The reasons that I got tickets for this gig were very clear:
1) Athlete are a band I have heard of and I really liked Wires
2) A band I had heard of was playing in Northampton
3) Not only was a band I had heard of playing in Northampton, they were playing The Picturedrome, a nice pub that often hosts comedy nights but seldom gigs
You will notice that these reasons are 66.6% Northampton related and only 33.3% band related, which is perhaps a little harsh on Athlete. Although I had heard of them I have to say that I wasn’t that familiar with most of their back catalogue (although – interesting fact alert – I had last seen Tim the keyboard player explaining the pre-recorded beginner tutorial on the piano at the British Music Experience at the O2. OK, maybe not that interesting…). Anyway, I invested in Athlete’s debut album, Vehicles and Animals, before the gig so that I would have some idea. And did I mention that they were playing in Northampton?
I missed the first support act of the night but arrived in time to catch the main support act The Official Secrets Act. I’m fairly certain that I had heard of them before but I didn’t know any of their music. They were actually pretty good and yet again I have been inspired to look up their myspace page to have another listen. I don’t believe that there are many bands out there whose drummer also manages a solo on the French Horn, so for that reason if no other I would urge you to check them out. OSA seem to specialise in what I would loosely term ‘angry pop’ and also had a random plastic crow (rook? raven? pigeon? it was unclear…) perched on their keyboard. Unfortunately I think they lost the audience when the lead singer said how much they were enjoying being in Nottingham...After a relatively long wait while they changed over all the set – having three acts on a small stage appears to be something of a logistical nightmare – Athlete took to the stage. It was an interesting audience, mostly comprised of thirty-somethings and a surprisingly high proportion of skinheads. Not the indie crowd I had expected but there we go, there were obviously fans who had seen the band before and had even attended a previous acoustic session they had done at The Picturedrome a long while back. We were treated to an unusually long set for a band at a small venue with 2 support acts but I suppose it accurately reflected the wealth of material the band had to choose from as they have 3 albums behind them and another in the pipeline.
And they put on a great show. It turned out that I knew a few of their songs, but even the ones I didn’t know sounded great. They were playing with a replacement bass player as one of the main band members had just had an operation on his knee but the replacement guy seemed to do an amazing job – the whole set was very polished. Their lead singer (Joel?) was very engaging and the whole thing had a really warm feeling about it, like they were all getting back together and just having a bit of a jam. There was an opportunity for audience participation with a bit of singing (never goes amiss in my book) and they came back on to do their encore even though they must have been running over. Sometimes I don’t know the songs there is a risk that the gig can get a bit boring quickly (I found this with Kings of Leon) but the beats and the melodies of Athlete’s music kept me interested and not at all tempted to slope off to the bar for another glass of wine.
For this tour, Athlete seem to be going for breadth rather than depth as they seem be playing small venues but making a stop almost anywhere you can imagine. I’m not sure what the strategy is as that seems like quite a lot of hard work to me but maybe they just enjoy the smaller gigs. Or perhaps this is like a bit of a warm up for something else. Because it seems to me that Athlete are much too good a band to be playing Northampton. Not that I’m complaining!Athlete’s fourth album, Black Swan, is out later this year
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