Live Review

Lower Than Atlantis – Dingwalls, Camden

• 31st Jul 2014

The final day of a club-size-underground-back-to-the-roots-sold-out tour at Camden’s Dingwalls on one of the hottest days of the year was always set to be a sweaty one, but nobody could have realised just how totally fantastic it would be; a great evening for British bands.

Openers Yearbook were excellent, playing as if it was a come-back gig of all gigs, and it felt like they knew there were a lot of music industry movers and shakers in the room (they weren’t wrong). West-country babes Decade smashed it out of the park with their performance, topping off what reads as an epic tour for them. They managed to work the crowd like they were Kim Khardashian, playing hits from recently released album ‘Good Luck’, getting half of the room that clearly knew every word to sing along and the other half so totally transfixed that they commanded everyone’s attention. This is clearly the beginning of a very large journey, one that is going to go in one direction: up.

Watford’s Lower Than Atlantis have had a pretty big year, and although used to playing bigger venues they took it back to the start tonight but with no less energy, commitment and production. That was the first thing you notice. Small club venues, big production. This was evident from the offset with their first song, the omnipresent rumble to welcome them on and straight into new chart hit ‘Here We Go’, which was a huge success live, clearly making it clear that radio pays, as it has been on every sports show on the BBC and the Radio 1 A list for 4 weeks, an effort well deserved.

The sweat, dripping from backs, foreheads and the ceiling was disgusting, yes, but also a clear sign of a fantastic show. Playing songs from their back catalogue, a B-side and a couple from their up-coming album, this show was incomparable to any seen recently. There was a lot of hype behind this run of LTA shows, and the big shoes of all 4 men on stage were clearly filled with perfectly sized feet as it was outstanding. The crowd loved it, the speakers couldn’t take much more and frontman Mike’s voice just about held out.

It must be quite difficult when you’re used to bigger venues to be back stuck in a van and sharing a dressing room as big as a toilet with 2 other bands for 3 weeks, but they didn’t show this fatigue when they went out, putting on a slightly arrogant, yet entirely grateful performance. The atmosphere was electric, making everyone excited not only for the album out at the end of September, but also for their upcoming Reading and Leeds sets. Finale ‘Beech Like The Tree’ was as great as the first song, and complete with end of tour shinanigans with both Decade and Yearbook coming on to sing/dance and throw toilet paper, clearly friends made that will be missed.

This is going to be a massive year to come for LTA, and excited is an understatement as to how we feel about this. We don’t give star ratings, but if we did this would have been a full marks job.

– Jess Kempner

Venue: Dingwalls, Camden
Support Band: Decade, Yearbook