After a summer of success with their album ‘I Love You.’, a string of Festival shows, and featuring on ‘The Amazing Spiderman 2’ soundtrack, California band ‘The Neighbourhood’ played an intimate show at Leeds University Union last week – a venue they last played supporting ‘The 1975’.
The band opened the show with ‘Female Robbery’, with frontman Jesse Rutherford wearing a combination of sunglasses, a hat, an I heart LA t-shirt, and a long animal print coat. A spectacular outfit that he mixed and match for the entire show, at one point ensuring he wore his sunglasses, as he told the crowd that some tracks sound “cool with sunglasses”, encouraging those equipped with them to put them on before they played ‘A Little Death’. On a cold and dark Thursday evening in October, I wasn’t surprised to see a serious lack of sunglasses in the crowd…
The band played all of their hits, as well as pleasing fans with what they stated to be older Neighbourhood tracks, including ‘Let It Go’, as well as some new tracks they’ve been premiering online, such as ‘Jealou$y’.
Jesse has an unreal amount of energy and his slick dance moves were on top form, sometimes I couldn’t believe that his voice was so flawless, despite him bouncing around the stage. Apart from when his mic cut out during ‘Afraid’, it was like listening to the bands work on the best speakers in the world. His voice shined in particular when they performed a stripped back version of ‘West Coast’.
Unfortunately, the gig was only 1 hour long, and there was no encore, but for £12.50 a ticket, you can’t have it all! The Neighbourhood are definitely a band worth seeing live.
By Laura Dean – @modestlaura
