The Beat Surrender

Ok, I clearly need to get a few things out of the way straight away here. There were two real reasons why I wanted to go see the Sugababes live in Bradford went the tour came round. The first was that we don’t cover many pure pop acts live and I was intriuged as to how they would get on in a venue like this rather than the big arena’s they are probably used to. The second is less honourable as an amateur music hack…yeah I quite like Heidi Range!

So here we find ourselves in Bradford on a Monday night and it’s only as i’m on my way to the chinese meal that i’ve bribed my Mrs with to come with me, that it starts to dawn on me what I might have let myself in for here. God it’s gonna be heaving with teenage girls with high pitched screams, it’s going to be a PA system playing the backing tracks, hopefully loud enough to drown out their singing and i’m really regretting this already.

You’ll be pleased to know that the Chinese was nice, despite being a buffet I didn’t overdo things with just the two platefuls.

Ok we can’t delay things any longer, so we head along towards the venue, my spirits start to get raised a little bit the closer we get. For a start i’m not the oldest there and by that I mean I’m not the oldest that hasn’t accompanied a minor to the gig! Plenty of couples and groups of women are walking into the venue which does surprise me. Like us a lot of them of them stay in the bar when support act Luigi Masi takes to the stage.

Once he’s finished we make our way into the venue (it was a shame to leave the bar as i’ve never known it so quiet at the bar for a gig!) proper, up several flights of stairs and then to our seats, which normally i’d hate but is actually a real relief tonight. For a start we are right on the front row so don’t have to stand up at any point, it also meansd i’ve got a good view of the stage as well.

Now that isn’t always important but tonight it is, you see tonight is the Change tour and true to the name the girls live up to that once they finally arrive, changing costumes ten times during the gig. A lot of this is done in quite a clever way though as they have three doppleganger backing dancers to hell them with the changes live on stage generally, meaning the time spent off stage is kept to a minimum.

The biggest surprise of the night is that the girls are backed with a live band, more impressively they have really good voices live which I certainly didn’t expect. They don’t always look comfortable with the choreography at times unlike the backing dancers but you can’t fault their performance tonight.

No it doesn’t compare to the blood, thunder and beauty of an indie gig but you try sitting through the brilliant Hole In The Head opener and not start tapping away, likewise Round Round, Freak Like Me, Stronger, Red Dress or Push The Button which are all fabulous pop moments, it might not seem as natural gig wise but taken into the context of a pop gig this really is as good as you could hope for and in my case far better.

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