Songs old and brand new, as Reading welcomes The Wildhearts' long overdue return!
It’s been nearly five years since The Wildhearts played Reading, and a lot has changed. The intervening years have seen one of the classic lineups disintegrate again; Ginger Wildheart putting together a new lineup and releasing the storming ‘Satanic Rites of The Wildhearts’ album to great acclaim, only to be eclipsed by the devastating news of Ginger’s personal health. Geordies are made of stern stuff, and Ginger has reacted the only way he could – by shunning debilitating treatments and vowing to continue for as long as possible. Recent gigs have seen a reinvigorated Ginger producing some of the best performances of his career.
The gig sold out earlier in the day, and by 8pm, the venue is already gearing up for a big crowd. Not too shabby for a hot sweaty Monday night in Reading! As a result, local lads Small Town Saviours get a respectable reception from the eager audience. The various members of Small Town Saviours have long featured on the local scene in various guises, with a number of them in legendary local sleaze rockers band The Black Bullets.
The four-piece have a nice line in rocky punk with crunching chords, singalong harmonies and more than a dash of enjoyable pop sensibilities than has the eager throng nodding in approval. Lance tells us that you can’t find the video of this song online (but I did find it, for the time being), introducing the excellent ‘Fighting’, which slows the tempo down a little but more than makes up for it with some glorious “sha la la la” harmonies. Adding variety to the set, ‘Rant’ is riff heavy, with fast, shouty vocals mixed with gear changes aplenty, reminiscent of the headliners. It’s all over in thirty minutes and the band have given us an ideal warm-up for the main event.
The current lineup of The Wildhearts features Ben Marsden (The Spangles / The Warner E Hodges Band) on lead guitar, Carol Hodge (a star in her own right – check out her stunning back catalogue, including with The Steve Ignorant Band) on keys and backing vocals, and Charles Evans being a tour de force on drums. Random Jon Poole is unavailable for this batch of dates, so his spot is filled by the ubiquitous Chris Catalyst (Eureka Machines / Ghost amongst numerous others) on bass.
Opening with ‘Failure is the Mother of Success’, it’s clear that this is going to be a set concentrating on the heavier elements of the band’s extensive repertoire. One of the standout tracks from the last album, the song has everything you expect from a Wildhearts song – fast thrashy guitar, guttural vocals and harmonies, before breaking into the slower, melodic instrumental middle section, eventually leading into a rapturous singalong finale. The band are on top form from the outset.
There’s a triple hit of riffage with the quickfire combination of ‘Nothing Else Changes but the Shoes’, ‘Sleepaway’ and ‘Mazel Tov Cocktail’ each playing to the band’s strengths. The Reading crowd is in fine fettle, and so is Ginger, although his experiences of Reading town centre earlier in the day won’t endear him to the area. A Wetherspoons pub that wouldn’t admit dogs is never going to go down well with the frontman. Cue calls for Maggie to make an appearance on the stage – sadly not tonight as it’s too loud and she’s getting pampered in the green room.
The extremely cheeky ‘Kunce’ is a cracking song and goes down a storm. Concluding the selection of songs from the last album is the piledriving ‘Maintain Radio Silence’ with Carol’s pounding keys pulsating throughout the song. It’s fast, relentless and truly exhilarating to watch the band going hell for leather. Growing up in Newcastle as a pre-pub teenager usually meant Friday night round a friend’s house for drink, music and chat interrupted only for our weekly dose of Cheers on Channel Four. Forty years on, the theme music still gives me goosebumps and the band’s heavier version is always going to be one of my highlights.
There’s a new album coming out later this year, appropriately called ‘Northern Spirit’ and the first song from it is ‘Spider Beach’. It’s the second time I’ve seen the band play the song, and it is very keyboard-heavy – almost being a companion piece to Carol’s own ‘The Price’ (which Ginger also played on). I love its mid-Eighties feel, and my expectations for the new album are very positive.
Ginger wants to play hard rock for twenty minutes, and so he does, starting with ‘Everlone’ before leading the band into a selection of hefty riffs from across the years. All eight minutes of ‘Slaughtered Authors’ follows effortlessly moving between melodic verses to anthemic choruses and meaty-as-fuck wig-outs. It’s non-stop glorious stuff, and Ginger is loving every minute of it, swapping wry looks with Ben and Chris. ‘Diagnosis’ from 2019’s ‘Renaissance Men’ is always going to be a highlight of any set – and we are not to be disappointed tonight.
Keeping the weighty feel, ‘Chutzpah’ is another classic tune from The Wildhearts with eardrum destroying guitars returning to pummel you into an audio stupor. As is traditional, the set ends with the audience led ‘Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me’ and the band leave the stage.
We don’t have to wait long before The Wildhearts return and launch into a thundering ‘My Baby is A Headfuck’, to finish the night off. It’s a testament to Ginger that there is so much quality Wildhearts material out there that big tunes like ‘I Wanna Go Where the People Go’, ‘Suckerpunch’ and ‘Splitter’ can be left off the set, and the crowd still leave satisfied.
The glory days of Sub89 may long be gone given the endless list of tribute bands that play here nowadays, but every so often a band comes back to remind you how good it used to be. Tonight was certainly one of those nights – a packed crowd, loads of good will and cracking tunes to blow the cobwebs away.
Main Photo Credit: Main Photo Credit / All Photos: IAN LADLOW
Live Video (from Southampton show): CHINNERSROCKS
- Failure is the Mother of Success
- Nothing Ever Changes but the Shoes
- Sleepaway
- Mazel Tov Cocktail
- Kunce
- Maintain Radio Silence
- Cheers
- Spider Beach
- Everlone
- Riffs Medley
- Slaughtered Authors
- Diagnosis
- Chutzpah
- Don’t Worry ’bout Me
Encore:
- My Baby Is a Headfuck
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