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Gracing the stage at a packed Heaven, ex Maccabees frontman and indie stalwart Orlando Weeks saunters on to the stage to a teasing beat. This builds up to the singer’s haunting, distorted lyrics in set opener None Too Tough, a lively start with its anthemic drum beat. Second song Blood Sugar has a looping keyboard and a sweet sentiment with the nostalgic lyric ‘Night time on the river, gone the bell that had rung forever, as long as I can remember’ sung with a bittersweet tone. Its thunderous, resounding drums, looping guitar note and steady tempo change with sudden drum bursts create a rich anthemic sound filling the iconic venue.
Weeks describes his third song with its beautifully gentle piano intro as being ‘Like a lullaby’, adding affectionately that he wrote it for his son. This flows into jaunty fourth song Milk Breath, an intense shift in tempo as he raises a pint of Guinness to the crowd on St Patrick’s Day before bursting into Look Who’s Talking Now, a hit with the crowd with its poetic power in the lines ‘Put a fire in your hand, You can let your guard down, Cause no one is invincible’. Weeks is highly animated, as he passionately sings ‘It’s good to see you’ which fades into a repeated back track as he keenly announces “That’s a new one, the new album is almost ready”, delighting the crowd.
On the following track there is a huge, emphatic drum beat with screeching guitar that builds explosively, and this sees Weeks play the guitar, alongside a repeated keyboard note breaking erratically and suddenly into the musing lyric ‘How long til we get old’ which combined with guitar solo effect is mesmerising. In an ebullient exchange with the crowd, Weeks talks about when he played the next song Better on Clive Anderson’s radio show, and his friend who owns a record shop said someone had bought the record as a result, adding dryly “Which is what you would expect and hope for”. He continued; “However the next day the buyer says he is returning the record, saying it didn’t have enough harmonica and he felt short changed. This one has more harmonica!” which sends punters into a harmonica hysteria.
His next song has a brilliant baseline – effortlessly yet expertly interjected with the drums. A moody song opening with Jeff Buckley esque heartfelt vocals, the chorus of A Beautiful Place, has a poetic wistful delivery, with the line “I don’t look back tomorrow and it’s going round in circles”. In a humble aside, Weeks says “Thank you for letting us play in this prestigious venue”. Making an unorthodox megaphone announcement with unclear and menacing messaging paired with a sinister sounding guitar riff, the lyrics ‘Good old boys and good old girls who shine in this memory of mine’ sung with otherworldly space like sound effects in the background in the first song of the encore epitomise his and the band’s highly distinctive sound that charms a sold out crowd tonight.
