Academy: Zuton Fever
On the 21st March, The Zutons played at the Birmingham Academy, suggested by Rich I witnessed one of the coolest bands around at the moment.
The Zutons, are from the city of culture (Liverpool) and they bring a kind of mixture of ska, country and indie rock, in much the same way as The Coral do, but they add much much more. The gig started off with a support band from the real city of culture, Birmingham. Misty’s Big Adventure hailing from the musical melting pot of Mosley (famously linked with UB40), brought a strange mix of music that can only be described as ska-jazz-hiphop-pop. They had a guy on stage who danced through most of the set wearing a red sleeping blanket with inflated blue rubber gloves hanging off, oh and his face was painted blue, he could have been the guy who didn’t quite make the Intel Pentium adverts!!
Next support, we had two supports were a huge difference, The Stands, reminding me more of Cast than anything else. They were joined for one track by Abi, the sexy sax player from The Zutons.
The crowd packed in as the Zutons swept onto the stage. We have never seen the Acadmey so lively or that full before. It was an electrifiy set, everyone knew the words. “You Will You Won’t” got everyone moving. Quite simply put The Zutons took the biggest stage they have played in Birmingham so far by storm, energy was pumping out throughout the room and the whole band seemed genuinly thankful during the encore. The hit “Confusion”, which has been used on a Peugot car advert, got the crowd swaying. “Don’t Ever Think” was short but to the point everyone joined the band with the arms. The crowd were alloed to sing some parts of some songs, which made it feel more like a stadium than anything else.
Hard to find a best bit of the night, but at £2.20 for a bottle of much needed water, the price of the drinks was the only thing wrong with the night. It was a truely energetic set and bigger things must be coming for this hard working and talented bunch of Liver-folk.