FRANK TURNER AND THE SLEEPING SOULS @ THE WULFRUN AT THE HALLS, WOLVERHAMPTON 18/02/2025

For the half-hour before Frank Turner comes on stage, they play some Motown hits. “My Girl” is about halfway through when Frank Turner appears.

Is it stretching the analogy too far to say the crowd has found their guy? Probably, but I’m going with it.

He presides over his flock with the skill of a preacher. Watch the near-religious fervour that greets “I Still Believe” and tell me he’s not one of the greatest live performers on this planet.

Early on, he plays “I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous,” which means it’s been 16 years since I first saw him. That was the first gig I attended after my mum died in January ‘09. You’d best believe he matters.

Even before that, he’d gone solo for “The Ballad of Me and My Friends,” and if he’d done that for 110 minutes, it would have been superb. He doesn’t, though. Instead, last year’s “Do One” and the punk-fueled “Try This at Home”—the best song Billy Bragg never wrote—push the energy up another notch.

It all comes down to the way the crowd totally buys into it. “The Next Storm” is matched by the fire in Turner as he thunders through “No Thank You for the Music,” a song about people who “make music for the wrong reasons” (is it any wonder he has such ire for them?).

It’s staggering how raw he still is. I saw Million Dead back in the day. Twenty years later, he can still get a circle pit going or tear through a garage punk song like “Girl from the Record Shop”—another from Undefeated.

His songs matter. That’s why they resonate. “1933” is more relevant than it should be, and when he reaches back into that incredible back catalogue, it always feels right—just like “I Am Disappeared.” Anthemic, it underlines yet again how resourceful and skilled The Sleeping Souls are.

Speaking of anthems, anyone who suffers from anxiety and depression has theirs in “Haven’t Been Doing So Well” with its Thin Lizzy-style guitars.

Usually, you review gigs and say, “That was a singalong.” Here, it’s pointless to single one out—they all are. “Plain Sailing Weather,” with its Jimmy Eat World vibes, is just another example.

The camaraderie between band, crew, and audience makes a Turner show different. “Wessex Boy” connects him to his roots, and “Worst Things Happen at Sea”—which he plays without the band—connects him with a part of his past he perhaps wants to forget.

Speaking of which… “Long Live the Queen,” the one that connects Frank to me in the most personal way, kind of happens. It still affects me. It always will. It came out just before my mum died. Enough said?

“Be More Kind” seems to matter even more in 2025 than when he wrote it, which is awful, really.

The Sleeping Souls return for the huge-sounding “The Way I Tend to Be,” and they “take it home,” starting with the superb “If I Ever Stray.” And if you don’t like “Recovery,” then you don’t like Frank Turner. It’s as simple as that. Then things get all Flogging Molly on “Never Mind the Back Problems,” and “Photosynthesis” belongs to the 1,400 in the Wulfrun tonight. Getting old? Yeah. So what? And the electric mandolin rules—even before the circle pit.

Turner is not a rock star, not at all. He deserves an encore, though. And it’s long.

“Undefeated” is “about persistence,” and Matt Nasir’s piano is as stoic as it gets as the song builds. “Polaroid Picture” is a burst of energy.

“Get Better” is as euphoric as it gets, and when “Four Simple Words” hits, you can only think of this: In “I Still Believe,” there’s that line that always seems to burst forth every time you see him—”Something as simple as rock ‘n’ roll could save us all.” Anyone who says that’s bollocks hasn’t ever seen Frank Turner.

Show 2,997. And with a “broken ankle”—but no matter: still independent, still undefeated, and on any stage, there isn’t anyone better at this.