Leeds has an extraordinarily vibrant music scene, perhaps the most vibrant outside of London. Its music venues are frequently ranked amongst the best in the country and nearly every band touring in the UK makes at least one stop in this fair city, sometimes even two stops.
The idea that Leeds is The Music Lover’s City is most obvious when May Bank Holiday Weekend rolls around each year for this weekend is when the music lovers finally grasp control of the city during the spectacle that is Live at Leeds. 80% of the people you see running around the city centre are most probably going to be those in a rush to get from one end of the city to the other in order to see the most hotly tipped band this year. It sounds stressful, but it’s this rush that makes Live at Leeds so exciting. Plus, what better reason to head home for a bit of a rest the weekend before my dissertation was due in!
With an unrivalled number of acts in its seventh year, both big names and the local ones, it looked like the Saturday would be a busy one, with queues winding down the street from City Museum just to pick up wristbands. At that point, I’m sure pangs of fear shot through everyone that they might not get in to see the band they most wanted to see but it appears that the Live at Leeds gang have managed to streamline the experience and queues were moving at a decent speed. Plus, if the queue was too big, there was plenty else going on throughout the city at the same time.
Kicking off the day as I do most visits to Leeds with a trip to Nation of Shopkeepers, it was an encouraging sight to see the place buzzing with anticipation just after lunch time. I’m here to see Night Engines who were sold to me in the guide as a Talking Heads influenced, garish shirt wearing 4 piece. Channelling Davids Bowie and Byrne, they’re the perfect start to the day with their blend of foot tapping rhythms, hip shaking grooves and a lot of yelping. Managing to grab the attention of the notoriously apathetic early crowd who are just killing time until the bigger bands later on is no mean feat, but these guys certainly did that with some, albeit slightly dubious, style.
Deciding to stick around in the newly refurbished Nation of Shopkeepers, now feeling much more open in the stage half of the venue, to see On an On at 4, I waited with anticipation for Nadine Carina, a song writer from all over the land (half Italian, half Croatian, born in Switzerland and living in Liverpool) with a penchant for swooning and whirling melodies. Unfortunately, whether this was a sound problem or a crowd problem, I just couldn’t hear anything beyond the occasional grandiose finale to a track despite the persistent attempts of a few in the crowd to make everyone shut up. Luckily, no such problems exist for On an On who manage to dazzle the crowd with a mix of back-and-forth boy-girl-boy vocals and fuzzy riffs, main single The Hunter taking the crowd by the throat and leading them on a synth-driven trip through the sunshine.
With a brief bit of respite to grab a bite to eat, it’s up to Leeds Met for London Grammar, a band I had heard a lot about but never really heard; the packed out room a good sign of things to come. What we get is Florence Welch-esque soaring vocals alongside something which wouldn’t find out of place alongside Zero7 or Massive Attack’s back catalogue; a dark and brooding concoction made only more intriguing by the restrained drum and bass fuelled finale. What followed this was one of my most highly anticipated bands of the day, Wolf Alice, and rightly so. Although the room was nowhere near as the packed out as it was for London Grammar, perhaps not yet well known enough to fill a room like Leeds Met The Stage, they throw their scuzzy rock sound around into it fills every inch of the room, single Fluffy enrapturing the crowd with its balls to the walls ferocity. Even the softer songs, such as Bros, manage to keep the crowd in a headlock.
After a last minute cancellation for AlunaGeorge last year left me a tad disappointed (although it did mean I could head over to Leeds Met to see Savages on a whim who, at the time, I had never heard of but now can’t escape), they returned this year to place O2 Academy, ironically again at the same time as Savages. After finishing the BBC Sound of 2013 Poll in second place, it seems like this duo can take on anything, including a surprise cover Montell Jordan’s number one single This Is How We Do It. With a number of hit tracks under their belt, AlunaGeorge get the crowd moving, the whole place becoming one big party with Aluna Francis as our master of ceremonies leading us all in a merry dance. And boy can she dance, captivating the crowd as she glides across the huge Academy stage, taming the stage to her command.
All this seems, on paper, like the perfect warm up for what is to come next: Rudimental. Now, I don’t consider myself a drum and bass fan at all but, whack some brass over the top and get one of the most promising songwriters in pop to help you out (MNEK, an 18 year old guy from Lewisham that’s had his hand in the best The Saturday’s song All Fired Up and surprise number one for Duke Dumont and A*M*E, Need U 100%), and baby, you’ve got a stew going. It’s infectious and the gloriously sunny weather all day meant that the crowd were in the mood to be taken away on this equally sunny ride. Sure, some of the album tracks sounded a tad flat, but when they get to the likes of Not Giving In, inviting John Newman on stage who had been playing The Faversham earlier in the day, the crowd went wild to the sounds of, what is most likely going to be, the most used track on BBC inspirational idents replacing any Sigur Ros song ever (seriously, Festival and Hoppipolla are so overused now guys!).
As the crowds disperse, we decide to head over to the relatively quiet Faversham for MSMR, a two piece with soaring synth driven melodies and wonderfully gravelly vocals. Knocking through their singles, Hurricane and Fantasy, the wash of chillwave-y goth-pop akin to Zola Jesus with a touch of Wild Belle makes this a perfect end to a wonderful day, marred only by a few sound troubles here and there.
