We celebrate our Sunday evening at Newcastle’s Boiler Shop with emerging indie rock outfit Crystal Tides and indie greats The Hoosiers!
The Portsmouth-based band that open the night have a most memorable stage presence and bring an incredible amount of energy to the stage. They seem to be born to tear down stages all across the country and do so with ever infectious indie rock bangers that wouldn’t sound out of place in arenas. Rumbling drums, exhilarating riffs and five band members that are giving it their all make Crystal Tides a joy to watch and the perfect band to open the night for The Hoosiers.
As soon as the English pop rock greats we have been eager to see for years now enter the stage a breath of excitement rolls through Boiler Shop. The Hoosiers don’t seem to have aged a day and have clearly missed the stage and their audience as they announce “we’ve missed you”, and that’s mutual. Their adoration for their music, their audience, and the stage carries throughout the venue, all the way to the bar at the very end of the long rectangle building, and they haven’t even played any of their hits yet… Yet for those hits we do not have to wait long, their setlist for tonight’s event is one of dreams. The setlist is a perfect mix of new material and well-known hit singles, with brand new bangers such as ‘Idaho’ and ‘Lip Sinking’ of their new album ‘Confidence’, all the ones most of the audience has come for; ‘Stop Giving Me Choices’, ‘Worried About Ray’, ‘Cops and Robbers’, and we end in an all-time high with ‘Goodbye Mr. A’!
Vocalist Irwin Sparkes, who formed the band in 2003 together with drummer Alan Sharland, shares his incredible vocal range with his audience and makes me do a double take – checking to see if that is really just a man’s voice – multiple times. Their synth-driven indie rock is as infectious as anything and gets its edge from simple yet tasty guitar licks. On their new album they hone in on the confidence gained over the years, gone is the self-consciousness of the dog days around their second album, in its place a determination to lock back in to the freedom and joy of the early days!
The band are smiles all throughout the night and bring their eager audience a tight performance without faffing about. In contrast to American band We Are Scientists, The Hoosiers keep their stage banter to a minimum, and it shows that a great band builds a bond with their audience through their music and not their jokes. They’re a tight bunch that are clearly enjoying their time on stage and by the end of the night the entire audience is beaming which simply leaves a delicious aftertaste.
The night is exactly long enough, the band played all of the songs we came to hear and ticked all of our boxes. They surpassed our expectations since we didn’t have many, there’s only so much a hit machine can do after a hiatus of about five years, but The Hoosiers have clearly made use of their hiatus and have returned with renewed energy that makes us want to listen to their new album ‘Confidence’ on repeat. Newcastle is still a tough nut to crack when it comes to getting people to buy tickets to live events, which was adamant again tonight, but The Hoosiers, their team, and Boiler Shop showed that there is still so very much to give and gain from live music and we should all cherish that, hold on tight and never let go. The Hoosiers were also once a small band no one had heard of, and if people hadn’t bought tickets to see them then, they would not have ended up playing Boiler Shop tonight!
musicforthemisfits.com 