It’s not been long since the last time we went to a 90s album playthrough at the Electric Ballroom – in fact, it’s been a matter of weeks. That last playthrough was a little shambolic so, as much as I was looking forward to this one, I was a little apprehensive too.
First off, some context here about why this album was so special to me in the 90s. Echobelly at Southampton Guildhall was my first proper gig and a bit of googling suggests it was 26th Feb 1996 although one website insists they were in Portsmouth that night. I won’t say which website it was cause yknow, confusing Portsmouth and Southampton is practically a hate crime in some quarters. But I know I was there and remember it well. I’d just got “On” for my birthday a few days before and, on the advice of my friend and gigmate Liz, had listened to it obsessively in preparation. So the words of that album are embedded in my brain and that would stand me in good stead for this gig.
Even before I got the album tho, Echobelly had a bit of a special place for me. The birthday before I got “On”, I was turning 14 and still trying to believe I was a mainstream pop-picker. So I’d asked for the Brit Awards Compilation and we listened to it in the car on the way down to Wales to see my baby nephron. I found myself weirdly drawn to a couple of the tracks – “Girls and Boys” was one and “Insomniac” by Echobelly was the other one, straight after that. I didn’t want to like indie because a girl at school liked indie and I didn’t like her. But it was the Spring of 1995 and indie was coming for me whether I liked it or not. Almost exactly a year later, there I was pogoing to “Great Things” in the mosh pit.
One more thing before I actually tell you what happened last night – Nathan and I saw Echobelly, in 2001 at ULU. They had a new album out and barely played anything from “On” but that night will live on in my mind as one of the greatest nights ever because we bumped into half of Blur at the bar. See, good vibes follow Echobelly round.
Onto Camden then! I’d learnt from our last trip not to try and smuggle snacks into the ballroom but honestly, there were times last night when I really could have done with a few Squashies. Instead, I just had to rely on the bouncy pop of “On” to keep me dancing constantly. The band turned up promptly unlike Evan and straight away, there was bouncy pop abounding. The album starts with the three best-known songs, so there is a danger of peaking too early with this format…but it’s unavoidable. So we just had to throw ourselves into it.
It’s harder to throw yourself into the moshpit when all around you are standing still tho. The crowd was quite blokey and, obviously, we were all of a certain age. Lots of people were just kinda standing around so even tho we had a dance, there was a distinct lack of moshpit action. Maybe it was different right at the front.
They started, as you’d expect, with “Car Fiction” and the crowd did not exactly go wild but they certainly appreciated it. Then “King of the Kerb”, which seemed better known and got a few people around us dancing. But it was obviously the third song – “Great Things” – which got the sort of raucous reaction that every song deserved. I mean, if you only know one Echobelly song it’s gonna be that one although I’m not sure how many middle-aged people would venture out on a school night to see a band if they only knew one song. Maybe those people are the kind of people who like to obsessively video female lead singers during gigs. I couldn’t possibly say.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not the natural way to structure a set if your best-known songs are all front loaded but hey, it’s how the saying goes. Sorry, I meant it’s how the album goes. The next couple of songs – “Natural Animal” and “Go Away” were less well known but Sonya kept the atmosphere light and frothy with cheeky jokes and invitations to waltz around the ballroom. She promised a joke that she never actually told so if anyone knows what she meant, please do enlighten the rest of us.
Talking of cheeky, “Pantyhose and Roses” went down well, with everyone cheering the refrain of “it could change, it will never”. I’m not saying that us 90s kids fear change but yknow…there’s a reason we’re singing along to an album that’s 30 years old. I think it was a wise choice by the band to not mess around with the songs too much….after 30 years, it’s probably tempting to “reimagine” some of them, like Blur playing “Parklife” at double speed. But the songs were played faithfully and flawlessly and I, for one, appreciated that.
The other great thing (pun intended) about Echobelly is that they do gorgeous ballads just as easily as they do fun pop songs. Tracks from the second half of the album, like “Something Hot in a Cold Country”, “Dark Therapy” and “Worms and Angels” shimmered as lights beamed across the crowd. The ballroom was full of magic as we came to the end of what was really quite a short album. I was wondering what they would do next but Sonya handily told us: “We’ll play some songs from the first album, then we’ll £^%# off, you’ll shout for more and then we’ll come back for two more songs”
That’s a very pragmatic way to handle the will-they-won’t-they of encores but I find that Swedish people generally are very pragmatic. I should also say that I don’t know the first album as well as “On” because I had to wait for Christmas and birthdays to get new albums so we survived on whatever scraps of music we could find. Makes me wonder if GenZ know how lucky they are, having all the music from human history at their fingertips. I would wonder whether they were sufficiently grateful for that but I’m pretty sure that they’re not.
All of which is a long way of saying that I’m not 100% sure how the set ended. But I know it included “Atom” (after a cue from the audience) and “Close…But”. Only one of those is from the first album, it turns out. The last last song was definitely “I Can’t Imagine the World Without Me”, which *was* from the first album. But there were a couple of other tracks I didn’t know which might have been first album or B-sides. I don’t think there was much that was post-1995 during the night, so it truly was a nostalgia fest in the best kind of way. Compared to the Lemonheads, it was very controlled and polished but never in a sterile way. It was joyful throughout but there is something great about…yknow…competence. Sorry Evan.
I think the “On” tour still has a few dates left so if you loved the album back in the day, you should book….it’s well worth it. More details here. Just maybe book the next day off work to give your aching limbs a break after all that pogoing…
