Photos by Celia Medina
Newcastle’s Utilita Arena is filled to the brim with indie kids eager to sing and dance along to the programme of the evening; Day We Ran, The K’s, and indie legends The Kooks.
Australian indie outfit Day We Ran open the night strongly with soaring vocals and some great guitar lines. New to our ears, they got our interest peaked with an enigmatic live performance and have had us listening to singles ‘Foaming’ and latest ‘Snake With a Bone’ on repeat since our introduction. They’ll undeniably be hitting the spot for fans of 50 Seconds Of Summer.
We were not unfamiliar with the second support, The K’s have been a part of our indie anthems playlists since the release of ‘Sarajevo’, however there’s not been a single since to meet the expectations of such a hard-hitting banger. The boys did loosen up throughout their performance and had most of the audience in the palm of their hand as they all seemed to be of the age to get completely engulfed by indie guitar bands which made for a wonderful atmosphere. Six members, three guitars, a stand in drummer and a young, adoring fanbase, made for a good warmup for The Kooks!
As soon as The Kooks hit the first notes, those of us in our twenties and above were transformed back to 2008 when they released anthem after anthem, and they treated us to a set list filled with them. Singer Luke Pritchard moved and bounced about on stage as if he was still in his twenties and sang like it too, singles such as ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’ and ‘Bad Habit’ received a warm welcome and ‘Westside’ launched us into the disco part of the evening, followed by soaring pop release ‘Sweet Emotion’. A healthy dose of guitar shredding and all the ingredients for a hopeless romantic’s heart to start pounding a little faster made for an incredible and memorable evening.
The Kooks made time for introspection too with a heartfelt intro and rendition of ‘See Me Now’, ahead of which Pritchard shared a story about losing his dad when he was three years old and now being a dad of a three year old himself, “music is the healer” was the quote that stuck by us. Then came my all time favourite, that quite instantly brought tears to my eyes and a massive smile to my face; ‘Seaside’, which Luke performed solo. Near the end we could all feel the weight of the week weigh down on us, until the band kickstarted their encore with all-time favourites ‘Ooh La’ to end on an enormous high with ‘Naïve’. A thrill of excitement roared through the arena and gave us all that last hit of energy we needed ahead of us all heading back to our day-to-day lives. An evening that could’ve never lasted long enough had refuelled our tanks and memory banks, and for that we owe The Kooks.
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