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EMBRACE LIVE IN CONCERT

They did not – by any stretch of the imagination – disappoint.

Supported superbly by two bands – Four Day Hombre and Delays, who more than whipped the sell out 2,500 audience into a frenzy – Embrace took to the stage and took hold of the audience as though they were rag dolls, bouncing them at their own pace.

 

First up was the opener from This New Day, the blinding No Use Crying, with its superb rhythm and lead guitar riff, which had the audience jumping from the off. Next up, the seminal anthem Good Good People from the superb Good Will Out album of 1998, followed immediately by, surely, the band’s greatest song, the sublime Someday.

Three songs in and already its difficult to see how the set is going to improve, but somehow it does, with Danny handing banter backwards and forwards with audience as though they are old friends (“So then, what decent clubs are there to go to on a Sunday night in Liverpool? What’s that place The Cavern like? They’ve had the odd decent band in there, haven’t they?”) and singing songs so ridiculously well its as though he’s been penned up for months on end rather than coming to the end of a gruelling schedule.

The band were as tight as a drum. Hitting their marks perfectly, as Danny prowled the stage beneath a blaze of lights that resembled a lightening storm at times, with strobes and moody spots fitting each song perfectly.

But it was the songs that blew the crowd away. Nature’s Law, Gravity and Come Back To What You Know and Save Me were offset with new songs Target and I Can’t Come Down brilliantly. They even sang a new song from their as yet unreleased sixth album (sadly, the name of which I didn’t catch), which sounded fantastically moody and dispels ANY rumours about Embrace splitting up.

Outside of Someday, the highlights of the show were Looking As You Are and a stomping version of Ashes, both from Out Of Nothing, on which the show, sadly, closed after an hour and forty-five minutes.

Three quality bands, four hours of classy entertainment and all for £20? What else needs to be said? Other bands and artists need to take note.

Embrace are, without doubt, a phenomenal band to see perform live and the anticipation of seeing them again very soon has grown tenfold in a matter of minutes.
Superb!
9/10

 

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