Sound City 2023 moves from the city centre for Saturday and Sunday’s line up to the new venue of Mountford Hall and Stanley Theatre. With the move comes the ability for the festival to have a more concentrated and focused place to allow the acts to shine.
First up was Deco on the Stanley theatre stage. Deco has become one of the UK’s most fascinating viral pop acts. With an ability to create classic songs, they fuse contemporary elements with their love for 80s synth-pop. Their energy and passion on stage is clear to see but it’s the obvious enjoyment they get from performing that stands out the most.
With songs like ‘Nice car’, ‘Everybody Wants to be somebody else’ and an 80’s version of ‘Bitter sweet symphony’ it’s easy to see how the band have become so popular in such a short space of time. Their final song of the set was ‘Rain’. A song with an immediate hook and that has crowd participation very much at the forefront of appeal. Deco are a band that every festival goer or 80’s music lover needs to experience.
Over on the Mountford Hall stage, The Royston club. The 4 piece from Wales have been doing superbly well in selling out venues on their own headline tour and it’s easy to see why. Lead singer Tom Faithfull warms up the crowd very quickly with his sublime vocals and enthusiasm. The faithful crowd singing along to every song and getting louder as the set goes on. Songs like ‘Shallow Tragedy’, ‘Mrs Narcissistic’ and ‘Mariana’ set the stage for what is to come from the next 3 acts.
And then onto the big 3. The K’s are a band that haven’t released an album yet but you would never have guessed that from the support of the audience especially when it came to ‘Hoping Maybe’. A song that covers a sense of longing for someone that we do not yet know but yearn for their love and support. Blending “Girls just want to have fun” before going into it didn’t fool anyone either. They knew that hoping maybe was coming.
I think that the genuine joy visible from each member of the band at being able to perform with such an embracing crowd only adds to the popularity of this band. Up the K’s!!
Former busker Dylan John Thomas is the penultimate act for the evening and he doesn’t disappoint. At only 24, he already seems a master of the stage and everybody seems to know every last lyric of his songs. At only 30 mins (the same as the rest of the acts before him) his set seems to go even quicker than most. He seamlessly moves from one song to another. From a cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of fire’ through to ‘Fever’ and ‘Nobody else’ and ‘Feel the fire’ every song has classic written all over it. I can see him headlining many festivals very soon.
The Reytons are a band that need to be seen live. With their obvious comparison to the Arctic Monkeys, the Rotherham based band have amassed a large and faithful following that saw their album going to number 1 in the charts even though the band are still unsigned! This, coincidently, was their first live gig since the album knocked Taylor Swift off the top spot.
This was a powerhouse performance that tested the physical and vocal endurance of the crowd. Its songs like ‘Low Life’ and ‘On the Back Burner’ that give lead singer Johhny Yerrell the chance to stretch his vocal prowess, and that have the crowd stretching theirs too.
When it came to an encore there basically was no encore. Johnny decided he couldn’t be bothered with going off and back on and there was a bottle of Jameson’s waiting backstage with his name on it.
Ending the set with ‘Kids off the estate’ only further cemented The Reytons’ ferociousness and the bands’ ability to write and perform songs that could one day eclipse those of the Arctic Monkeys.