This is an archived post from our old website. Please excuse us if it looks a bit off, we are working through old posts and making sure they look tip top!
There is a good vibe at the Spa as people gather for what one expects, one way or another, to be an entertaining night.
First support act are A Jokers Rage. It’s a loud, high energy start. Their second song, ‘Screaming with the Lights Off’, has the crowd bobbing, it’s full of good riffs, and it seems they’ve brought a fair amount of the crowd with them fom York. The penultimate song is anthemic and catchy, with the refrain ’embrace your past, don’t live too fast…’. They end with a cover of Tupac Shakur’s ‘California Love’. This could have been the highlight of their set except that their singer lost the words and his way, in focusing more on getting over the barrier and offstage into the crowd, then running back around through the side door. For me, it failed in the execution, but the crowd seemed to enjoy the shenanigans.
Skarlett Riot were polished; less manic but more powerful. They’ve had tracks on Kerrang and Scuzz TV, blasting through some old and new EP tracks for the crowd. Their female singer played guitar on some tracks, and the band were like a non-stop powerball with seamless transitions from one track to the next, with nice changes of tempo and some interesting drum beats. They know how to work up the audience, and it ends sooner than I would have liked.
There’s definitely some sly humour at play as tracks like ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ are pumped out just prior to the arrival onstage of the main act. The Darkness make a flamboyant show of standing in line, holding hands, then enticing the audience to raise their hands high and clap with them. There seem to be no arguments. The lighting is superb, adding the right flavour of spectacle to the opening. Justin is on fine form – catsuit unzipped dangerously low, suggestively swinging his mic round at his hip, and ending the second song with a flying splits maneouvre worthy of the Kids from Fame. Third up is ‘Growing on Me’ and the warmth and enjoyment is doing just that; after this it’s time for Justin to converse with the crowds, exclaiming ‘f**king wow’ and declaring the joys of being in Scarborough. They tease with a call for requests before laughing, ‘get your hands off our f**king setlist’.
Spirits were high as the tongue-in-cheek foursome powered through a miscellany of back-catalogue, new tracks and cover songs. They have the balcony audience on their feet and the standing audience clapping and swaying along at the merest suggestion – all part of the skill of a band who know how to work a crowd and give a memorable show. ‘Love is Only a Feeling’ has everyone swaying, and the audio effects as it ends suddenly give one the impression of being on some surreal, glam rock spaceship. Of course, it’s not really the end; their encore is half as long again as the show itself, and the energy only increases, with Justin wrapping his legs around a security guard’s shoulders and being paraded around the auditorium like a maharajah. It makes for great connectivity, giving the masses the chance to feel like he was within inches of them, like he looked them right in the eye…
I’m pleasantly surprised that their cover of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’ sounds better live than recorded, even if the dramatic pause and sombre lighting seems a little tongue in cheek. At the end, thanking the audience, Justin says the applause and cheers mean the world to him, and you believe it. Their current album, Hot Cakes, is worth a listen, but the live experience with The Darkness, a characterful unit who relish the performance element, is worth it’s weight in gold. Considering it is a Monday night, the atmosphere is one of celebration and, as another audience member comments, brings ‘much needed lightness to these dark recessional times’.
