The Slow Readers Club brought their A Decade Of Cavalcade tour to Newcastle University on Thursday night. Performing their breakthrough second album in full followed by a set of hits from across the rest of their career, they delighted a dedicated audience and reminded us of the magic of the album that took the long road to breaking them.
When Cavalcade was released in April 2015 The Slow Readers Club were a brilliant thrilling band known only to a fortunate small band of followers. They launched it at Academy 3 in Manchester, their biggest headline show to date at that time, and it's kind of fitting that they finish this tour a couple of hundred metres further down Oxford Road in the main room of the Academy on Saturday night. If anyone had projected the trajectory they'd taken since then on that night, answers would range from surprise at the way an unsigned and unsupported band would progress to universal agreement that it is fully deserved.
Cavalcade did a lot of heavy lifting for the band before its follow-up Build A Tower came in and strode into the top twenty like it was its natural home. It was with some pride we named it Even The Stars album of the year in 2015. Full of singles that slowly but surely swelled the band's popularity - Forever In Your Debt, Don't Mind, Start Again, I Saw A Ghost and Plant The Seed - as well as crowd favourites and potential singles Fool For Your Philosophy, Grace Of God, Here In The Hollow - the album won friends wherever it went. Included among those were Jim Glennie and Saul Davies of James and when connections were made, The Slow Readers Club were invited to support James on their Girl At The End Of The World tour, an opportunity that took Cavalcade to a much wider audience who fell in love with it.
For the forty-five minutes of tonight's set we're reminded why. Whilst the second half of the set is sort of the greatest hits section, its the Cavalcade set that feels like one too as The Slow Readers Club remind us of the consistent brilliance of the record, a high bar that arguably they've not reached again across an album despite the plethora of huge anthemic singalong singles and stirring album tracks that have retained those that joined the ride on the James tour and since. Played in order, I Saw A Ghost and Forever In Your Debt revel in being revealed earlier in the set, whilst the likes of Don't Mind, Days Like This Will Break Your Heart and Secrets, now consigned to being played at home such is the strength of their full body of work, enjoy their moment in the limelight reminding us that Cavalcade us more than the singles that were its calling card.
The visuals the band have introduced this tour add to the effect of these songs and whilst the sound isn't helped by the University's low ceiling and the right hand speaker being placed on the other side of a big post than most of the audience, the effect is powerful. Aaron jokes after Grace Of God that one of the reasons they don't play that and Here In The Hollow together any more is that they're the hardest songs to sing, but such is the power and range in his voice no one is able to tell.
After a small break they return and head straight into Technofear from this year's Out Of A Dream album. The line between the Cavalcade songs through the second half of the set is one that's in plain sight. The Slow Readers Club proudly trade in these big anthemic songs written by "angry old men" rather than the "angry young men" of Cavalcade and the two debut album tracks Block Out The Sun and Feet On Fire and they run through a choice selection of them. All I Hear, Everything I Own, The Wait and Boy So Blue give a quick precis of what they've done in the intervening years, whilst Build A Tower's trio of You Opened Up My Heart, On The TV and the set-closing Lunatic threaten to steal the show from their older brother, but don't quite manage to barge it out of the limelight despite the crowd's enthusiastic reaction as the set moves to its conclusion, once a medical episode in the crowd is thankfully swiftly resolved.
Tonight was a beautiful reminder of an album that changed the world for a band simply through how good it is, a record that won the hearts of those that stumbled across it when the band's most effective marketing strategy was word of mouth. It's deservedly getting the recognition ten years on for the work it did in establishing The Slow Readers Club and a celebration of the outsider winning against the odds.
The tour continues at Glasgow Oran Mor (December 12) and Manchester Academy 1 (13).
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