Go:Audio, 9th April 2009 @ The Electric Ballroom, Camden

I went to the Go:Audio gig on Thursday with little in the way of expectations as I was the recipient of a text message that morning offering me a spare ticket. I'd heard of the band as a previous support for Scouting for Girls and took a couple of minutes over lunch to look up their myspace so I would have some idea what their music would be like. If you want to do the same then please click here to take a peek. Listening to a couple of their tracks put me in mind of Busted (no bad thing in my book!) but a bit edgier and not really anything like SFG.

Anyway, it's worth a couple of words on the Electric Ballroom as I hadn't been there before. Very convenient for Camden Town tube and the bouncers were actually quite friendly, although as we got there pretty late on they didn't have much of a queue to deal with. The venue itself kind of reminded me of student union club - a very dark cavernous place with toilets that run out of loo paper before the evening is out. The sound was ok though, which is definitely the most important thing. There's an upstairs balcony that I only discovered late into the set (whilst on a mission to find the aforementioned toilets) that gives a pretty good view over the crowd and the stage without getting stuck in the scrum downstairs - must try and remember that for next time.

I already said that we arrived late and support act Saving Aimee was already 3/4 of the way through their set, which was a shame as I always try and make a point to gain maximum value for money from my gig tickets ;-) I was surprised how busy the standing area was for Saving Aimee (check out their myspace here if you want to hear what I was missing - they have their own headline tour of the UK in June) and the crowd seemed to be really into them - so much so that the bar was pretty much empty. It was then that I realised that my friends and I had probably increased the average age of the gig goers by several years when we entered the room, and a significant proportion of the crowd were no doubt too young to be purchasing anything harder than a ginger ale. I had suspected this following my experience at the SFG concert in Wolverhampton last year, where I had this distinct advantage of being several inches taller than large swathes of the audience as most of them hadn't finished their growth spurts. It's bizarrely intimidating to be in a room full of 'youngsters' (I hate being 30) as you want to have more in common with them than their mums and dads loitering at the back of the room.

So anyway, to the main event. There were probably about 750 people there when Go:Audio came on to the stage (although I am notoriuosly bad at estimating numbers) and the vast majority of them where obviously from the ranks of their 34k+ myspace friends and very pleased to see them. The boys from the band are a lot closer to the age of their fans than the guys from SFG and they seemed relaxed and very natural on stage - the keyboard player kept stepping out in front of the keys to engage with the audience. The lead singer kept up the chat all the way through their set and the audience responded really well, prompting a number of resounding sing along including their track 'Why'. There was quite a bit of jumping up and down but standing half way back it was all fairly orderly - seeing the sweaty fans emmerging from the front of the crowd at the end of the gig suggested that there was probably more fun going on at the barrier.

Go:Audio were good fun and their music is quite strong in the vein of Fall Out Boy (Sugar, We're Going Down featured on the soundtrack both before and after the main set and received a strong reaction from the crowd). The band variously describe their music as 'pop-rock-dance' or 'pop-rock-electronic-dance-core' and the four-piece is certainly unconventional in their lack of bass player. My favourite track of the night was probably Drive To The City, which they played in their encore and is going to be their next single (out April) - the opening had definite overtones of early nineties dance music (again, no bad thing in my book!).

Overall I'd say that although I'm not a converted Go:Audio fan, they put on a good show and I can see why they have a loyal following. Their album is due out later in the year and I wish them the best of luck with it.