Review: The Futureheads, live at Glee Club, Nottingham

‘To do is to dare’. That’s what my Spurs-supporting friend tells me all the time.

Today’s charts are chocker-block with soulless auto-tuned R n’ B and shallow pop. There aren’t a whole lot of artists taking huge risks at the moment – the market just won’t allow it.

Then there’s those fearless Futureheads. Usually you’ll see them in somewhere much sweatier like Rescue Rooms, blasting through a 100mph set of break-neck barbed pop-rock. But this time, we find them on a tiny stage in Nottingham’s Glee Club – a far more fitting venue to mark the release of their recent acoustic and a capella album. Brave eh?

“It makes a nice change to be in a venue which doesn’t smell like vomit,” quips frontman Barry Hyde.

Tonight, Sunderland’s finest pull off a strange balance. In trimming away all of the excess so they stand on stage with their voices alone and the basic elements of a few traditional acoustic instruments. So in one sense, they sound like a completely fresh and new band, but driven by the distilled essence of The Futureheads.

Their folky re-imagining of Futureheads’ classics Decent Days and Nights, Man Ray and The Beginning of the Twist still maintain the spikey energy of the original pop-rock renditions, but with a new warming charm. These along with traditional Northern folk classics and a handful of wittily translated covers from everyone from Sparks to the Black Eyed Peas give the entire evening the vibe of a hoe-down of a lock-in in an old country inn. So much so in fact that a few leery Maccums are asked to leave the premises.

Either way, he who dares wins, and tonight The Futureheads are victorious.

By Andrew Trendell