White Lies at the Apollo

What a great gig this was. For a number of reasons, some unexpected.

Ok so first up it was a lovely day. Perfect sunshine for an al fresco lunch. I visited an old friend in Bow who kindly invited me over for a barbecue - lots of delightfully cooked meat, which is particularly generous of him as he is a vegan. And great to see his family again. Never met his two year old son before - another legacy of Covid - been a long time since have visited them. Gareth and I took him for a little walk, which he quickly tired of, but rejected the pushchair in favour of a carry from uncle Mark! 

So, fortified by a fair amount of sparkling wine and Pimms I headed off to collect up my companion for the gig. Always a great pleasure to be able to take young Luka, not least for his musical expertise. I mean he actually plays guitar. Proficiently. See exhibit A from his concert: 

And he listens to a lot of new stuff. His music knowledge is prodigious for 17!

And we were meeting Pippa their, a partner at my firm with whom I go to a number of gigs - and we have seen White Lies together before. But the unexpected was meeting the brother of one of my mates with whom I had also been to a number of gigs. He thought he was coming to this on his own, but I just caught his eye across the still fairly empty auditorium and so we had a fair old chat and was able to introduce him to Luka and Pippa. Now Luka had already met his brother, and Pippa had been on a call with his brother in a professional capacity just the other week. So a real coincidence. And we all chatted away very happily until acts started, and between, and on way home. So that was an unexpected pleasure. Made the evening go by very quickly.

And another unexpected pleasure was the support act - a Glaswegian band called VLURE. I should perhaps say a mixed pleasure - they were good and bad in parts. Musically they were really good. One of the best "unknown" supports I had heard in ages.

Good and bad - the bad being the frontman, who we all separately disliked. Firstly as a vocalist he was pretty rubbish, but in addition his histrionics, which I am sure he thought of as showing passion, just came over as totally ridiculous

But in terms of playing ability I will bow to my young friend Luka who thought the brilliant one was the keyboardist, who looked liked a goth dressing for a cocktail party. Basically if you ignored the vocals of this band, the sound behind them was really very good.

Then onto White Lies. Now being a fan they were always going to please. And unlike my three companions I had acquired and played their new album a number of times so would have been content if they had mainly devoted the gig to showcasing their new works, but in fact a lot of the set consisted of old favourites, including starting up with Farewell to the Fairground, arguably their biggest song.

Also the gig benefited from a very good light show.

Lead singer and guitarist Harry McVeigh gave a good lesson in showing passion without VLURE's ridiculous posturing!

And the encore went with an extra bang of confetti and balloons over a very enthusiastic audience!