The Bluetones, Academy 2, Sheffield

Tonight we’re in the intimate surroundings of the upstairs room at the Sheffield Academy, complete with a reassuringly sticky floor, as is so often the case in these places. It’s nicely full which is good to see.

Now I must confess that I’m coming a bit late to the party on this one. So late in fact that everyone else has got their coat and is making for the exit, including the band, who announced in March that this will be their farewell tour.

They are of course ‘The Bluetones’, purveyors of thirteen Top 40 singles and three Top 10 albums. All some time ago. Yet they have continued to tour to a loyal but sadly decreasing fan base. I’ve been remiss in never seeing them prior to Splendour this year, despite being an admirer of their early successes. I feel that tonight many others are returning after too many years of absence and if you neglect something it falls apart. Which appears to have been the cause of the demise of the Bluetones. Even the playing the classic album trick, with ‘Expecting To Fly’ didn't do the job. So, now as a parting gesture, we get this final tour.

First though we have Pugwash, shiver me timbers, but they have little in common with the cartoon Captain. I bet they’ve heard that sort of pun a few times but if you pick the name, you get the comments.

They fit the bill as a warm up act for their comedy element as well as for their music. They’re entertaining and easily strike up a good banter with the crowd. The Lindisfarne loving (apparently) Irish outfit have a bit of Liverpudlian thrown in, on bass guitar, actually sound incredibly like Elbow at times. Well until they dig back into their catalogue where the older stuff is more rocking. Lead man Thomas Walsh, for it his baby and has been since 1999, even seems to be going for the Guy Garvey look, e.g. physique or perhaps he had it first.



He’s also not adverse to a bit of name dropping, e.g. ‘Ben (Folds) popped in to do keyboards on this one’ or ‘here’s one I recorded with Neil Hannon’, when apparently they toured as ‘The Duckworth Lewis Method’. Still they’re good, affable and talented not that I’d buy any of their records. I’m just not sure when the right mood to play them would be.

Half an hour later, “breaking up is so very hard to do...” blares through the PA, “just tell me that we're through...”. The Walker Brothers playing “Make It Easy On Yourself”, this as Mark Morriss tells us is ‘the beginning of the end’. Cue boos. He scowls at the booing, we’re not here to boo, we’re here to celebrate the career of the Bluetones.

They open with a couple of album tracks, ‘Unpainted Arizona’ and ‘Zorro’ or as Mark describes them an ‘opening of openings’ as he adds ‘Surrendered’, the opening track from album number five. Odd idea but clever. So let’s spoil it, be pedantic and point out that ‘Unpainted Arizona’ was track number two on ‘Return to the Last Chance Saloon’.



From here the pace is gradually hiked, starting with ‘Fast Boy’, who we’re told is the man who once sold him weed. There after we get the same professional and polished performance that seduced me (belatedly) at Splendour.

Mark Morriss’s vocals blend with the intricate guitar playing of Adam Devlin, together with drummer Ed Chesters and Mark’s younger brother Scott on bass.



Mark is always entertaining to listen to, even when commenting on Sheffield’s road system. Now after sixteen years of coming here on tour, they’ve finally finished it, as the band split up. This acts as his intro to the automobile inspired car ‘Autophilia or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Car’. Unfortunately the parking charges seem to be paying for those improvements. Ouch, as my wallet would say later.



‘Cut Some Rug’ needed no introduction and didn’t get one but Richard Payne, the fifth member for nearly four years did, as he comes over from Australia to rejoin them for this final tour and to treat us to keyboard on the like of ‘Tiger Lily’ from their third album ‘Science & Nature’.



They seamlessly move from one of their oldest tracks, the excellent ‘Bluetonic’ to one of the newest, last year’s ‘A New Athens’ from the album of the same name, with ease and without dropping the quality. Then we’re into a run of singles ‘After Hours’, ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’, ‘Solomon Bites The Worm’, ‘Marblehead Johnson’ from back when, he says, they were fashionable.

So what words of wisdom have the boys got to offer after sixteen years...? ‘We've learnt many things after years on the road so here’s another song about drinking...’ Cue ‘Carry Me Home’, a recent single that shows that they still had it to the end. Then moving swiftly from ‘a single that didn't sell enough to one that sold too many’ ‘Slight Return’, a track they’ve struggled to throw off the shackles from ever since and Mark always seemed slightly irked that they have to play it.



Then closing with possibly the band’s favourite and mine too, ‘Never Going Nowhere’ and then they go off, promising to return swiftly but in the interim leaving us with an empty stage so that we can contemplate what it will be like from now on, forever. No more Bluetones.

The mandolin, ‘hard to play and look cool’ comes out with one of those blowy keyboard things, A Melodica is it? for a quirky encore of ‘Slack Jaw’ and ‘Vostock of Love’ the B-side to ‘Autophilia’, and that they claim is ‘one of the best we've done’. Not totally convinced about that. Then it’s the traditional close of ‘If...’ before they go off for a second time, leaving us to wonder if that really is it.

Not if the crowd have anything to do with it, impressively picking up the ‘na na na na na’ from ‘If...’ and hurling them back at the empty stage.

So the band return again, in dressing gowns and clutching bunches of flowers to play something that has ‘always been requested of them’... seriously? A hilariously light-hearted but still excellent cover of KC and The Sunshine Band’s ‘Give It Up’. An ‘I was there’ moment I think.

They finally close the night quietly and with little fuss courtesy of an obscure moment from their debut ‘Expecting to Fly’. The track called ‘A Parting Gesture’ is an appropriate way to go. Then with four final final words from Mark, "We were The Bluetones...", they are gone... forever. Well, call me a sceptic, until they reform of course.



The Bluetones Farewell Tour runs until the 27th September, catch them while you can.

Edit this setlist | More The Bluetones setlists

Elbow, Rock City

We're back at Rock City to see Elbow. They're more L's sort of thing than mine. She says they're very mushy and she's worried that I might nod off at the gig but I've been swotting up on them and I rather like them. If I can stay awake at 'Scouting For Girls' and 'The Hoosiers' then Elbow shouldn't be a problem.

L and Daughter are already down at Rock City while I'm aiming to get there for 9.30, which is when the main bands usually take to the stage. So I can tell you nothing of the highly rated 'Two Gallants' who were supporting. I can also tell you nothing of the opening of Elbow's set, playing 'Starlings' armed with trumpets apparently, because they came on at 9pm and I didn't get there until quarter past.

When I get there, after I manage to find someone to take my ticket, the band are playing 'Great Expectations'. I try and find L but it's so packed I can't get through to where she says she is. I wasn't expecting a crowd. I though everyone would be lounging around on blankets and in deckchairs. I was so convinced that it would be sedate and only half full, that I even considered getting the dog a ticket.

I move through the crowd to the front, which is amazingly easy, no moshing tonight. The band launch into 'Mirrorball', beautiful and dazzling but slightly nod-off-able. Elbow are sometimes so laid back they're horizontal and some of their tracks do make you want to reach for the newspaper. At other times they're simply stunning.

After another track, 'Red' I believe, I decide I can possibly make it up the back steps, across the balcony to try and find L and Daughter from above. I have a go and find them; they have a great spot on the stairs. I join them and, because a lot of people find it impossible to stand still for 90 minutes, I'm immediately totally in the way. People are constantly pushing past me, including a chap who smells like he's soaked his jacket in nicotine. At least, thankfully some of the people squeezing past me are female.

From this new position I can take in the scene. Elbow are a five-piece from Bury and are fronted by Guy Garvey, a cheery and slightly rotund chap with an interesting line in witty banter. He could make it in stand-up if his voice goes.

As he communicated with the crowd, better than almost any band I can remember and generally legible, he came across as a thoroughly decent and down to earth sort of chap. At one point he tells us about their roadie 'Mexican Wayne' but he doesn't play the track he's hinting at, 'Mexican Wave', nor does he asks us to wake up their bus driver. Thankfully.

His band, as he keeps telling us, are all friends and colleagues of 18 years. I find it hard to believe that they've been together for 18 years and only produced four albums but Wikipedia says it's true, so it must be. In fact the five guys originally formed a band called 'Mr Soft' at Sixth Form College in 1990 but it wasn't until 1997 that they became Elbow. Even then, their debut album 'Asleep in the Back' was not released until 2001.



Tonight Guy also surrounds himself with attractive women, in the form of a three-piece string section and another girlie who's acting as a runner with pints of water for him. The 'orchestra' are balanced at the back of the stage, as there's not much room with a large set of keyboards and an equally large drum kit. It would be a shame if they outgrew venues like Rock City because they need a bigger stage.

I'm on the steps in time to see the band perform their recent single; 'Grounds for Divorce', which sounds amazing live, a rocking departure from their normal style.

'Mondays is for drinking to the seldom seen kid' he tells us. Well no actually Mondays are usually AF for us but if we'd known we'd have had a beer.

The 'Seldom Seen Kid' is their friend Bryan Glancy, a fellow Manchester songwriter, who died recently and has been immortalised in the title of their new album. Like their previous three, it mixes epic melancholy ballads with more upbeat but equally epic numbers. It's also possibly their best.

'Forget Myself' follows and obviously prompts a huge sing-along, many octaves lower than last nights. Tonight's crowd is more mature, although a good mix of ages, with more men, and slimmer women.



Also from the new album, 'The Stops' comes over well and they play a haunting 'Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver' a song about 'love and the construction industry'. All in all, a set pretty much filled with spellbinding songs. Although regrettably I miss 'Leaders of the Free World' which they threw in early.

Guy reels off details of the latest births accredited to the Potter brothers, Mark on guitar and Craig on keyboards. Some wag enquires whether they have the same mother, it's a rare moment that Guy gets upstaged from the floor. This leads us into 'Newborn', a song about heartbreak and death. Cheery stuff. A powerful track which I was not previously party to.

To end the set Guy orchestrates a mass sing-along to 'One Day Like This'. Judging by the reaction, you would have thought this was a classic from Elbow's past but no, this is a four-week-old cut from the new album and the crowd sing it back to him with glee, although it is due to be released as a single in June. Could this be their 'Run', the big breakthrough that could make them as big as err... 'Snow Patrol'. Perish the thought but they deserve success.

'One day like this a year would see me right'

Yep, not a bad night out.

After the band leave the stage to rapturous applause, the crowd strike up the song again and keep singing until Guy and Craig return to play 'Puncture Repair' while the rest are allegedly on a 'fag break'.

I look behind me and L is still there on the steps and hasn't tottered over into the non-mosh pit. Thankfully no embarrassing stunts from her tonight.

They continue the encore with 'Station Approach', then to finish Guy goes into the crowd and hand picks ten lucky souls to join him on stage to dance and sing along to 'Grace Under Pressure'. Naturally he chooses the best-looking girls together with a few guys to make it not look too obvious. Although he does seem to let some plonker slip through the net.

So L reckons they're mushy, I reckon mournful is a better word, which isn't the same thing at all.