October Drift’s tour in support of their new single Blame The Young, the first fruits of their forthcoming third album, called in at a sold-out Trades Club in Hebden Bridge on Wednesday night.
It’s probably a horrible word to use to describe a band but October Drift are reliable. Their live shows are guaranteed to be an uplifting experience, the energy in the room generated by the band’s performance impossible to resist, the intensity of the way the band leave nothing on stage at the end of the night exhilarating to behold and the full-on in your face power of each and every song giving you little time to stop and reflect.
They’re one of the most consistently entertaining live bands around and after two albums, with a third on its way, the response of the two hundred and fifty people crammed into the country’s finest small venue, taking the chorus and riffs from the band and singing them as their own as if we were in a cavernous arena, is a joy to behold as we stand at the side and survey it. From seasoned veterans going back to their early days as The Darlingtons, to the locals who posted on social media they’d brought thirteen October Drift virgins and deflowered them all, the audience is morphed into one.
The only two moments of introspection are at the start as Kiran performs Ever After in the crowd and at the end as he and Chris and their coopted audience backing band sing the aching poignant Like The Snow We Fall. In between are fourteen songs, taken from their two albums Forever Whatever and I Don’t Belong Anywhere, that aim high and hit the target every time making it feel like they’ve condensed down a stadium-size sound and ambition to fit this room. The audience respond in kind.
Kiran’s out in the crowd, climbing on tables, stage diving, fans climb on shoulders, something rarely seen here, and conducting the singalong of Forever Whatever. Dan and Alex throw themselves around the stage, lost in the moment while Chris is the conductor at the back, dictating the pace and driving these songs into the moment where they explode in choruses that fill the room and threaten to raise the roof as well as the temperature.
With two albums and a third on the way October Drift have songs to fill their seventy five minute set without any mid set lull or drop off. New single Blame The Young and unreleased new song Hollow possess the unmistakeable October Drift DNA, a progression rather than a revolution, and leave with the promise that album three will be a step up. But for tonight it’s the likes of Airborne Panic Attack, Come And Find Me, Forever Whatever and Oh The Silence that complete the set where October Drift lay down their marker in front of an adoring audience - bold, unashamedly ambitious in scale and fusing their influences into their own musical vision.
October Drift played Ever After, Lost Without You, Losing My Touch, Cherry Red, Don’t Give Me Hope, Hollow, Blame The Young, Webcam Funerals, Waltzer, Bleed, Insects, Airborne Panic Attack, Come And Find Me, Forever Whatever, Oh The Silence and Like The Snow We Fall
October Drift's official website can be found here. They are also on Facebook and Twitter.
Their tour continues at Edinburgh Mash House (April 25), Aberdeen Tunnels (26), Scunthorpe Cafe Indiependent (27), Nottingham Bodega (29), Oxford The Bullingdon (30), Aldershot West End Centre (May 1), Southampton Joiners (2) and Paris Supersonic (24).________________________________
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