It’s been an impressive 12 months for Cambridge based Lonely The Brave; they’ve had two very impressive singles as well as played some very successful support slots supporting the likes of Don Broco across the UK. Finally though, the band have headed out on a headline tour of the country, taking along the delightful Fatherson from .Kilmarnoc. Impressively, the London date of the tour, at Cargo, sold out well in advance, and the live room filled up incredibly fast when the doors opened around 8.
Fatherson started their set with frontman ____ standing alone with a guitar, his powerful voice doing the hard work and stunning most of the audience into instant silence. It was an effective way to start the set, but joined by the rest of the band they took another life, mixing together quiet sections, where the voice was met with ringing chords to create a sound that matched even some of Frightend Rabbits ore emotional, with some louder parts soaked in echoing guitar and intricate drumming. Tracks like ‘Home Town’ and ‘Mine For Me went down well, the audience dead silent during the quiet bits (something I found shocking considering the fact they were a support for a sold out crowd; a rare respectful audience!) I’m certain that Fatherson are destined for big things and am interested to see what they do next.
Before Lonely The Brave took to the stage, the whole audience seemed to finally surge forward, and looking back showed an incredibly busy Cargo, bursting with anticipation. Starting, as their support had previously, with just a solemn guitar and some emotive vocals, ‘Things Will Matter’ set the mood for the evening; the bands songs, whether at their heaviest or calmest, are certainly heavy on the emotion and, as Black Saucers saw the rest of the band kick in and the volume go up a notch the band seemed to be visably enjoying playing to a crowd of people who seemed to know the words and could be heard singing along throughout.
Previous signal ‘Backroads’ had to be a particular highlight for me, a song that had been really perfected as a unit, sounding as tight as it does on record. The clever lyrics of the song sang over a lovely sounding guitar melody really work well and it’s certainly helped by the sound of people to my right singing back every word. Newest single Trick Of The Light also seemed to get people really going, a small pit breaking out during the chorus as the band seemed to be incredibly comfortable with the audience, moving around the whole stage while singing the words to the fans.
Finishing the main part of their set with a cover, ‘Hope There’s Someone’, the band took a quick break before coming back for the seemingly compulsory encore, before leaving the stage again, leaving the audience hungry for more. The band seem to have received a lot of attention recently with the music press and, based on tonight’s performance, I would say it’s well deserved. Lonely The Brave have written some great material and certainly put the energy into delivering it live. In recent months I’ve found myself watching half hour sets that felt like they’d been going on for days, but on this occasion the opposite is true; forty five minutes passed and I could have sworn it’d been twenty tops. It bodes well for as the band progress and do more headline tours: if new material is as strong as this I could see the band performing a set twice as long and still exciting. The year’s only starting and I for one can’t wait to see where they are by the end.
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