early but I’ve been told they were good. From looking on their YouTube page I can see why they were chosen to support McFly, they’re young, alright looking and they’ve even done a mega cringey version of McFly’s song ‘That Girl’, amongst various other pop covers including One Direction and Taylor Swift.
McFly came on at an unusually early time of around 8.45, but maybe it came round quicker due to the nights ‘host’ Ant Brant (or as they called him ‘Mr Antastic’) keeping the audience entertained for a short while. I say entertained lightly, because sorry but he’s really not very funny. Now if anyone remembers the band V (around back in the early McFly days and sang ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’, he was a member.
The show began with an acapella version of ‘Memory lane’, but soon enough the curtains dropped to reveal their impressive stage set up, the distinctive intro to ‘That Girl’ kicked in, and the whole place went nuts.
The set list all in all was great. On top of all of their greatest hits including ‘5 Colours In Her Hair’ and ‘Obviously’, they were sure to please their older fans by performing some album favourites that haven’t been played live for a long time. One of the best parts of the set for me was when they played my favourite 3 songs from the radio:ACTIVE album: ‘Corrupted’, ‘Nowhere Left To Run’ and ‘Lies’.
They then toned it down for a short while, with Tom putting down his guitar and moving over to the piano as they performed a brilliant stripped down version of ‘I’ll be OK’, followed by the ballad; ‘Bubblewrap’.
Not wanting to let their audience get bored, naturally after the band had performed ‘Smile’ we were greeted with Danny stopping the show to request various hats to be brought out for each member. Ant Brant returned to the stage, the sax players even stepped down to join the band, and they performed a cheerful medley of covers consisting of ‘It’s Alright’, ‘Don’t worry Be Happy’, and ‘Y.M.C.A’.
The show was soon to come to an end, with Tom announcing before they played the full version of ‘Memory Lane’ that it was their last song. For Dougie to then pick up his setlist and inform everyone that it wasn’t, it was in fact just the encore and that they would soon be returning to play three more. But in all fairness everybody knew that anyway, what band doesn’t do an encore?
Off they went for a minute or so, and as they came back and Tom picked up his pink ukulele we knew what song was coming next. After a good sing and dance to ‘Love Is Easy’ with it’s catchy chorus and ‘do do do do dooo’s’, it was time for ‘All About You’. They then went on to end their 1 hour 45 minute set with what was definitely the best and most heartfelt singalong of the night: ‘The Heart Never Lies’. All in all I couldn’t have enjoyed it more, and whatever your opinion is of bands like McFly, you really can’t deny their talent once you’ve seen them live. Even my dad would agree there, I only ever had to beg him once to accompany me in seeing them live (when I was 11) and he still happily came along again!
I took a few video’s, YouTube destroys the quality of them a fair bit, oh and sorry about our singing haha…
Over the Christmas holidays, I became familiar with a new band: Bastille. I noticed that they were playing at Leadmill in march and mentioned it to a friend who is a fan of theirs, but then made the school boy error of deciding to wait for our next loan installment before buying tickets, so you can imagine my disappointment when I went on the Leadmill website to find it had sold out. 😦
I was determined I was going to see them live though, so I kept checking back on the Leadmill website and was lucky enough to find that a few weeks ago there were suddenly two tickets available. Obviously I brought them without a second thought and this is my review of our time seeing them.
Just look at that beautiful face. If that’s not enough to make you want to see Bastille live though then seriously, go download the album because that should do it.
(Just want to add, that photo isn’t mine it’s from here.)
After listening to their debut album ‘Bad Blood’ on repeat constantly in the run up to their gig, I was even more excited. And they certainly didn’t disappoint.
This was the first time I’d been to Leadmill to see a live band, so it seemed really strange seeing it at full capacity, and with us barely able to fight our way through the crowd to get a decent view we definitely regretted not arriving earlier. Coming on stage to an excited and impatient crowd at around 9.30pm, Bastille began with their album’s title track Bad Blood, which called for a major sing along from the crowd and got everyone in the mood. They then went on to play nearly their entire album, plus those such as ‘Poet’ and ‘Sleepsong’ that older fans of the band will know.
My favourite song of theirs is probably ‘Things we lost in the flames’, it’s a ballad track from the album, and hearing it live literally gave me goosebumps. The lead singer Dan Smith, sounds equally as good live if not even better than on the album. ‘Overjoyed’ and ‘Oblivion’ were also amongst my favourites to be performed, with everyone singing along to every word.
They even surprised everyone with a brilliant cover of City High’s ‘What Would You Do?’, this was definitely one of the highlights as with so many of the crowd knowing the song and being clearly impressed at their choice of cover, the atmosphere was amazing.
Unfortunately my camera has been playing up so I was unable to get the quality of pictures and videos that I’d hoped for, but my phone camera isn’t too bad so here’s a clip of it.
They ended on ‘Pompeii’, their number one single at the time and then returned to play another couple of songs, ending on crowd favourite and debut single ‘Flaws.’
Pompeii. (Please excuse my singing)
So yeah, if you get the chance (and they’re playing festivals such as Leeds/Reading) then I highly recommend this band.
Shuffle 