Live Review :: Red Rum Club :: O2 Academy, Liverpool - Oct 28 2017

Live 

Red Rum Club

O2 Academy, Liverpool 

October 28 2017

Words: Jane Davies

Pictures: Red Rum Club, Thomas Adam

It’s quite an achievement for emerging bands to shift up a gear from a small club to something like the 02 Academy. Sometimes they aspire too early, resulting in an embarrassingly small audience, just to put “We played the Academy” on their musical CV. This was not the case for Liverpool’s Red Rum Club who took their rightful place on stage as headliners in front of a near capacity audience. It was a pivotal moment for the six piece alt rockers who have spent most of 2017 playing gigs outside their home city, spreading the word far and wide.

Local young punks, Generation had succeeded in whipping up an already animated audience in readiness for the main event. Frontman Dean Carne fulfilled a childhood ambition to crowd surf which made for a few tense moments until he was safely delivered back to the main stage.

Since Little Indie last reviewed Red Rum Club back in January, their sound has evolved significantly, going down a more American country route, more TexMex now than Killers. ‘Calexico Girl’ with its strong Latino feel headed up with lots of “ay ay ays “and a predominant brass presence really got the O2 rocking. The lively ‘Casanova’ maintained the Latino tempo and brought even more brass to the party. In contrast, they did not completely forget their own roots with their latest single, ‘Friend Of A Friend’ carrying the infectious line, “who are you?” which was duly chanted back by the audience; the sort of chant you would expect at a football match. Coincidentally, RRC are very proud to have made the match day playlist at Liverpool FC with this very song. As the set progressed and lead vocalist Fran Doran swayed more energetically, the audience responded more vocally; some got up on the shoulders of willing friends to get a better view.

Each song met with huge cheers and applause. The trumpet playing of Joe “the blow”; intrinsic to the band’s originality and identity, at times was swallowed up to an extent by the large and impressive guitar section when not playing an introduction or solo which was a shame. Full credit to lead vocalist Fran whose voice successfully contended with the huge sound that is Red Rum Club.

Red Rum Club’s anthem ‘Would You Rather Be Lonely?’ finished a flawless and slick set which lead to relentless chants of “We want Rum” until they returned to play an unprecedented two encores with a bit of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack thrown in for good measure. This Halloween weekend gig had not delivered any nasty surprises or bumps in the night apart from three members of the audience dressed as the Ghostbusters, who danced nonstop and luckily didn’t unleash any ghosts or gremlins within the venue.

The bar was raised this evening and the Scouse Americana rockers comfortably soared above it and probably drank it dry afterwards.....