Live Review :: Marsicans :: Academy 3, Manchester - Apr 6 2019

Live

Marsicans

Academy 3, Manchester

April 6 2019

Words/Photos: Jack McKinnell

For the fifth of their eight dates on their Abbie McCarthy's Good Karma Club tour, Marsicans hit the home of indie rock with a stop off in Manchester's fair city.

With a buzz nicely building in the crowd - who had earlier been warmed up by local bands Denova and Corella - the Leeds quartet took to the stage and bassist Rob Brander started by playing the bass with some nifty fretwork and showed off his vocal skills as the main backing singer, before an impressive display on both keyboard and guitar. Welcoming the crowd with “Hello, Manchester!” Brander had control of the crowd as he instructed a sea of more than willing teens to jump, sing and mosh.

As for those mosh pits, they were big and complicated, and being right in the centre of the room, it seemed like you couldn’t escape them. Teenagers not old enough to drink were engulfed by a sea of older teens, and got lost in the midst. The youth of the crowd was shown when inflatables were brought and thrown around in the crowd.

The bassist often shook his head violently throughout the gig, like a child trying to get rid of brain freeze. But it was far from cold in the compact room, with guitarist Oliver Jameson having to take his jacket off after the first song. The three guitarists controlled the stage, strutting around and swinging their guitars. Frontman James Newbigging looked comfortable playing both the guitar and bass, despite not saying too much to the crowd other than that the band were going to enjoy their days off between Manchester and Glasgow on the 11th.

They open with their latest banger ‘Your Eyes’, a song about trying to live up to other people's expectations as you become an adult, but no one seemed too bothered right now about being too 'grown up', as both band and crowd got into the swing of the song's harmony-laden, upbeat groove.

New song ‘Little Things’ which talks about being in love with a girl, shows a little softness to this group's "dirty pop" sound; however, the highlight of the show comes from their performances of the dreamy ‘Too Good’ and the buoyant ‘Throw Ourselves In’. With the songs coming back to back, the crowd were on a high. But Brander orchestrated the crowd to sing with him on the latter, and with voices screaming back “love” in the bridge, the room echoed to the sound and you could almost palpably feel the connection between band and fans. Brander stated that this song was a “love song for everybody”, and this was captured in their rainbow lighting.

Their constantly changing light effects - with a clever display where the band would disappear from stage as they stopped playing, to reappear less than a second later - kept the crowd excited, adding to the intensity of their performance.

As they come to the end of their set with the infectiously poppy 'Pop-Ups (Sunny at the Weekend)', a song which displays all their best in pop hooks, combined with energetic harmonies, for a band still only in their early 20s to have hundreds of people singing their songs back at them, you feel that this can only be the beginning of what’s to come for Marsicans.