Royal Blood - Gig Review 15th December @ Festival Hall, Melb, VIC
Royal Blood
Festival Hall, Melbourne, VIC
December 15th, 2023
Support: The Buoys and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
The weather in Melbourne is notorious for having 4 season in one day, luckily, Friday night was a delightfully pleasant one. However, inside the iconic venue that is Festival Hall, it was gearing up to be a hot and sweaty night of rock when UK duo Royal Blood stopped in for the Melbourne leg of their Back To The Water Below tour.
Kicking off the night was Sydney four piece The Buoys, who’s name is quite ironic considering it’s an all girl band, although I think that’s sort of the point. The strange thing about the setup of the stage was that the headliner’s drum kit was on stage left, so anyone standing or sitting on that side of the venue had an obstructed view of both opening bands. Terrible view aside, my only complaint about The Buoys is that I’ve never seen them before, and they’re bloody brilliant. Guitarist Hilary Geddes is exceptionally talented and it was hard to take my eyes off her while she was performing. The rest of the group is made up of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Zoe Catterall, bassist Courtney Cunningham and drummer Tess Wilkin and all four ladies are very good at what they do. Even though the crowd was still building when they hit the stage, it was a very vocal group that seemed to be enjoying The Buoys. Before performing their new track ‘Settle Petal’, Zoe announced that the track “makes me mad in the best way” and I don’t think I’ve ever related to something more. The ladies blazed through their 8 song tracklist with class, talent and energy, and I cannot wait to see what they get up to in the future. Definitely one to watch!
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Next to take the stage was the Perth outfit with one of the best band names around, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. The thing with the Porn Crumpets is that they beg the question ‘how many guitars is too many guitars?’ as the band is full of them. 3 in fact, and a bass guitarist. The only way that I can think of to describe them is as ‘dancey rock’ but also heavy at the same time. I think my favourite thing about the band is that even though vocalist Jack McEwan is originally from the UK (migrated to Aus at 13), he sings with an Australian accent. It’s always great to hear an Australian accent come across on stage when we’re so used to hearing everyone sing with an American accent. The building crowd were extremely vocal during the Crumpets set and it’s easy to see why, the guys are high energy and a lot of fun to watch. Their songs are a little bit long, and at times during their set it was a bit like we were an audience to one of their band practice sessions, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it was never boring. It was also guitarist Luke Parish‘s birthday and while the crowd didn’t manage to sing it entirely together, we definitely tried and banded together to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to help him feel special and celebrate with us.
Finally, it was time for Royal Blood to take to the stage, and entering to the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, also known as the Western Whistle, is a pretty good way to start! The crowd was rowdy from the moment the music started, and it only took until halfway through opening track ‘Out Of The Black’ for drummer Ben Thatcher took his chance to leave the drums and come down into the crowd. The crowd was packed, hyper, and rowdy, and both Ben and Mike Kerr were feeding off the energy, and it was so easy to see that the two of them were having such a good time on stage. For a band of only 2 people they did a really good job of using the whole of Festival Hall’s stage, with Mike frequently wandering from one side to the other, as well as constantly ending up at the front of Ben’s riser. ‘Boilermaker’ is one of my favourite Royal Blood songs so I was really excited to hear it on the setlist, and even more excited to the people around me in the crowd not just rocking out, but also having a little bit of a dance as well. One of the best things about the kind of rock music Royal Blood makes is that you can headbang, but you can also dance, and sing along really giving you an all over experience and feeling.
The guys played songs from all of their albums, ranging from ‘Loose Change’, ‘Ten Tonne Skeleton’ and ‘Little Monster’ their self-titled 2014 debut, to bangers from their new album Back To The Water Below such as ‘Waves’, ‘Pull Me Through’ and ‘Mountains At Midnight’. Seeing as it’s been 3 years since the guys were last here, it was easy to see why the fans were so keen to have them back and to spend an evening singing along to every song and just all around having a great time. We also got to see an awesome drum solo from Ben Thatcher as a bit of an outro and a break in the set after ‘Little Monster’, and the crowd were absolutely loving it. I was also so glad to only hear a very brief chant for a shooey, which Ben and Mike were more than happy not to oblige to (well done, Royal Blood fans!), and found it very funny that before the encore the crowd kicked off the classic ‘Ole, ole ole ole’ chant that you often here at soccer games as a way to entice the boys back to the stage. For ‘Waves’, the first track after the encore, they brought out Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ Chris Young to play guitar so Mike could focus on playing bass, whilst touring musician Darren James focused on the piano. Sadly, at this point it was time for Royal Blood to wrap up the evening, closing with ‘Figure It Out’ which went so hard. Hopefully it’s not 3 years before the duo make their way back to Australian shores, and hopefully it’s in a bigger venue. Even though it wasn’t a sold out show, it may as well have been with how vocal and energetic the crowd was!
Gig Review by Kelsey Trevan (@kelsey_139)
Setlist:
Out of the Black
Come on Over
Mountains at Midnight
Boilermaker
Lights Out
Shiner in the Dark
Supermodel Avalanches
Trouble’s Coming
Typhoons
Pull Me Through
One Trick Pony
Little Monster
How Did We Get So Dark?
Tell Me When It’s Too Late
Loose Change
Encore:
Waves
Ten Tonne Skeleton
Figure It Out
You can catch Royal Blood in Adelaide tonight, and they wrap up their tour in Perth on December 21st. Tickets here!
Royal Blood - Australian Tour 2023
