Gigs

Gig Review: Reuben + The Ghost Of A Thousand + Baddies

Venue: Waterfront, Norwich
Date: 7 April 2008

It’s 7:45 and there’s already a lot of people milling about – the crowd in particular strikes me as being more than a little odd. There’s the usual 16/17 year olds in the pit area, but there’s a few older fans in here too, from 20 to 50, and the look isn’t as “alternative” as you’d expect – tonight’s bill clearly appeals to a wide audience, and the venue is fittingly packed and scanning the stage eagerly for signs of movement.

Baddies are the first band to take up the gauntlet, looking and sounding every bit like the pissed-off kid brothers of The Futureheads. Their “woop woop” harmonies, spasmodic jerking and office attire seem radio-friendly enough at times and elicit a few polite cheers from the crowd, but there’s nothing here for this audience to really get their teeth into and if anything they seem a bit out of place in this lineup.

The lights go down again and suddenly the stage feels a lot smaller than before. The Ghost Of A Thousand emerge in an eruption of roaring guitars and screaming vocals that feels more than a little east coast hardcore. With his ginger quiff and t-shirt that “looks a bit like a tattoo design”, there’s more than a little Frank Carter about Ghost singer Tom Lacey and the band spend the first half of their set sounding very much like they spent the last year listening to ‘Orchestra of Wolves’ in the garage. Towards the end they seem to find their groove better - the thrashy hardcore bleeds into some epic, crushing guitar stabs and Lacey’s wild screaming seems to take on a raw, more emotional nature. The crowd responds with a circle pit and he dives onto the front row. There can only be 7 or 8 kids holding him in the air, but they parade him around the pit for the length of the song and they’re all sweat and Cheshire Cat smiles afterwards.

There’s a buzz in the crowd about the end of Ghost’s set, but there’s no real doubt who the stars of the show are here. We’re all debating which album Reuben will open from, but nobody really expects ‘Scared Of The Police’ to come thundering from the speakers - like wondering whether you’ll have fish and chips or hamburgers for tea and getting chargrilled squid - puzzling for some and delightful for others. Reuben are a band that knows their fans, and any newer ones who are as yet sporting a mixture of confusion and surprise gleefully hurl themselves into the pit as SOTP gives way to the visceral brutality of ‘Blood, Bunny, Larkhall’.

Now, I have a confession to make. The reason the pictures of Reuben are a little sketchy is that between screaming my head off, being rammed against the front railing and bouncing off random people like trampolines, I never really found time to whip out the camera. The nature of Reuben fans is that every pit seems like a big party. Complete strangers, plastered with stupidly oversized grins, sing into each other’s faces, link arms and dance in circles. This evening pioneers Jamie’s new invention, the “square pit”, and there’s always this weird, underlying sense that somehow, at least for an hour, you’ve acquired 200 new best friends.

As the evening draws on, Jamie whips out his acoustic for a couple of slower numbers including an interesting acoustic version of ‘Deadly Lethal Ninja Assassin’, closing with the anthemic ‘Cities on Fire’ followed by the extended version of ‘Shambles’ from the ‘TwoByThree EP’ (featuring tour-mates Ghost Of A Thousand and Baddies). The lights go up and the only complaint from the audience is that there’s no encore. As for me, my finger’s sprained from pitting like a maniac, I’m covered in sweat, and my grin couldn’t be any more stupidly oversized. Job done.

For fans of: Biffy Clyro, Gallows, The Futureheads
Band links = Reuben / The Ghost Of A Thousand / Baddies

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