ELECTRIC BALLROOM
THU 12TH FEBRUARY 2015
You can’t usually hail any tour by The Cribs as a ‘long-awaited return’, as they don’t seem to stop touring, but this spin around a slew of ‘intimate’ venues – their first in the UK for two years – can probably be described as just that. You get a better sense of their hiatus, when you realise new album For All My Sisters will be released nearly three years after their previous long player, making it their biggest gap between albums yet.
Evidently they’re as keen for us to hear it as we are – after burning through Mirror Kissers to get us warmed up, the brothers Jarman barrel straight into the Dinosaur Jr-esque fuzz and buzz of teaser track An Ivory Hand.
Come On Be A No One sees the audience find its voice and the front few rows their figurative pogo sticks, before they drop another newie in the shape of A Different Angle. It’s wistful, laden with ‘oohs’ and seems like a festival singalong waiting to happen.
From there it’s a blaze through the likes of Summer Of Chances, Pink Snow, Hey Scenesters! and Men’s Needs topped off with a messy march through a menacing City Of Bugs to send the Jarman army home happy. In the words of An Ivory Hand: ‘Do you still want it?/Now we got it.’ Indeed we do, and indeed they have.
20.02 – Glasgow King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
21.02 – Newcastle * 6Music Festival
22.02 – Sheffield Leadmill
25.02 – Manchester The Ritz