Thus Love continued their relentless touring schedule with a packed out show at Salford's White Hotel on Saturday night with a set taken from their two albums to date Memorial and last year's All Pleasure in front of an appreciative crowd. Support came from heavily-backed newcomers Ain't.
Ain't claim in their bio to be "channelling the stranger end of 90's guitar music", a claim that they spend half an hour backing up across seven songs on Saturday night. With just three singles to their name - Oar and Teething from their debut 7" single and Pirouette released just a few days earlier - they've built up a substantial momentum of press acclaim already, but that alone is nothing if you can't do it when it matters in front of a curious crowd that will be their harshest and most relevant judge.
Ain't pass the test with flying colours. With Hanna centre-stage delivering a vocal that wraps itself around those guitar sounds that come from the heavier end of the 90s if not the strangest, they hold the audience's attention and as the set progresses you sense them warming to songs like Long Short Round that feels familiar because of the aforementioned influences, but which has a personality of theirs that connects in the here and now as fuzzy, almost distorted guitars clash with ethereal vocals and soar off into the stratosphere. As they finish with Pirouette, the receptive audience show their appreciation and Ain't prove there's much more to them than what's been written about them.
Thus Love are the perfect band for this venue - both outsiders in a world that's increasingly veering towards the straight and narrow confines of conservative conformity - the band threatened by their home country's anti-woke crusade, the venue by two councils' pursuit of building large high-rise apartment blocks ignorant of the cost to the cultural fabric that's at the beating heart of their city's identity.
The sound is perfect. We can hear every single nuance in the fourteen songs. Echo Mars' voice drips with the emotional depth that comes with their lived experiences, the expanded version of the band freeing them from the confines a trio often has to become a compelling band leader. Ally Juleen, who joined on bass in 2023, is much more visual an artist than predecessor Nathaniel van Osdol and the interaction between Ally and Echo, often leaning back to back, one tilting into the other, makes you feel the connection they have on stage. The addition of Shane Blank on synths and guitars broadens the palette of the songs, giving the songs from debut Memorial more light and shade and bringing the more expansive vision of its follow-up All Pleasure to life. At the back drummer Lu holds everything together and drives the songs along with power and moments of subtlety that give the songs their edge.
They go big from the start. They open with Repetitioner, the song that rightly saw them playlisted at 6 Music and which first piqued our interest and then take us on a winding journey through the two records, interspersed with the between album singles Put On Dog and Centrefield that act as a bridge between them and a brand new song 2am that Echo performs solo at the start of the encore.
Highlights come from both records, but in truth the set never drops once across the fourteen songs. Memorial's Inamorato, Pith And Point and In Tandem have the same urgent qualities three years on that make them perpetual earworms, whilst Birthday Song, On The Floor and main set closer Lost In Translation. They finish on Family Man, as urgent and thrilling as ever, before bidding us farewell. They might be playing their forty-fifth gig of the year, heading to the UK after a long tour in Europe, but they have so much energy that you wouldn't know they've spent the past two months sleeping on floors and travelling around in a van.
The audience love them, it's refreshing to be at a show where everyone's focus is on the band rather than their phones or their conversation, but Thus Love have that ability to force you to pay attention, drawn in by their music and the way they look on stage, a perfect alternative rock antidote to the increasing pressure within the music industry to look and behave a certain way to get success.
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