Live Review

fun. – The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool

• 7th Jun 2010

A busy night of gigs this Friday night, ended with an intimate, sweaty but thoroughly enjoyable show. A trendy bar, check. Dingy basement with makeshift stage, check. Fairy lights to set the scene, er check.

It seemed that there were more members of the band than there were audience, but this intimate show brought the band close, touching distance in fact. All 6 members, those with a permanent fixture in the band, and those that were just sessioning all seemed jolly and jetlagged, drunk, hot but so excited.

They played their full forthcoming album, full band, with much audience participation, and a weird repetition of the theme tune from ‘Fraiser’. Weird huh?!

‘Be Calm’ was epic, ‘The Gambler’ almost brought the audience to tears, and ‘Roman Candle’ brought that little bit of twee to the whole set. Singer Nate managed to sum the band up to the crowd that were mostly all there because they had all heard of the band but ‘people like us because their parents can like us too’ probably runs true. Songs about children, kids and songs that wouldn’t seem out of place on the West End stage as well as the songs with Queen and Weezer influences for the dads to get involved too, they had a beautiful set, it was a great show and they came across as lovely, funny, people, down to earth, and happy to stop the set for a chat with the people that actually turned up to see them.

Slightly different to the sell out shows they had in London in March, but hopefully they wont be too put out by the lack of audience, bearing in mind it was a VERY late show, if they come back you should go see them, have a giggle and get involved!