Gossip at Olympia, Liverpool
As festival season draws to a close, bands have begun flooding back to the cities to play shows. Tonight, Gossip make their way to Liverpool to play a show at Olympia for the first night of their UK tour. With Glasgow up and comers, Dead Pony, in support, it's set to be a fun night of music to bring the week to a close.
Coming all the way from Glasgow to kick things off we have the mighty, Dead Pony. These guys have been running up and down the country playing festivals and shows. Tonight is their final show of the summer. Starting off with a cover of The Prodigy’s 'Voodoo People' before diving head first into their own material, it's clear that Dead Pony are here to have a good time. This is a high energy set from start to finish, something the crowd maybe weren’t expecting or ready for. Vocalist, Anna Shields is once again on top form, as she dances across the stage rarely staying in one spot for too long. Her performance is as strong as ever and oozes confidence, making for an exciting and eye-catching performance.
The exciting thing about Dead Pony is they don’t stick to one specific genre, which makes them the perfect band to fit into support slots across various tours. Although, this being said, that doesn’t take away from the fact that they may be relatively new to the scene, they’ve worked hard to make a name for themselves and have built themselves quite the fanbase. Their huge choruses are catchy, the music is energetic and sounds fresh and exciting, and their live performance is hard to beat. Whilst the band put everything into their performance, the crowd doesn’t quite seem as keen to get involved and that's through no fault of the band, it's simply because it's an older crowd here tonight.
Tonight's headline act is Gossip. Following, a huge performance at All Points East Festival and a headline set at Glastonbury, Gossip are back and bringing their iconic sound with them. Formed in Arkansas over 20 years ago, the band have seen huge success across the years despite taking a break for a short while. Fronted by the iconic Beth Ditto, the band are best known for their straight talking music which is never scared to tackle topics ranging from politics and cultural issues to discussion of gender and sexuality. Tonight they bring this to the stage in front of a packed out crowd.
Taking to the stage, Beth Ditto states that she’s nervous but as soon as the band begin to play their opening song, ‘Listen Up!’, that seems to disappear and the performance begins. It's a joyous performance which covers their entire career, covering all albums to date including the latest release ‘Real Power’. Despite the subject matter, the songs are up beat. Beth Ditto's incredible vocal range only makes these songs sound even bigger than they already are; at times Beth’s vocals even give a gospel sound to the songs. Beth’s on stage presence makes her a force to be reckoned with, during songs her vocals soar over the room whilst between she jokes and laughs with the crowd, making for many memorable moments.
The band's music has always sat in the indie rock genre but intertwined with this is a heavy pop presence and that's okay, there’s nothing wrong with that, if anything, it only projects the songs further. The newer songs all sound great live but the crowd are here for the older songs. Songs like ‘Heavy Cross’ and ‘Move In The Right Direction’ still sound as good now as the day they were written and get some of the biggest crowd responses. It’s often tough trying to showcase new music when you have such a strong back catalogue but this is no issue for Gossip as they strategically mix the newer songs into the setlist. Saving the best till last is always the best way to go out with a bang and that's exactly what Gossip did. Saving their biggest hit ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’ until the end of the set brought things to a close in a big way, leaving the crowd only wanting more.
This show was a fantastic return from Gossip and proof that they are still at the top of their game even after so many years in the industry, with no signs of slowing down any time soon.
