Touring their ninth album ‘Keep The Village Alive’ Stereophonics played an outstanding set just short of 2 hours at the Manchester Arena last week.
The first glimpse of the band caught by the crowd was the silhouette of lead singer Kelly Jones behind a ‘Keep The Village Alive’ curtain. The curtain dropped for the vibrant first track and second single from the new album ‘I Wanna Get Lost With You’, perfectly accompanied with an illuminated and colourful backdrop. The first single ‘C’est La Vie’ confidently followed, reminding us just how astounding ‘Keep The Village Alive’ is.
The band then spiralled in to a set list that felt like hit after hit – they weren’t self indulgent with their new material in the slightest as they included tracks from all nine albums; from the crowd favourite fast paced ‘A Thousand Trees’ to the slow-rocking ‘Superman’. One special moment of the night in particular was when Kelly asked the crowd to hold up their phones/lighters for the recording of the video due to accompany the bands next single ‘White Lies’ – the Manchester Arena has never looked so beautiful. Though the night wasn’t short of special moments, with others including ‘Handbags and the Gladrags’, a solo acoustic rendition of ‘Traffic’ from Kelly and the string quartet accompanied ‘Violins & Tambourines’ from the ‘Grafitti On The Train’ album.
Other highlights that got the crowd fired up included ‘Just Looking’ and ‘Pick A Part That’s New’, as well as ‘Sunny’ and ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’ which both received fantastic crowd reactions and sounded superb, you completely forgot that they were both new tracks. The band finished on ‘Local Boy In The Photograph’, mass crowd sing along included with everyone on their feet before they swiftly left the stage.
Encore? Of course! Kelly’s distinctive voice belted out arguably one of the bands best live tracks, ‘The Bartender & The Thief’ from ‘Performance And Cocktails’. The atmosphere was electric and the band were thriving off the energy and positive vibes from the crowd as they played ‘I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio’, the gently thriving ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ and last but not least, what’s become somewhat of an anthem for them; ‘Dakota’.
If you missed Stereophonics in Manchester then the good news is that they’re back next summer, playing at the Castlefield Bowl as part of Sounds of the City. They’re also due to play not one, but two shows at Edinburgh Castle. Make sure that you catch them if you can – if I learnt anything from this gig, it’s that Stereophonics are the Masters of writing a smashing set list!
