The Beat Surrender

Couldn’t tell you if the rest of the band are the same but my hat goes off to the drummer (Johnny) from Keith for being the friendliest drummer in music. FACT. I can’t think of many other people who are playing their biggest ever support tour of their career to date and would come out to the bouncers on the door two minutes before they are due on stage and explain the mix up on the guest list.

Thanks to his intervention the promoter looked upon our case sympathetically (the plus one had been missed off the list, not uncommon at this venue to be honest!) and we were in the venue and onto the first bottle of lager of the night.

The Mancunian four-piece Keith had just started their first song of the night as we got into the venue and surprisingly the venue was already pretty busy. This is generally quite rare at eight o’clock so it was pretty obvious that a lot of people had at least come to check out Keith as well as the headline act, maybe more were like me and only their for the support.

Luckily the band rise to the occasion and they deliver a confident, fun and all too short set (headlining in Leeds later this month so wouldn’t mind seeing them play for longer), the highlights are Hold That Gun, Back There and a brilliant dance floor shaker in Leave It Now, For Now.

Everything about the band is geared towards live performance the sound flits between the more sombre tracks and the higher octane sonically charged tracks that see them really getting into the groove, quite often the singer has to flit between microphones as he plays his Moog, he is also confident when talking to the crowd, he explains the origins of the bands name and has a bit of banter with people in the front of the crowd, always good to see and it brings them closer to the audience.

The closing epic finishes and it’s time for them to leave, the crowd are generous in their applause and the band have given as good a support performance as I’ve seen for a long time, I’m guessing that they’ve made one or two more friends along the way.

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly already has plenty of friends in the room thanks to four p*ssed students from Southend-On-Sea who are here to support him with boorish chants and a roomful of people who seem to like his one man show, albeit with a trumpet player and drummer tucked away in the wings.

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