iDestroy have come from Bristol and, as Bec Jeavons explains, this is not quite how they usually do things. Usually they are running around the stage, all punk-rock energy and motion. Tonight, though, the pair are sat down.
Never mind. If anything, that just makes the challenge more interesting.
“Cheap Monday” is still fun, still sharp, still carrying that punchy, youthful spirit that makes iDestroy such an engaging prospect. There’s a challenge in not moving, almost, because even stripped back, these songs still want to kick against something.
“All My Friends Are Plastic” is one of those songs of youth, but not the boring, misty-eyed sort. It is more knowing than that. More modern. More aware of how the world can make everyone feel disposable if you let it.
Women’s safety is discussed in the words to “Headphones”, and that gives it a real bite. “Sad”, a brand-new song, is raw enough to suggest that the next chapter might be an intriguing one.
“I Don’t Want To Talk To You” becomes a crowd participation moment, while “Juice” proves something that always matters: a good song translates to any format. “Tell Your Friends You Love Them” is harder to introduce, and Jeavons admits as much. The reason comes through in the lyrics.
iDestroy are about to begin a new chapter. On this evidence, they sound energised for it.
Before The Virginmarys arrive, “Redemption Song” is played. “All these songs of freedom,” sang Bob Marley, and surely that is what The Virginmarys are about too.
Their songs are about life. Proper life. The brutal, beautiful, exhausting, ridiculous business of getting through things. They are delivered with passion, and that is especially true, oddly enough, of the new stripped-back record that came out last week.
“Beyond The House Of Fires” is a reimagined version of “The House Beyond The Fires”, one which “needed to be done, and was fun till it wasn’t”, as Ally Dickaty puts it here. Yet when “My Nettle” starts, all those endeavours feel worth it. The song blooms in this setting, finding a different sort of power.
“Dance To The City” proves that to be no fluke.
“Has anyone booked a ticket thinking this was a regular VMS gig?” asks Ally, because this is anything but. For one thing, Gareth Price has swelled the numbers to three, and his guitar work is sensational throughout. Dickaty, meanwhile, is at the piano for much of the night, and that change alone shifts the emotional weight of the songs.
“There Ain’t No Future” is still enormous like this, and “Sleep” is elevated by Price’s solo, which is frankly sensational. “Cast The First Stone” has so much emotion that it almost feels invasive to be in the room with it, while “Urban Seagull” allows the band thing to happen a little more naturally.
“You’re A Killer”, reworked here, is incredible. And that line “Information, information an idiot’s guide to dividing the nation” sounds like it was written after scrolling through a Reform supporter’s X account for five minutes and deciding humanity might have been a mistake.
“When The Lights Go Down” has an almost military beat, while “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen is an unexpected but brilliant turn. “Where Are You Now” builds beautifully, and “Veteran Soldiers”, the new song on the album, is dedicated to the fans. That matters. With this band, it always does.
“White Knuckle Riding” closes things, and the line “barely surviving” rings out again and again. If it is not exactly a happy note to end on, then it sums up their existence as a band. Dickaty talks about he and drummer Danny Dolan sleeping on floors to get by, but adds that they are long past the point where the band was a choice.
And perhaps that is the thing.
If the Marley song is about emancipation, then there was once a Virginmarys T-shirt that said “faith, hope, love, music” on the back. Those four words are shot through tonight. Even in this different form, nothing can lessen the power.
NOTE: Pictures taken for me by a kind man next to me as I can’t stand I couldn’t see so the whole review was written just from listening to it as my actual view was this.
