Coventry cathedral ruins may not be the most obvious of gig venues, but if there’s one band that can cope with such spectacular surrounds it is probably the Music.
After a four year absence the Music are back with ‘Strength In Numbers’, their third studio album and a record which you feel will either make or break the band. Since the NME love-in of their eponymous debut in 2002, when the Music were the epitome of cool, it hasn’t quite gone to plan for the band.
Follow-up ‘Welcome to the North’ was a better record; more balanced and thoughtful, but failed to sell in significant quantities or capture the imagination of the music buying public.
Coventry was the first night of a nationwide tour to promote the new record and from what was on display it seems the new material will continue down the path of increasingly compact – even poppy – songs. The most instantly appealing of the new tracks was probably ‘Drugs’ with its sky scraping chorus, however ‘The Spike’ and ‘No Weapon Sharper Than Will’ also sounded very promising.
The whole performance – new tracks and old favourites – was delivered with all the bristling intensity you would expect of a band like the Music and drew to a spectacular crescendo with ‘Getaway’ and ‘Bleed From Within’. Both are among the strongest in the band’s back catelogue, but the live arrangements were just perfect and a marked improvement on performances from a few years back.
It’s difficult to know exactly how well the new album will do in terms of sales – early backing from the likes of Radio 1 has been good – but on this evidence the Music intend to make a real go at it, whatever happens. Good on them.
Set-list:
1 Take The Long Road And Walk It
2 Spike
3 Freedom Fighters
4 Drugs
5 Jag Tune
6 Human
7 Fire
8 The Truth Is No Words
9 Strength In Numbers
10 Welcome To The North
11 No Weapon Sharper Than Will
12 The People
13 Get Through It
14 Getaway
15 Bleed From Within
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