Pixies, Academy, Birmingham

 

Edit this setlist | More Pixies setlists

Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Rock City, Nottingham

 

Edit this setlist | More Frank Turner setlists

The Jesus And Mary Chain, Rock City, Nottingham

 

Edit this setlist | More The Jesus and Mary Chain setlists

The Slow Readers Club, Rescue Rooms, Nottingham

 

Edit this setlist | More The Slow Readers Club setlists

Interpol, Civic Hall, Wolverhampton

 

Edit this setlist | More Interpol setlists

The Libertines, Rock City, Nottingham

Supported by Vona Vella, Real Farmer & Ed Cosens

The night began with a trio of support acts comprised of bands from Peter Doherty’s own label Strap Originals. It is a very tight schedule with short five-minute changeover periods between the artists which isn’t helped by the doors opening quite late at 7pm and the first band due on at 7:20pm.  

First up are Nottingham’s Vona Vella, who are Izzy Davis and Dan Cunningham, a pair of harmonious singer songwriters who turn up as four piece tonight. They trade vocals over lively guitar driven melodies with a mishmash of styles but are generally mellow and summary, very Lloyd Cole, and highly likable. They come over as a group of mates having a great time. They’re possibly too nice and I’m not sure where they take this act from here. 

Up next are Real Farmer, a band from Groningen in the Netherlands. Their lead singer walks on stage, promptly throws away his mic stand, jumps in the air a few times and spits. Ugh. Then he starts pacing up and down. This is just his warm-up I think. Then...  It’s Play Dead! Or Killing Joke maybe. This is more my thing, spitting apart.

Finally, we have Reverend and the Makers guitarist Ed Cosens who gets a few songs in while the roadies are busy resetting the stage behind him for the Libertines. He’s missed his first assigned slot and now he gets to play a mere three acoustic numbers while fighting a battle against a now restless crowd.

Then… just as we’re expecting the main event to start rather than the whole band, we get just the one Libertine as Pete Doherty strolls on to the stage alone and introduces a poet he allegedly found on Upper Parliament Street while walking his dog last night. I think it’s fair to say that said poet goes down a bit mixed.

Fifteen minutes later Doherty is back, now in his raincoat but this time with the rest of the band. Then things really took off ‘Up The Bracket’ style as they opened with a classic that is now amazingly 22 years old.

Doherty spends most of the night loitering to one side as Carl Barat, kitted out in a trilby hat and blazer, commands things from centre stage. Everyone took a turn up front though with both drummer Gary Powell and Barat taking turns on the piano and bassist John Hassall taking a turn on vocals. 

 

The set was a mix of the classics and the brand new with plenty played from their new album ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ in a night that was riotous but retrained too. These days you are assured that the Libertines will not only turn up to play but they'll be on time and they’ll play through to the night’s conclusion rather than being prone to curtailing things at any moment.

After an eighteen song set that finished with ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’ the band returned for a long encore of a further seven songs that Doherty even took his coat off for. This included ‘Gunga Din’, which was one of only two included from their third album 2015’s ‘Anthems for Doomed Youth’, ‘Time For Heroes’ from album one and to round things off standalone single ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’.

Los Campesinos!, Foundry, University of Sheffield

Supported By Me Rex

Tonight I am at the Foundry, otherwise known as the Students Union of Sheffield University. The support band Me Rex are very very loud unless its purely because I’m stood right next to a speaker stack. They are definitely raucous and very good with a touch of Forward Russia about them. 

Their enthusiasm is hugely infectious and they quickly won over the crowd with a performance of what I'm told was indie punk bubblegrunge (or something like that). However getting deafened by the support band probably isn’t a great tactic.

In between bands I head off to find a beer as Sheffield Uni is usually awash with Thornbridge but not tonight and I come back empty handed.

Los Campesinos take the stage and immediately up the stakes out-racousing Me Rex. Opening with 'A Psychic Wound' from the new album which slides us in gently until the popular threesome of 'I Broke Up in Amarante', 'Romance Is Boring' and 'Avocado, Baby' up the craziness as they add in first crowd surfing and then a circle pit. It's clear already that it's not just the support band who were loud and I'm now very deaf. 

Los Campesinos were formed in 2006 and looking around a lot of the audience would barely be born then. Lead singer Gareth clearly has the same thought and asks how many were here the first time they played Sheffield, in this very room, 17 years ago in 2007. Four hands go up. How many seeing them for the first time… about half the room. All barely older than the lifetime of the bad. Yet when 'Knee Deep at ATP', from the first album, comes round they all go wild. It's very interesting how people get into bands these days. 

The band had a brief moment in the sun in the late 2000s with the likes of 'You! Me! Dancing!', saved as always for the encore, but they were then largely written off but not forgotten. The seven-piece, who cram on to a stage bedecked with banners for just causes, have become cult stars who sadly come around far too infrequently. Their new album 'All Hell' is their seventh but their first for seven years and it is self-produced, self-released and self-marketed on a budget of allegedly just £190. Yet tonight and the whole tour are sold out.

Tracks from the new album slot in neatly within a career spanning set list covering their usual subjects - doomed romances, doomed football, doomed capitalism etc. On of their new tracks 'To Hell in a Handjob' is apparently about 'punching fascists with your mates'. Musically, they don’t miss a beat.

Gareth gives up the mic briefly for keyboardist Kim takes the lead on the wonderful 'kms' before taking it back and insisting that the rest of the set will all be 'bangers', if anyone has any energy left. I could have done with that beer.