Singer-Songwriters are everywhere. Everyone has, at somepoint in their life dreamt of being able to pick up a guitar, strum away and pull that girl or guy with an amazing song, or leading thousands of people in a singalong. Very few actually manage to make a career out of it. Even fewer are actually good, all round musicians and entertainers. Tom McRae is one of this rare and dying species, and I caught him last night at Bristol’s O2 Academy.

I’ve caught Tom a few times before, having been enchanted by him on the Hotel Cafe tour around the UK, where he was funny, entertaining and above all had some gut-wrenching songs that I so loved. We’re not talking the usual tales of failed relationships, oh no, we’re talking death, decay and pain of the nth degree. Yet somehow you leave a Tom McRae show feeling optimistic, positive even, despite the mass sing alongs of “It’s the end of the world…” (in old favourite ‘End Of The World News (Dose Me Up)’).

With his dry sense of humour, Tom observed that his (surprisingly excellent) cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella (which he referred to as his “Tombrella”) got bigger cheers than any of his other songs so far, asking the audience to send in ideas for other merchandise (so far they’ve had a McRadio (that only plays bad news), McRaybans (that always give the darker side of life) and the Tombrella (that lets you have the shade even on the sunniest day)).

Acknowledging fully that commercial success has largely eluded him, he takes pimping his merchandise to a whole new level, past shameful and back around to highly amusing, flogging tea towels, posters and CDs like there’s no tomorrow. If Tom ever gives up the music biz there is most likely a job going for him as a comedian – his tales about touring around the UK (“I only remember doing Leeds Girls Grammar School on that tour…”) and comparing releasing singles to being like raising Orang-utans (don’t ask, you probably had to be there to understand) are both hilarious and a great respite from the melancholy of his tracks..

Opening the set with some songs of his new album, The Alphabet of Hurricanes, I will admit I was concerned that, at 40, he’d gone all “rock” on us in a mid life crisis, however you quickly realise that lyrical content is still the same sort of stuff. I personally far prefer his earlier three albums, however the songs from his latest two (“King of Cards” and “Alphabet of Hurricanes”) are by no stretch “go to the bar” / “talk to a mate” / “go to the loo” material – they’re just as valid set additions. I’m a fan of the sadder tales, the melancholy and the woe, but that might just be due to other issues in my life at the moment. Songs like ‘Walking to Hawaii’, ‘Hidden Camera Show’, ‘My Vampire Heart’ and ‘End Of The World News (Dose Me Up)’ never get old, songs that I’ve grown up with and will always treasure.

Opening up was Texan Brian Wright who also plays guitar supporting Tom, and his set was a strong set of guitar tales, which would be ace if only we had a camp fire to sit around and a few less idiots talking through the whole set.

Tom McRae’s tour finishes tonight at London’s Scala, which is sold out, before Tom hits Europe for a few weeks of shows. If you get a chance, make sure you catch the talented Essex troubadour somewhere in the future – trust me, it’ll be one of the best shows of your life, and if it’s not I’ll pay for your ticket. Can’t say fairer than that, eh?

Read our interview with Tom McRae here.

Cymbals Eat Guitars seem to be spending a lot of time in Britain, having played a series of dates in the UK in February in addition to opening for the Flaming Lips during Wayne Coyne’s band’s London residency last November. But earlier this month they started their first major headlining tour of North America in Philadelphia. The second date of the tour was a sold-out show on 06 March at D.C.’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel. (If you’re interested, I had a brief question and answer session with their newest member, bassist Matt Whipple, the first week of March, and you can read it here.)

The two openers for the night were fellow New York bands – the electro-folky Freelance Whales and the experimental pop band Bear in Heaven. I’ve had the misfortune of missing out on Freelance Whales twice – once, when D.C. traffic wreaked havoc on me and Mary Beth’s plans to arrive early for the Fanfarlo concert early last December at Iota (when FW was supporting the London folk pop band) and twice, they had sold out the smaller Black Cat Backstage floor when I was on the bigger, upstairs floor covering We Are Scientists.

This Saturday night, the Whales played to an appreciative crowd, many of whom knew and sang along to songs on their forthcoming, self-released debut album ‘Weathervanes’. The band is an interesting juxtaposition of traditional folk (banjo, accordion) and new-fangled instruments (synth and keyboard) as well as the unusual (xylophone, watering can used as percussion). Note: I thought they were great and the current hype around them is insane, you’d be remiss not to at least have a listen.

Bear in Heaven was the wild card of the night for me, not knowing anything about the Brooklyn band. I thoroughly enjoyed the combination of voice, guitars, synth, and drums coming together to create some atmospheric masterpieces that at times could be called rock and at times could be called dance. You would not have guessed this looking at the three men on stage displaying various stages of beard and mustache. Fun stuff like ‘Wholehearted Mess’ surprised me with the band’s brand of experimental dance. (Is that even a genre?)

When 23.30 rolled around and it was time for the headliner Cymbals Eat Guitars, I was feeling a little apprehensive. I hadn’t been in such a testosterone-fueled, excitement-filled room since seeing the Hold Steady at the 9:30 last summer. The quartet’s sound is tight, sounding better than ever. They powered through several of the songs like ‘Under a Hazy Sea’ (featuring Joseph D’Agostino’s emotional vocals and jangly guitar) and the jaunty ‘Indiana’ from their Memphis Industries’s debut ‘Why There Are Mountains’ and played some new ones for us as well.

I’m pretty sure they could have sold out the next biggest venue in town, the Black Cat, but my feeling is that the rock of Cymbals Eat Guitars feels right in a sweaty, packed place like the RnR. The band heads to South by Southwest this week and I’m sure they will wow the Austin crowd just like they wowed us here in D.C.

After the cut: more photos!

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Note: There are no live photos in this review because there were absolutely no cameras allowed at the gig, sorry!

Reading my gig reviews, you could easily make the assumption that I say that every gig is one of the best I’ve ever seen, but I promise you, this has just been a spectacularly good year for gigs! Sunday night I had the pleasure of seeing everyone’s favorite pocket-sized jazz musician, Jamie Cullum, and opener Imelda May at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. I went into this sold out gig worrying that there was no way it’d live up to my expectations – I’ve been trying and failing to see Jamie Cullum live for about 5 years now, and I wanted it to be something extra special to make up for the fact that I had to miss watching the Oscars to see it. Basically, if it was anywhere short of Jamie’s amazing performance in his ‘Live at Blenheim Palace’ DVD, then I was going to be thoroughly disappointed. Fortunately, both Jamie and Imelda completely blew me away!

Dublin rockabilly songstress Imelda May played a powerful, vibrant 40-minute set to a nearly packed venue, and had everyone dancing along. She has a deep, raspy, soulful voice that captivated the audience, and she seemed to be having a lot of fun up on stage. She played more than 10 songs,  including ‘Johnny Got A Boom Boom,’ ‘Big Bad Handsome Man,’ and ‘How High the Moon.’ One of the best parts of her set was her wonderfully cheeky lyrics, like “Count my fingers, one and two / one of them is just for you / Count my fingers, one, two, three / the one in the middle’s to you, from me.” With the backing of her band, including a drummer, electric and acoustic guitarists, and a double bass player, Imelda thoroughly warmed up the crowd for Jamie.

Jamie Cullum is an absolutely fascinating and captivating performer. The energy with which he throws himself completely into his performance is just mesmerizing. He can switch from slow, brooding intensity to manic and impossibly intricate piano solos in the blink of an eye. At the end of his packed 2-hour set, I was amazed that he could still stand, he’d put so much energy into his performance.

As if his music wasn’t captivating enough, he was also hilariously entertaining between songs. In the first non-sung words out of his mouth, he said “Hello, my name is Justin Bieber.” Later he quipped, “Just picture me as Johnny Depp, I’m sure it’s not the 1st time…why are you laughing?” At one point he described the double bass player, Chris Hill, as a monster and said “That man has a fist full of sausages!” – I’m just going to  assume that’s a good thing in Jamie’s world.

But back to the music: not one of the songs got away without a generous helping of improv – I mean, come on, he is a jazz musician, after all. During crowd favorite ‘Frontin’,’ Jamie used the piano as one giant percussion instrument while beatboxing and singing. Even the slower songs like ‘What A Difference A Day Made’ were a big hit with the crowd. We all tried (and failed) to sing along, prompting Cullum to say “It’s hard trying to sing along with a jazz singer, isn’t it?” He had the crowd completely in the palm of his hand, whether he was making them scat along during ‘Wind Cries Mary,’ sing along and jump up and down to ‘Mixtape,’ or listen in complete silence to ‘Gran Torino.’ During the encore, he even convinced the crowd to sing the entire second verse of ‘All At Sea,’ and it sounded gorgeous.

But the indisputable highlight of the show was also its most unexpected. Toward the end of his set, Jamie had the band bring all of their instruments to the front of the stage, and instructed the crowd to part down the middle. The band then launched into Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me A River,’ and the crowd went mental. Over top of that, Jamie sang the jazz standard ‘Cry Me A River’ off-mic, and then jumped down off the stage with his horn players, and proceeded to sing a capella from the middle of the crowd – simply amazing and completely unexpected. There’s really nobody like Jamie Cullum for genre-bending, mad scientist-type brilliance. This gig will be hard to top!

After the cut: Jamie Cullum Set List!

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Set list and photos courtesy of Mary Chang, USA Editor and gigmate extraordinaire.

Somehow, after years of loving British music, neither member of the D.C. branch of TGTF had ever been to a Muse gig, so when they announced they were coming to the Patriot Center, we knew we had to go. Having miraculously managed to get two general admission floor tickets (it sold out within 2 hours of the tickets going on sale), we headed down to the venue nice and early and staked out a spot on the left side of the stage just one row back.

Stood in front of what looked like three skyscrapers, opener Silversun Pickups went on right on time and played a solid 45-minute set, including ‘Substitution’ and ‘Panic Switch’. They weren’t quite my style but they sounded good and they thoroughly entertained the crowd as they filed into the 10,000-seat arena. The best part of their set, for me, was lead singer and guitarist Brian Aubert’s quips between songs, like “this is our second show on this tour – the band, not you guys – you don’t remember last night? You were reeeaaalllly drunk.” Plus, they get bonus points for having a female bassist and being unfazed by such a huge crowd.

After a 45-minute break, during which Mary and I were treated to what I shall refer to as a “smoke machine facial,” the light’s dimmed to thunderous applause from the now-packed arena. In quite possibly the best gig opening I have ever witnessed (and I’ve been to a LOT of gigs), they dropped the building-looking cloths to reveal each of the 3 band members in the middle of their own massive column with video screens on all sides, at least 6 metres up from the stage. With that, they launched straight into ‘Uprising,’ whipping the crowd into a chanting, fist-pumping frenzy. Throughout the show, they raised and lowered the bottom half of these columns, allowing the band to either seem to float above the crowd or to walk around the massive oblong stage.

These video columns were the biggest part of the set, but every aspect of the setup was spectacular: there were spotlights, lasers, a piano with a see-through lid and a rotating drum kit (not to mention Matt’s bedazzled leather jacket and trousers). But the real highlight for me was during the amazing ‘Time is Running Out,’ when they released giant balloons into the crowd that looked like eyeballs. When the balloons popped, they showered the crowd with red confetti. It was so much fun trying to hit the balloons that I nearly knocked off Mary’s glasses in a fit of joy.

They played all the crowd favorites, like ‘Supermassive Black Hole,’ ‘Resistance’ and ‘Starlight,’ plus ‘Knights of Cydonia’ in the encore, and in every song Matt, Chris and Dom played insanely well while acting like it was nothing – they’re just that badass. Their playing on ‘New Born’ was particularly spectacular, and Matt Bellamy has a surprisingly versatile and powerful voice live. In one of my favorite moments, Matt brought out his keytar and strutted about the stage playing the incredibly sexy ‘Undisclosed Desires’ (however, Mary argues that ‘Plug in Baby’ is far sexier). And Muse’s show is undeniably sexy: it’s the result of what happens when you successfully straddle that fine line between confidence and arrogance. They are extravagant and over-the-top, but they don’t take themselves too seriously, and because of that, the show is so much fun for the audience. It’s impossible to come out of a show that fun and not be entirely smitten with the band, so if you have not seen Muse live yet, then by all means, GO!

After the cut: set list and more photos!

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“Lovely to see you again. Hope you’re doing okay.” Those were the first quiet words of hello from Editors’s Tom Smith to the crowd at the sold-out 9:30 Club Sunday night. That may have been a tentative introduction but the band’s performance was anything but tentative. They played a nearly 2-hour set to an audience of adoring fans in love with their old hits like ‘Munich’ and “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors’ as well as the synthy goodness of newer tracks like ‘Papillon’ and my personal favourite off ‘In This Light and On This Evening’ (released last year), ‘You Don’t Know Love.’

It was really interesting to watch the contrast of material from their first two albums made with traditional rock band instruments against the new songs, heavy on synths. The best moment of the night for me was ‘Bricks and Mortar’, watching lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz leave his guitar behind for a moment to plug away at a synth, with Smith following not far behind to join him so they were pressing buttons feverishly in tandem. Electropop awesome sauce.

Joining the dark princes of English indie rock on this tour were the Dig, a rock ‘n’ roll quartet and the Antlers, a more fuzzed out, dream / experimental pop band. Of the two, I preferred the Dig, because they played straightforward, feel good guitar rock that isn’t showing up on American radio stations as it should. Songs like ‘You’re Already Gone’ and ‘I Just Want to Talk to You’ point to exactly what is wrong with most rock music today. It’s missing bands like this that make exciting but not over the top rock ‘n’ roll. The Dig is set to self-release their debut album ‘Electric Toys’ in America in late April.

MP3: The Dig – You\'re Already Gone

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But it’s not like the Antlers really needed my endorsement anyway. The Brooklyn trio have a definite following in Britain, with their early March gigs at London’s Union Chapel and Brighton’s Hanbury Ballrooms already sold out. Songs from last year’s ‘Hospice’ are brooding pieces for the thinking man, somewhat challenging for the average pop music fan but worth the time seeking out if what you’re after is thoughtful lyrics with an interesting instrumental backdrop. I’ve heard them been compared to Fleet Foxes, Cold War Kids, Passion Pit, and I can see the reasons behind these comparisons, but I’d throw in possibly Beach House and Late of the Pier for good measure. If any of these bands named ring your bells, the Antlers just might be for you.

After the cut: photos and set lists.

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Last night we braved the rain showers, the freezing cold and the plain depressing evening and ambled along to Bristol’s Thekla to catch two bands that have been flying below a few radars of late.

First up was Brighton’s Peggy Sue. The indie folksy trio have just announced that their debut album will be out on Wichita in April, and so they’re hitting the road with Local Natives as a warm up to what looks set to be a year spent on the road. Having toured with Kate Nash, The Maccabees and Mumford and Sons, they knew how to command the stage and warmed up the limited Wednesday night crowd with some ease.

Sounding like Arcade Fire if they’d gained a few Fleet Foxes and spent a few weeks in the wild west of America with Gogol Bordello, they make a hell of a lot of noise for three people. With a wash board, accordion, and salvaged cymbals they started off slow with Long Division and Yo mama before notching it up a bit. Chat was kept short “due to a show on Monday where we just talked shit”, but they were none the worse off for it. Bluesy and lots of drums, they sound like so many bands you know (and love) and also something charmingly different. Definitely catch them if you can.

Then it was the turn of Los Angeles’ Local Natives. Not ones for having a massive hype machine behind them, they have built up a fanbase through relentless touring. They worked their way through the entirity of their debut long player, Gorilla Manor joking at the start of the encore “this is our last song – no, seriously, it’s the only song left that we know that we haven’t played!”.

So much of their set is full of anthemic, fists in the air sort of stuff, which we love here at theregoesthefear.com. Tighter than , you can tell that they know their songs inside out, stopping and re-starting songs in perfect unison. It’s almost like they’ve taken Fleet Foxes and injected them with a bit of Vampire Weekend or Two Door Cinema Club. They can also pull off the slower tracks (“Stranger things”, “Cubism”) with panache that doesn’t leave the crowd leaving for the loos or a fag break like Miike Snow’s set did.

Whilst both bands are no fresh faces to the touring circuit, both showed that they’re getting somewhere – it may not be an Arctic Monkeys rise to fame, but they’re definitely on the right tracks.

Enter our competition to catch Local Natives next week in Birmingham.

As we walked up the stairs to the main floor of DC9, the loud booming of Editors’ synthtastic ‘Papillon’ greeted us. I could tell this was going to be one great night. To be fair, Liberation Dance Party is always full of English electropop, but this time, VV Brown was in the house. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how many people in Washington knew who she was or what songs she was famous for; a lot of people go to Liberation for the open bar and to socialise, not necessarily dance or pay attention to a live act, if there is one. But I was proud of my D.C brethren for selling out DC9 and for the amazing, raucous reception they gave Brown and her band, and deservedly so for their short but high energy set.

VV Brown is one gorgeous woman, now joining Twiggy and Danii Minogue as a face on Marks and Spencer’s future adverts. So I’m not sure why she chose to obscure her face with a glittery, feathered mask. But I’ll admit it did lend an air of celebration to the festivities. Whether singing into her microphone or megaphone, beating on a conga drum, shaking a jingle stick, or playing keyboards, she looked right at home on the DC9 stage. She mainly played songs from her debut album, ‘Travelling Like the Light’, released last year, but there were some surprises. Brown asked the audience if they liked hip hop, and would it be okay if they played a cover of ‘Best I Ever Had’ by American star Drake. Was she kidding? This was Washington after all, chockful of urban radio stations. The fans ate this cover up.

‘Shark in the Water’, Brown’s upbeat love song that was supposed to be the closer of the night, became a massive crowd singalong, two boys next to me particularly keen on singing along to the chorus loudly and looking like they were going to make a move to jump on stage to touch Brown. When fans cheered for an encore, Brown and her band returned to the stage and played a song that she admitted really was an improvisation – I don’t think any of them had expected to receive such kudos from the audience. Her post-gig Tweets indicated that she was really touched by the reaction to her music and I’m glad: their set was absolutely blinding.

Editor’s note: this review would have been a lot more detailed, had an overzealous fan not snatched my notes in a fit of urgency at the end of the show. Mary Beth surmised that he grabbed the closest piece of paper – my notes – in order to get an autograph from VV. What an odd incident! Note to VV Brown fanatic: if you still have my notes, I’d like them back please. You have my contact information, please get in touch. Thank you.

On the train ride home, Mary Beth and I recalled the great songs that were played at the dance before VV Brown played, because it really was a night of English pop/dance epicness. Bill Spieler told me the complete list should go online at the dance party’s Web site sometime later this week, but I’ve included a list of the great songs we could remember. So after the cut: in addition to the usual photos, I’ve included a list of songs that were played on the night so you can have a feel for the epicness.

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After the La Roux show scheduled for last Wednesday (10 February) was postponed to 25 July due to the latest round of snow here, I was so worried about the We Were Promised Jetpacks boys making it safely to the States that I sent them a Tweet to check on them. Wednesday night they Tweeted me back from New York with the following exultant message: “don’t worry, we made it in yesterday!” Single gals like me wince just thinking about Valentine’s Day. This year however I was really, really chuffed because I knew I’d forget all about this when captivated by the Scottish rockers the night before V-Day, rocking out to their tunes at a sold-out show at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel in Northeast. They’d played an opening slot here last October with comparatively older veterans of the music scene, Fat Cat labelmates Brakes and the Twilight Sad. But Saturday night, the Jetpacks were headlining.

First up on the night were Typefighter, a local Washington folk/pop quintet that looked and sounded oddly like Fanfarlo. This description is not intended to be a dig at either band; I just thought it was eerie for two bands to be playing such similar music, with four guys and a girl multi-instrumentalist / backing vocalist, having been put together separately but divided by an ocean. Speaking of oceans, Typefighter enjoys singing about them, as evidenced by the song ‘Ocean Floor’. Another great song is ‘Worth the Wait’, featuring the banjo and lead singer Ryan McLaughlin’s twangy, countrified, folky voice. Given the popularity of Fanfarlo, Mumford and Sons and Noah and the Whale, I imagine they would do extremely well in Britain. They’re currently unsigned but I imagine with their promising talent, they’ll be scooped up soon.

Bad Veins, a duo from Cincinnati, Ohio, played second. I’ve seen some duos at the RnR come up with some ingenious solutions to only having two members. In Bad Veins’s case, they employ a third “member”, an antiquated reel-to-reel tape player they’ve christened ‘Irene’, and Irene comes through with orchestration that would of course be impossible with just two humans. And as if having Irene wasn’t enough, singer Benjamin Davis also employs a telephone setup, so he can sing into the receiver and the resulting sound is just like you’d imagine someone singing to you down a telephone line. The backbeats are courtesy of drummer Sebastian Schulz, whose driving rhythms along with Davis’s vocals and guitar combine to make some great sounding rock. I thought hard about how to describe what they sound like – the drumming is as manic as Keith Moon’s in the Who, but Davis’s vocals on top can be angsty as Glasvegas’s James Allan but can sometimes be shouty.

Half past 11, so that meant it was finally time for We Were Promised Jetpacks, the band I had come all this way to see. I was bouncing off the walls the day in December when their first North American tour was announced. The band is so powerful instrumentally live and lead singer/guitarist Adam Thompson’s vocals are so cutting that this is not a band you can watch and simply sit and stare. There is something so incredibly liberating to singing along to ‘Quiet Little Voices’ playing in your bedroom. But it’s incomparable to the effect of the “oh oh ohs!“, multiplying the feeling a couple thousand times when you’re stood in front of Thompson, singing along with him and the other similar-minded fans squeezed into a tiny club like the RnR. Fantastic.

While stage banter is not the band’s forte, Thompson thanked the appreciative crowd for their applause between songs, and he must not have forgotten being mocked in October for being from Scotland (an audience member then equating Scotland as if being out in the wilderness with no running water) because when asked to tell a Scottish joke, he responded good-naturely with a wry smile, “a Scottish joke? Fuck off!” This of course caused everyone in the club to laugh.

But we weren’t there to laugh, we were there to be rocked by the Jetpacks. The band powered through 10 songs, with ‘It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning’ and ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ being major highlights for me. The set also included two new ones that might be on a new EP, but I can’t tell you for sure because it’s not on Fat Cat Records’s Web site yet, and the merch table was gone by the time the show was over and I couldn’t find any of the band to ask them about the new release. (The disappearing merch table is one of the few complaints I have about the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel, as I couldn’t get Miike Snow merch last September there either.) In short: it may have been Valentine’s Day, but thanks to this amazing show, I walked out into the cold Washington night with a spring in my step.

After the cut: photos and set list.

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Band of Skulls have recently hit the big time having appeared on the latest Twilight soundtrack, so needless to say Wednesday night’s show at the 100 Club on London’s Oxford Street was jam-packed full of newly converted fans.

First up was Deptford’s very own TAPETHERADIO (pictured right) that Jess introduced us to last week. Amazingly tight, their indie pop-rock is a masterpiece, slightly Cure-esque and very anthemic. Steve Lamacq commented about their new single, Save A Life, that he “like[s] the urgency. It’s like they must get it out there or they’ll explode”, and live this is definitely the case – rock star poses, anthemic fists-in-the-air moments. It just would have been nicer if more people had turned up early enough to see them.

Followed by the nausiating Black box Revelation, we felt TAPETHERADIO should have been at least second on the bill – Black Box Revelation were full of whiney vocals, poor attemps to rip off the White Stripes and a Phil Lynott look-alike. Shame.

Finally it was time for the headliners, Band of Skulls. With a strange crowd made up of half middle aged rockers and half tweenie Twilight fans, they managed to get the crowd as one rocking out to their blues-infused rock. Generally a bit heavier than what I’m used to, I won’t lie in saying they’re not completely my first choice of a band, however their bassist Emma Richardson is one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

NME tours are always a great way to catch tonnes of great new music, and this year’s NME tour is no different, though some of the bands on the 2010 tour have taken longer to appear than in previous years, with The Maccabees now on their second album and Bombay Bicycle Club having been around for over five years.

The Drums were typically energetic to open things up, however didn’t offer much more than when we saw them support Delphic the other week. Their Beach Boys / Cure combo looks like it could well be the anthems of the summer for some.

Second on were London’s Big Pink, fresh from supporting Muse at the end of last year. Whilst I’m sure they’re perfectly competent, their My Bloody Valentine-esque stuff is really not my cup of tea. However, they seemed to suit the Bristol Academy’s setting much more than the O2 arena, this time not hidden behind such a thick wall of smoke. Coming on in just her underwear, their drummer Akiko provided the pounding to accompny Milo Cordell’s beats. Dominoes had everyone’s arms in the air, jumping and chanting along – if only all their songs were as hit-single worthy and not buried away under such thick layers.

Bombay Bicycle Club were the reason we were at the O2 Academy – having recorded been around for half a decade already, recording their album in between A Level exams and having won the prestigious V Festival opening slot, it was time to see if live they could translate the success of their 2009 debut “I had the blues but I shook them loose”. Ambling on stage decidedly unassumingly, they had the benefit of a crowd who knew every word, and were willing to forget that its Sunday night and acting like it was the party to end all parties.

Though their set was very lively, many of their songs have quite a sense of melancholy about them – the sound of 1,200 people all chanting “I’m not home / I’m not home / I’m not ho-ome” was quite something. Closing the set with “What If”, lead singer Jack Steadman dedicated it to “anyone who’s feeling lonely today”. Whilst technically speaking they were playing in a support role to The Maccabees, Bombay Bicycle Club showed that their years of hard work has done them well, strong pretenders to the crownd, and hopefully future NME tour headliners.

With that, roadies swarmed on the stage revealing The Maccabees backdrop, and before we knew it they arrived, looking rather shocked at the number of people stood cheering for them. Opening with “William Powers”, they set a scintilating pace, having the whole buidling dancing, only pausing for the slower, more Valentines-suitable Toothpaste Kisses. Closing out with the fantastic trio of “No kind words”, “Bag of bones” and “Love you better”, they showed that whilst it’s been six years in the making, they are more than worthy headliners.

After the jump: Photos and the Maccabees setlist.
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