Live - Hard Fi - Price of Wales
Last Thursday there was a little bit of England in St Kilda. One of the best British bands of the past few years, Hard Fi, were playing at the Prince Of Wales Bandroom to promote their new album Once Upon a Time in The West (OUATITW).
It was my first time going upstairs in the Prince so it was all a bit new to me and was quite excited to finally have a look at it. I was impressed as soon as I walked through the doors. I love arena concerts; generally, with big groups that’s the only time your going to see them live but you can’t beat a room off a pub to give that intimate feeling. The band room is just the right size that even when the place was heaving it still felt like a small and intimate gig!
The support band, Amy Meredith, came on at about 9.45 and played for 30 mins – a good warm up act getting the crowd worked up nicely for the main event. The
night went a little downhill from there..
For some reason the band had requested that no cameras be allowed, which seemed a bit rude to me and a few others who tried to take sneaky photos and promptly got a talking to from the bouncers and security. Then came the waiting and the waiting, and the waiting and then a little bit more waiting for the band. There was a 45-minute wait between the support band finishing and Hard Fi making their appearance. This seemed far too long, people all around us were getting restless and so were we, we needed the bathroom but didn’t want to lose our spots are the front and the band room was now nicely filled so movement in any direction became difficult
Eventually, around 11pm the lights dimmed and on they ran! The crowd went wild and the good times began! From the moment they came out on stage there was a constant wave of energy pouring out of the band, even before the end of the first song, Gotta Reason, the sweat was pouring off them all. The songs flew fast and thick and showed no sign of relenting; it was just high-energy stuff, with a break small enough to grab a swig of water before going straight into the next one.
They covered a lot of ground in the hour they were on stage, flitting back and forth between their first album, Stars of CCTV and OUATITW. One of the great things about Hard Fi songs is their sing-a-long value and this really shows when in a live environment, highlights were Suburban Knights, Television, Cash Machine and We Need Love – if only for the fact that the starting line mentions my home town of Birmingham! The encore started with the much calmer, Tonight, which was done with minimum accompaniment and with the crowd singing along as well gave it quite a haunting gospel sound, which in the end helped portray the mood of the song.
The relaxed atmosphere didn’t last though, the rest of the encore was made up of their more well known hits off the Stars Of CCTV album, ending with their own uber-track Living For The Weekend, this is easily their most popular song and got a huge response when the first notes started. Personal highlight was when Richard Archer jumped down from the stage and gave everyone in the front row a chance to sing with him, it was great, even if it was only “Going out tonight”.
The fun finished around midnight and it was time to go home, the gig seemed to go on a lot longer, but all good things…etc, fell asleep with a good ringing in my ears, always a sign of a good gig.
The band said they hoped to be back in Melbourne early next year if the new album does well, so go and buy One Upon a Time in the West and you might get a chance to see them for yourself.
Click here to go to their MySpace page.
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timmeyboy
said ages ago