VLURE returned to Manchester for the first time in a year to the Deaf Institute to deliver a high-energy set that mixed old favourites with some sparkling new songs to a euphoric crowd.
There's something special about a VLURE show, a real sense of community and joy that only those who attend will understand. It doesn't matter what you look like, how old you are, who you love, there's a coming together as one the moment the ecstatic beats that drive their songs kick in. Hamish is both a man possessed, lost in the music but also an unassuming gentle giant who is more likely to hug you than threaten you as he stands shirtless singing inches from your face. He's joined out in the crowd by Conor for the finale This Is Not The End and the room feels like one amorphous mass from the cool kids stood at the bar to the sweaty men who've jumped around at the front for forty-five minutes.
There's new songs in the set as you'd expect and demand from them - a debut VLURE album is well overdue but of course like all bands at that stage in their career finances dictate that it's a major outlay that the income from the industry alone barely covers. Those new songs - Fear, Feels Like Heaven and one that they don't introduce - possess the enthralling magical power of the more familiar songs around them in the set which many bands lose once the first thrills of being in a band wear off.
Opener Heartbeat, following an instrumental backing track accompanied by Carlo's imperious drumming, still has that wall-shaking power of their earliest shows as do Show Me How To Love and Shattered Faith. More recent singles Cut It and This Fantasy map out their development as a band and make ever more sense as a bridge between the older and brand new songs. It's only as we wander home at the end that we realise they've dropped both debut single Desire and the magical Euphoria as a statement that they're not standing still.
The magic that makes VLURE such a unique proposition is the way in which they fuse electronic dance music with the more traditional guitar and drums approach of many of their contemporaries to create a sound that manages to sound both unique yet accessible. Whether you're throwing yourself around at the front or standing at the back watching everyone is included, drawn in and welcome in their world.
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