
Would you like your All-American Rejects a little darker, or your Placebo a little brighter? Perhaps you’d like a touch of Band of Skull’s melancholy or the gloss of an Andreas Johnson hit thrown in for good measure? Well then you’ll have a fairly good idea of the musical territory that Morning Parade are exploring at the Scala this evening. It’s a consciously epic, radio-friendly sound that will likely appeal to fans of Elbow and post-Holy Bible Manic Street Preachers , as well as aficionados of the Stereophonics circa Language. Sex. Violence. Other?.
It certainly hits its mark tonight. The band plays a confident set to a very enthusiastic, receptive audience that fills this multi-storey nightclub with cheers and roars from all angles and corners. The first half of the show is catchy and solid, but it’s not until Morning Parade strike up for the oldest song in tonight’s set, A&E, that the performance really springs to life. Perhaps it’s a personal anthem or the band’s earliest manifesto, but a compelling unity between the members of Morning Parade materializes at this point and the stage is transformed by full-on rock theatrics.
The Hammer Horror intro of Your Majesty follows and gives the music a welcome edgier dimension. This reviewer for one would like to see a bit more of this grit, spit and sneer in the band’s repertoire, but it would be churlish to kick any mud into the path that Morning Parade are so competently forging towards a crowd pleasing late night slot on the main stage at V festival.
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