08 November 2012 (gig)
08 November 2012
Fast becoming one of the biggest names in the UK rock scene, Twin Atlantic have had no difficulty selling out Manchester Academy. With Charlie Simpson in tow this is the largest headline date the band has played.
Charlie Simpson made his name with Busted and Fightstar, tonight however he’s playing material from his solo album ‘Young Pilgrim’. He’s brought along with him a backing band that includes Elliot Minor vocalist Alex Davies and he arrives amid a mixture of cheers and boos. It’s clear that the boos are because his past boyband fame but it’s clear that this has been left behind as he plays a set of mature folk.
The band is tight and provides harmonies that complement Simpson’s vocals adding an extra level to these songs that isn’t there on his recordings. ‘Parachutes’ and ‘Farmer & His Gun’ have a large portion of the audience singing along and a big cheer spreads when he breaks into a Fightstar-esque scream during set closer ‘Riverbanks’.
2012 has been a big year for Twin Atlantic, building on the success of their recent album ‘Free’, they have seen their music used in the Stratos jump and made several high profile festival appearances. But tonight’s sold out show has got to be a high point. As the Scottish quartet arrive on stage the cheering almost drowns out ‘Time For You To Stand Up’ and it quickly becomes evident that soon this band will have outgrown even this large venue.
Tracks like ‘Edit Me’ and ‘Dreamember’ sound huge and everyone dons a Scottish accent to join frontman Sam McTrusty in singing. With no expense spared, the band play in front of an impressive lighting rig rather than a standard backdrop and large balloons are thrown into the crowd towards the end.
They wrap up with the anthemic ‘Free’ and the band has barely left stage before the inevitable chants for an encore fire up. McTrusty returns to the stage to express how much it means to the band that they can play to this amount of people. He doesn’t need to say it though because the emotion is plain to see when the whole venue sings every word ‘Crash Land’.
There’s no doubt that 2013 holds even bigger things for Twin Atlantic and on the evidence of tonight’s show, no band deserves it more.
