Razorlight, a band who at the start of their epic rise to stardom were a welcome breath of fresh air injected into the ever increasing mediocrity of the recent indie scene. Johnny and co bounced onto the stage with their customary energy and it seemed many believed that this would be a high octane, ferocious performance that Razorlight fans are accustomed to.

It started explosively too with Vice, Dalston and Rock N Roll lies quickly following each other, with a new thickness previously unheard at Razorlight concerts. It sounded like Johnny truly believes that in order to succeed with now much heard material at the summer festivals, the band must evolve these tracks in order for them to sound fresh. And these new ideas seem to have gone down well with the crowd as Bright lights (a welcome surprise) showed, with Johnny controlling the stage with amazing presence and Andy really showing off his strong and effective drumming. The whole band seem more comfortable with their rising popularity and sound amazingly tight musically.

Unfortunately this technical brilliance and sheer raw sound didn’t seem to appear on the new tracks that appeared last night. ‘Caseys House’ was the first played, and was very commercially laid back in its nature with a mid tempo shuffle aspect to it. It didn’t have piercing melodies or complex Dylan-esque lyrics written for it and on this showing it does not bode well. Another new song played in the encore was a track apparently written the day before called ‘In the Morning’ but again this seemed to be toned down and powerless with no real memorable moments. The other new track played, ‘Stop’ (requested by a fan and apparently never played before) was much better; fitting in nicely between the best track of the night ‘Keep The Right Profile’ and a rare outing for ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’. It may concern some of you who know more than most about Razorlight that these two tracks (songs written some time ago and both used as B-sides) were definitely more entertaining and fruitful than any of the new material previewed tonight.

Do not get me wrong; all in all this concert was a positive warm up for their festival appearances and primarily Johnny, Bjorn, Carl and Andy all seemed very confident with tracks both old and new. Hits from ‘Up All Night’ came thick and fast and sounded impressively fresh. But the concerns across the venue seemed to be, will Razorlight up the stakes with their new album or will they fall, fall fall? From this performance the answer certainly hangs in the balance.

www.razorlight.co.uk

Alex Chapman