PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight was the first night of Australian band Tracer’s first UK headlining tour. They were in the UK last late last year supporting Royal Republic, and are now back. It’s impressive – less than six months ago they were the support band at the Underworld, but now they’re headlining the Islington academy, a larger venue and selling over 600 tickets – a pretty impressive and rapid rise in popularity, which is primarily down to the strength and quality of their music.
Tonight opens with Sheffield band Littlecrazy. Surprisingly given the number of bands I listen to with female singers, I hadn’t heard of Littlecrazy before, but they certainly made a good impression with their indie influenced rock.
Right from the start they surprised people – having two female backing dancers with them on stage, something not seen that often in rock gigs. In some of the songs though the dancers stopped dancing and switched to their other roles – backing vocals, with one also playing the keyboards.
The bands singer, Sofire had a good voice and strong stage presence, and like the rest of the band looked to be enjoying herself on stage. The band put in a good performance and went down well with the crowd. Definitely a band I’ll be keeping an eye out for in the future.
Tonights main event though was Tracer. On stage at an earlier than normal 8.30 they were playing to a large crowd, and got a great reception as soon as they came on. Tracer play great music which is best described as a blend of 90s stoner rock and 70s hard rock. The album (Spaces in betweeen) is great and well worth buying but in a live setting you get a whole load more energy and power. This young trio really put in a powerful performance with bassist Leigh Brown in particular constantly leaping around, headbanging and generally putting more energy into his performance than seems possible.
Guitarist Michael Brown handles vocals for most of the songs and has a defite Chris Cornell sound to his voice, and he does a great job with both vocals and guitar tonght.
Watching the band perform it’s clear that their rapid growth in popularity over the last few months isnt going to end any time soon – this is a band that’s going to be playing bigger and bigger venues with each trip to the UK.
If you havent listened to Tracer yet then check them out on Youtube and then buy the album. If you’re in Sheffield you’ve still got time to catch them playing at The Plug tomorrow (Saturday) night – the final date on their current tour.
Hopefully it won’t be long before Tracer are back on another tour.
A great night of music – both bands put in a great performance and went down well, but Tracer were simply superb on the night.
Tracer setlist:
The bitch
Devil ride
Wrecking ball
Louder than this
Don’t forget my name
Samurai
Voice in the rain
Spaces
Son of a gun
Walk alone
Encore:
Won’t let it die
Too much
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