Nothing But Thieves: Rock City, Nottingham, Broken Machine Tour — Review
Nothing But Thieves are showing once again why they are one of the nation’s fastest rising rock talents, as they complete their schedule for the UK this winter before embarking on a European tour.
After having some early success with EP releases, the band charged onto the national scene in 2015 with an outstanding self-titled debut album featuring break out hits “Ban All The Music”, “Trip Switch”, and my personal favourite, “Itch”. They followed that up this year with an equally impressive second album, “Broken Machine”, and on Friday (10/11/2017) I saw them on their eponymous tour at Rock City in Nottingham.
The band opened with “I’m Not Made by Design”, a thrilling number epitomising the band’s style: tension building guitar riffs combined with a precise, dramatic percussion build up followed by an overwhelming crescendo of sound. It still amazes me how lead singer Conor Mason manages to maintain a seemingly impossible trinity of insane power, stunning accuracy and a beautiful tone with his vocals. One almost gets the feeling that even if he hadn’t reached fame with his band, he could be a huge artist in his own right.
Partway in, I noticed a slight crowd lull for “Soda”, but I think that spoke more about the crowd not being able to keep up with the band’s seemingly endless supply of energy than it did of any deterioration in quality of sound or disengagement with the music: as soon as the crowd had rested and the drums kicked into the next song, the energy of the whole room shot up again.
Towards the end of the gig, Mason was left alone on stage by the rest of the band — “I’ve got you all to myself now” he cheekily joked to the crowd, before beginning an acoustic cover of the late Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’”, a heartfelt tribute to one of his personal musical inspirations. Managing to capture the emotion of Petty’s vocals, whilst maintaining the distinctive high register of his own, was an impressive feat which had the whole crowd singing along. Mason followed up with another acoustic solo of “Hell, Yeah”, one of the band’s slower, more melancholy songs, before the rest of the group joined him again for the final few numbers.
The band opened their encore with “Particles”, their newest single release which opens with an ominous, thudding bassline, then once again the band build up to a huge wall of sound and Mason lets rip with a passionate, pained chorus: “If I need to rearrange my particles, I will for you.” The last song, “Amsterdam”, a raucous, thrilling track which mostly cuts the slow build up of many of the band’s other hits and goes straight into a frantic frenzy. As the band walked off stage for the last time, there was a sense of satisfaction in the crowd. Nothing But Thieves had blown the roof off the place but at the same time played a set which seemed complete and didn’t draw to a premature close.
Overall, the gig was a thrilling set of music with an ecstatic atmosphere, perhaps aided by the fact that with only two albums to choose from, the band didn’t leave any hits out. If Nothing But Thieves continue writing and performing in this vein it won’t be long before they reach the upper echelons of British music.
Article: Alex West
Editor: Alex West
