hundred Reasons
Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Saturday 8th April
Live Review
For those of you who only know Portsmouth for it's soon to be relegated football team it's a city on the South Coast that is desperately trying to create a music scene, few bands have played down here that really grab your attention but there are a couple of venues that have managed to produce the goods over the past couple of years, one of them being the Wedgewood Rooms.
The support acts chosen for Hundred Reasons first tour with new label V2 were either very well picked or very badly picked, depends how you look at it, it seems to me they had done what many bands do nowadays, pick support that will make you look good and keep their amps turned down!
The first band on was Birmingham boys "Keiko" who just about managed to keep the half empty hall entertained long enough for me to realise I hadn't even spilled my pint yet, don't get me wrong, they weren't as bad as that sounds but just as your getting in to one of their songs it all changes and goes off beat, great if that's what your after but we here for Hundred Reasons not a rock/reggae experience. Second on the bill (and by this time the hall is starting to fill up) is "Stapleton", I'm going to have to be honest when I say I don't really remember a thing about the set, their music was missing the final punch and didn't appear to be very original, again, I'm sure they are a great band on their own night but when your supporting a band like Hundred Reasons they do draw a particular crowd, and it seemed to me this crowd wasn't really feeling Stapleton's "soft rock vibe".
Then, the reason this venue sold out so quickly….Hundred Reasons, at this point the amps were firmly stuck at full volume, the crowd was at its capacity and my beer, well it finally ended up all over the floor, my shoes, and probably the first two rows in front of me. They kicked it all off with "Broken Hands" which immediately made an impact on the crowd, as did the following song "I'll find you" which appeared to send everyone crazy, all you could see in front of the stage was a sea of arms, bobbing heads and converse trainers!
The set was a mixture of songs both old & new but the crowd pleasers seemed to be tracks of their first album "Ideas Above Our Station", they also played a few tracks from the new album (first for V2 records) "_Kill_Your_Own_" and you can tell from the reaction that people will be lining up to buy this album. If you own ANY of the Hundred Reasons Albums and you have not seen them live yet then you are in for a surprise, one of the bands that are defiantly 20x better then they are on CD, and if you like the CD as much as I do you have one heck of a show waiting for you! They encouraged people half way through the set to sign up to their Myspace page, having a little dig at the people who use it along the way "get your backpacks, hoodies and mix tapes at the ready!" states vocalist Colin "we need more friends!".
All in all I think it was an extremely successful gig offering everything you need from a live show, they just exude energy and passion from the first note until the last and it makes them a great live band.
For those of you who can't make it on this tour here is a set spoiler for you:
Broken Hands
Ill Find You
What you get Fucked
Feed the Fire
The Perfect Gash
Harmony
No Pissing About
The Chance
Answers
Drowning
Oreo
Live Fast Die Ugly
Kill Yourself
Falter
If I Could
(Encore)
Silver Cock
Breath Again and ill cut you!
Adam Prickett
Site - http://www.hundredreasons.com
