Live Review

Kids In GlassHouses – Academy 3, Manchester

• 1st Nov 2007

This was definitely a showcase of upcoming British pop-punk and a show that shows that that genre is not dead, in fact it’s fully thriving with fresh talent emerging constantly.

SaidMike opened up the proceedings with a synth-tastic display of good old-fashioned rocking out. A theatrical performance with lots of energy but they definitely had things to work on, it seemed the bass player was scared of the crowd as he only faced the crowd when he had a line to sing, and the singer, Tom, had all his hair covering his face through the whole performance so you couldn’t tell if he was enjoying it or not! However the songs were good and fairly catchy and the crowd seemed to be enjoying it.

With the entrance of Tonight Is Goodbye to the stage, you could feel the excitement rising in the audience, and it was worth it. They just oozed energy, and every song was sung with such gusto it was surprising they had an ounce of life left at the end of the performance. They premiered a couple of songs and played the rest off their EP. Tonight Is Goodbye really are going to go far – their record sounds great, the put on a great live show, from their exuberant energy to cracking moves they really fulfilled the perfect support slot role and got the crowd well and truly warmed up.

Kids In Glasshouses as per normal put on a simply stellar show. They played a few new songs which people seemed to know, they played the killer songs from their CD and they even played the “song we never used to play live”, Historia. The thing about this Welsh band, is what they lack in charm they make up for in talent. Seriously though, it was fantastic, tight rhythm, great vocals and just good music. Bad points about this set? The only bad thing I can say was how short and encore-less it was. It was pretty upsetting, I know it was probably an average length but it seemed really short and everyone expected an encore!