The Beat Surrender

It’s not a particularly nice Saturday night, I’m absolutely skint at the moment and I’m planning a rare quiet night in. This quiet night planning isn’t going that smoothly though, despite being no Leeds game today it looks like I might be called out into this cold wet evening to brave the elements in the name of rock n’ roll and the fact that the show must certainly go on.

You see I’d arranged for one of my reviewers to interview the band and then the concert later that night of a band from Canada called The Weakerthans, I’d found out a couple of days before that he wouldn’t now be able to make it, but I’ve wrongly presumed I’ll find someone to fill in, it is after all a Saturday Night rather than a school night.

As Saturday wears on though my search for intrepid gig goers with basic communication skills is starting to look ever more desperate, until a call at around 4.30pm finally sees me throw in the towel and do the decent thing…I decide to cover it myself.

So a quick dash into Leeds and I make it to the venue at bang on six to get my interview in, once I get my fifteen minutes of inane questions in and the lead singer has finally got his head around the Yorkshire accent it’s on to a trawl of Leeds worst mainstream bars with my mate and some of his work colleagues who have been out all day.

Needless to say alcohol levels between us are considerably different and within a couple of hours I’m fairly relieved to be heading back to the venue to watch a gig with a very respectable crowd who like myself don’t seem that drunk. The main room in The Cockpit is actually about three quarters full which i’m surprised about. I know they are onto their 4th album with the release of the recent Reunion Tour, but I didn’t expect them to have such a following over here in the UK.

I’ve missed the support bands so i’m afraid I can’t tell you about them and I don’t have long until The Weakerthans amble on stage and confidently stride into the first couple of songs, being a newcomer to the band I don’t recognise all of the songs, Civil Twilight does get a run out early on and is well received, but it’s the older material that most of the crowd are here for and The Weakerthans oblige by sharing their previous three albums out nicely amongst about two thirds of the set.

As a band they are tight and move effortlessly between the rockier numbers and their more folk based songs, they are all very competent players and the lead singer holds the band together nicely with his easy on the ear vocals. The only real gripes that I have are that the banter is kept to a real minimum, which is a shame being as they don’t get over here too often and after a while the songs do start to sound very similar.

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