“We’re slightly pissed,” reckons Spunk Volcano, singer with Dirt Box Disco (and Spunk Volcano and the Eruptions).
“We’ve got half an hour to make you think you fucking love us. Here’s a song called ‘Punk Rock and Porno.'” And that, ladies and gents, is about all you need to know about them.
Dirt Box Disco are absolutely magnificent. Read my reviews of the albums that Maff Farrell has sent me over the years—they’re incredible on every level.
The perfect support band for The Wildhearts, their “Tragic Roundabout” is a beauty, “Cinderella’s Mötorhead Tattoo” is insanely catchy, and “Second Hand Sex Toys” is either the best song ever written or the worst, depending on your views (guess what I think!). And if you don’t love “My Girlfriend’s Best Friend’s Sister,” then there’s no hope, frankly.
They end with “My Life Is Shit,” and it’s just as knockabout as the rest. Life might be shit, but there’s Dirt Box Disco. For everything else, there’s rock ‘n’ roll and Readers’ Wives. What more do you need?
Jim Jones All-Stars are on early, but as the man himself puts it, “We can’t wait, we wanna boogie.” And that’s exactly what they do.
Just as they did up the road last year with The Black Crowes, they prove that their mix of rock and soul (think of them as a filthy E Street Band) is pure, unfiltered fun.
New single “Goin’ Higher” brings the rock ‘n’ roll swagger, but Jim Jones has been doing this for years. “Burning Your House Down” comes from one of his former incarnations, and my God— it sounds absolutely primal here.
“I Want You (Anyway I Can)” distils their sound into a glorious three-minute explosion, while “Soul Trader” ventures into a jam. Somehow, “Troglodyte” ties it all together perfectly, dragging everything back to the primordial soup.
There’s a journey to the dark side with the bass-driven “Rock ‘n’ Roll Psychosis,” and “Shakedown,” a sprawling track from Jones’ Thee Hypnotics days, gives Stewart Ness on saxophone a chance to shine.
And with the words “Let’s boogie one more time,” the magnificent “Drop Me in the Middle” closes the set. But like the rest of the show, it’s so timeless and classic that resistance is impossible.
Ok, so if you’re going to start a gig, you might as well do it with a couple of the best songs ever written. The Wildhearts 2025 wander out like it’s no big deal and reel off “Suckerpunch” and “I Wanna Go Where The People Go.”
Ye gods. That’s an encore, right there.
Yet it’s what Ginger says after that encapsulates the night. Surveying the crowd at the place he calls “my favourite venue,” he says: “There’s a lot of love in this room. We’re gonna turn it into fuckin’ rock ‘n’ roll.”
They’ve literally just put a record out—”The Satanic Rites Of The Wildhearts”—and it’s a cracker too. They know it, as they pick a few from the set. Album opener “Eventually” fizzes, and as ever, if you forget how good one of their songs is, they’ll remind you. Tonight, it’s “The Jackson Whites.”
“Diagnosis” is always brilliant, but somehow, it’s delivered with even more passion tonight, spitting bile over the broken system.
Ginger looks reborn with Ben Marsden and Jon Poole next to him and Charles Evans behind him, and that’s reflected in how “Vanilla Radio” asks where the stars are, while “Troubadour Moon”—the tale of a never-was—is arguably the best thing on the new album. Both songs typify the belief in music that Ginger will forever have.
As they seem to do each tour, they dust something off, and the sprawling “Sleepaway” from 2021 is an unexpected highlight.
After this, spontaneously, the crowd starts singing “Oh, The Wildhearts, we love you”—somewhat ironic, given that it comes right before “Failure Is The Mother Of Success.”
The eight-minute epic was the first single from the new album, and there’s more than a glint in the frontman’s eye as he says, “There’s a lot of people who want this to fail, so the fact it’s in the charts is the worst day of the year for them.” A fact only reinforced as he sings the hook: “You took a lot of knocks to get where you are today.”
A fresh set with not much room for the early stuff (and MV probably isn’t the only one who didn’t hear their favourite song) instead means other tracks shine—like a singalong “Mazel Tov Cocktail” or newbie “I’ll Be Your Monster”—”one for the narcissists”—where the “sax solo” from guitar tech Dunc is something else.
“Everlone” sounds way fresher than its 32 years—perhaps because it comes from one of the greatest debut albums ever? The night’s first crowd surfer probably agrees.
Even though a bloke behind me shouts, “Play old stuff!” one of the joys of this band, to me, has always been that they don’t just do that. I don’t recall “Chutzpah” being in the set since the tour when the album came out 16 years ago, yet it finishes the set this time.
The diehards sing “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me” like the old days during the break, but the encore has “Inglorious” in it, so it’s already winning.
“Dislocated” always comes alive when played live, and it does here too.
Then there’s one more. The show is top-and-tailed by two songs joined on the debut. “My Baby Is A Headfuck” is beyond glorious. There’s a family in front of where I’m sat—mum, dad, and daughter, it seems—jumping for joy as the solo hits.
They’re not alone. And as the fireworks go off and Ginger stands on the monitor with his guitar in the flames, he knows it too. He needs to be here as much as we do.
Look, I’ve never hidden on this site that this is my favourite band—the only one you support through thick and thin like your football team. This October will mark 30 years since I first saw them. And as Ginger himself said tonight, this story is far from over.
There’s nothing quite like The Wildhearts when they’re on it, and it’s The Wildhearts vs. Earth—and they’re on it here.
