Last Saturday night, me and my friends went to see The Maine, and I think they won happiest gig of the year. Just thinking about it brings a massive smile on my face, and what more could you want from live music, really?

Before I go any further about The Maine, I want to say a couple of words about both support acts, Guillotine and Wallflower. I don’t know how they ended up here, on that stage, but I’m glad they did. Guillotine have a Brand New vibe and the same ability to hit you so hard with their music, just with a note, just with a word - they ring true. They also have some wonderful songwriting going on. Wallflower are more energetic - they were a band I’d heard about for a while and I was extremely curious to discover them. I’m glad we made it out on time, they were as excellent as everyone made them out to be. They’re energetic and catchy, they grab my attention and never let it go. During Guillotine’s set, I was telling my friend how they appealed to “the Brightonian in me”. Both bands are set to play Washed Out Festival, in Brighton, in April, and that, my friends, is no coincidence.

And then, The Maine came on.

They’re one of these rare bands that are very, very up high on the list of my favourite bands and yet, they don’t have a particular story of their own. They haven’t made me a better human being and they haven’t been that connected to traumatic events that might have happened to me. They mostly are the band that I seem to always watch with my girl friends. We all have a drink and we all dance and sing the lyrics at each other. The Maine are that one time they played a packed Nouveau Casino in Paris and we were at the front, belting out Into Your Arms. They are that one time I saw them play with Mayday Parade and me and my friends sang Another Night on Mars at each other. They are the band I cannot bring myself to miss if they’re in town - I always have time for them.

Last Saturday night was no exception - they had all my time, my undivided attention, and I had a couple of my friends, a pint of cider and black as a slightly sad nod to English Girls, and that was more than enough for me.

In We’ll All Be, frontman John O’Callaghan sings “All we needed was some good friends and a song to sing along”. Quite true, that.

We didn’t just get one song, we got sixteen. Sixteen, covering most of the bases but still, largely representing the band’s latest record, the excellent American Candy. We got classics like My Heroine, English Girls (written about a “dirty, stinky place called Snobs”) or Right Girl. We got deeper cuts like the stunning Raining in Paris (which had Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien for an intro. If you heard people singing loudly in French, that was us) or The Way We Talk. We got new songs, tasters of the Americans’ future record Lovely, Little, Lonely. Boy, am I excited for that album.

There was an energy in that venue, in the Electric Ballroom, that was unreal. Opening with their newest song (Butterflies and Déjà Vu) is a risk The Maine weren’t afraid to take, and a risk that paid off, as the several hundred people facing them knew every word like it was a classic. From the first to the last song, everyone was singing along to every single word, jumping up and down and dancing like there was no tomorrow, sharing a moment with their friends. It was simply the most joyous, cheerful and happiest gig I have been to in a long while.

You know how, most of the time, I end up in tears at gigs?

I didn’t this time.

I left the venue with my jaw aching because I had smiled so much.

My favourite thing about The Maine is that they are. They just are. They’re never using any of the clichés a lot of other bands in this scene do. They just do whatever the fuck they want to do without showing off about it. When they release a new record, they never tell you “it’s their best album to date”, or that “they wanted to take risks”, or that “they wanted to explore new sounds”. They just do what pleases them, what feels right, and deliver it to the world with a humility and a sincerity that I wish every band possessed. They are unapologetic, confident and genuine, they just turn pieces of them into music and offer them to the world without an explanation. They don't conform to trends, they just are who they are, and if it means guitar player Jared Monaco turning up on stage in a dashing velvet suit, then so be it.

I wish every band was like The Maine.

Once again, The Maine were a collection of tiny moments assembled together in perfect harmony. They were the dad joke John made and no one in our group understood. They were a line of five French girls singing Another Night on Mars to each other like we’d all been friends for ten years. They were the guy being brought on stage for oldie and super mega goldie Girls Do What They Want, a nice throwback to the first times I saw them. They were the “fuck Donald Trump” that came out of nowhere. They were my accidental slut dropping and my terrible dance moves. Seeing The Maine live is a celebration of life at its finest, it’s a collection of the most wonderful things - my friends, a drink, excellent songs to sing along, laughs, honest rebellion and carefree fun. That’s what The Maine are, to me, and will always be.

As the lyrics to We All Roll Along go, “Eighty one twenty three means everything to me”. I think it does. I think, yeah. 

The Maine mean everything to me.

On the sixteenth of January, 2017, We Are The Ocean announced what seemed inevitable : they were calling it a day. They did a small three show run, last week, and I went and attended it all, because it was the least I could do to say goodbye to one of the most important bands of my adult years.

I hate goodbyes.

Farewell tours aren’t meant to get you to discover new bands ; they’re here to celebrate the career of the band you love so dearly. We Are The Ocean’s farewell tour did that, but also managed to throw a new band my way. This band is called Holding Absence and is from Cardiff, Wales. Their sound is heavier than what you’d expect from a band supporting We Are The Ocean but more importantly, their sound has the freshness of a band who is just getting started perfectly balanced with the excellence of a band with a ten year career behind their wheel. It’s hard to believe this lot is just arriving on the touring scene (it was the first time they played Glasgow or Manchester) because they sound professional and neat the whole time. In three shows, thanks to their clever sound, some sort of crossover between Crooks and Architects, and thanks to their enthusiasm, they have won me over. They’re at Download in June, and not missing out on this sounds like a great idea.

I really, really, really don’t like goodbyes, and even though it’s almost a week since Glasgow, it’s safe to say I’m still in complete denial. (The fact that We Are The Ocean are due to play Slam Dunk Festival in May doesn’t really help the feeling and I have repeatedly asked anyone who's going to be there to provide me with alcohol at all times to numb the pain, à la Lily Aldrin in the last season of How I Met Your Mother).

The most painful part of this farewell tour is not just knowing that come the end of May, I’ll never see We Are The Ocean live ever again.

The most painful part of this farewell tour is watching them call it a day, play one last time, and seeing them enjoying themselves. It’s knowing they don’t want this to end either.

A lot of old songs are getting played, across this three date run. The setlist is extensive, twenty-two songs and a lot of deep cuts. Ready for the Fall and (I’ve Never Felt This) God Damn Good are brought back from 2008’s self titled EP. I get to hear Lucky Ones live, for the first and last time. A lot of songs are extracted from my favourite album, Go Now and Live. As frontman Liam Cromby says in Glasgow, they’re playing old songs and new ones, “covering all the basics”. These three shows, they’re excellent, of course they are. We Are The Ocean have never played a bad show and they have always given a hundred percent of themselves on stage. The things I love most about their live performances are there - Liam Cromby’s absolutely stunning voice, Tom Whittaker’s strong, brilliant, unforgettable drumming (he will be dubbed “the heartbeat of the band” in both Manchester and London), the band’s ability to reinvent their sound every time, to give every song a twist.

The London headliner was the most painful of all, and not because it was the last one - well, not only. During penultimate track The Waiting Room, a member of the audience injured themselves and the band decided to cancel the rest of the show so the woman could get medical assistance. While I fully appreciate that they took the best decision at the time, I couldn’t help being upset as they never got the closure they deserved. A band as talented and loved as We Are The Ocean deserved to finish on the high of hearing several hundred people singing their breakthrough song Nothing Good Has Happened Yet back at them. They deserved miles better than having to interrupt the show because of an injury.

I couldn’t help being upset and bitter, because it felt like, for the past five years, We Are The Ocean simply never got what they deserved. When former vocalist Dan Brown left the band, the rest of the members were constantly questioned about it. Whatever they did was welcome with an angry “Bring back Dan!”. I can think of bands who have changed vocalists and sound during their career and yet, I can’t think of another band who has had to endure criticism for those decisions for half a decade. We Are The Ocean never got the support they deserved from the music press, they got tossed at the back with the washed up scene bands and forgotten about. They never got the promotion they deserved. They never got the fame they deserved. They never got the popularity they deserved.

And they didn’t even get the ending they deserved.

Those three shows, though painful, were a beautiful reminder of why I love We Are The Ocean as much as I do. They’re a band that made sure I grew up okay. Their music got me through some awful moments, through depression and missing people more than the world, through family issues and dealing with my mental health, through recovery and doubt. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t had Go Now and Live to show me I wasn’t alone with my feelings, or if I hadn’t had Maybe Today, Maybe Tomorrow to accompany me through the long, tough process of getting better. The best part of my twenties has been plagued by all those problems, and all that pain, and all this loss, and all those fights to get better and get to the other side just fine, and the outcome wouldn't have been the same without these five and their music.

After my brief stint in the UK to see With Confidence, the plan was to patiently wait two weeks until my local date, Paris, on the 16th of March. 

That’s adorable of me to have thought I would make it two weeks when there was a full European tour available for me to check out, and here I went on an impromptu trip to Berlin and Leipzig, yes in actual Germany, to see this lot again. It was a good occasion for me to check out the state of the scene in a different country (which is something I rarely do, I usually stick to the UK and France because a) it feels safe and b) I speak the language), and see how the tour dynamic was without the Americans of Broadside, who were only scheduled to play on the UK leg of the tour and went back home as the others headed towards the old continent, leaving me with the memory of one of the most phenomenal key changes I've ever heard.

Neither Berlin nor Paris had a local band (Paris with no local band, shocking, am I right) but Leipzig did, in the form of pop punks Storyteller. I haven’t understood a single word the lead singer said as my German is abysmal (but according to a German citizen, “Ich liebe Kartoffelsalat” (“I love potato salad”) is all you need), apart from “With Confidence” and “fanboy” chucked in the same sentence, so I take it they were, as a unit, fanboying a little bit over the idea of playing alongside With Confidence. Music wise, they were alright, they sounded a lot like As It Is, if that gives you an idea - very bouncy, catchy and sunny.

I sadly missed a big chunk of Milestones in Berlin, as I got lost walking around in circles outside the S-Bahn station, but I was there bright and early for their Leipzig and Paris sets. I repeat what I have previously said : do not sleep on them. They’re not just lovely and catchy as hell, they’re also insanely talented. I found myself noticing how strong and impressive frontman Matt Clarke’s vocals are, and both performances were on the brilliant side of things. In Paris, they even had a little group of fans singing along to A Shot in the Dark or Call Me Disaster, and I’m pretty sure they will be a success when they hit our shores again in June, alongside Simple Plan. I cannot wait.

Safe To Say have been fully growing on me since the UK shows - it might be that I have actually taken the time to sit down and listen to their most recent album, Down in the Dark, and it might also be because the sound quality in all three European venues (Musik & Frieden in Berlin, Felsenkeller in Leipzig and Espace B in Paris) was so, so much better than in the UK, which made their performance bigger, and their music take a whole other dimension - it's catchy yet atmospheric, and I'm always on board with that kind of vibe. I still wish frontman Brad Garcia would stop apologising for not being a pop punk band - I promise, you’re still incredible, no one cares what genre your music is. The wait until they find their way back to Europe will be long. Very long. (In the meantime, if Only Rain could get the hell out of my brain, that would be lovely, please and thank you)

And then it was time for With Confidence.

The mainland crowds were different, and the venues weren’t exactly sold out everywhere. Berlin was reasonably full, but I could only count up to, say, fifty people in Leipzig. In Paris, according to drummer Josh Brozzesi, the band had only sold about thirty tickets until a couple of days before the show, and we ended up being, roughly, a hundred. A hundred VERY loud people, though, who sang along from start to finish and made it sound like there was five hundred of us in there. Apart from a tiny, shy one in Berlin, you couldn’t find the moshpits the UK had seen, let alone the crowdsurfers, but everyone was into it, and at the end of the day, what matters is that everyone has fun, not how you do it. It's okay to just have a little boogie or an angry finger point, too. On stage, all I see is a band who thrives in tiny venues, and, to be fair, whatever the size of the venue, whatever the amount of people in it, With Confidence are a band who gives their all. Some bands would get pissed off and play a half-arsed show because there’s only ten people in front of them. Not With Confidence. They always give a hundred percent, it seems.

Remember how, in the recap of the Leeds and Manchester shows, I'd said that if it wasn't for them reminding the crowd, I wouldn't have noticed that frontman Jayden Seeley was sick? Now he wasn't anymore, and, weirdly enough, I noticed. In the UK, I thought he sounded incredible, so what's above that?

Higher absolutely floored me all three nights - it seems I make a point of crying at songs that just aren’t sad. At all. The ending, more intimate, with just Seeley and his bass, asking the crowd to join in, absolutely destroyed me. Granted, nostalgia kicked in and I spent a good chunk of the Paris show wiping tears from the corners of my eyes, but, you know. There’s always space to celebrate such a lovely moment.

Paris was probably my favourite show of the whole tour, if I’m honest. Up until the beginning of Milestones, I was scared - was ending my stint on the Better Weather tour at home the best choice? Well yes, it was, thank you for asking. First, I got to make friends and enjoy the evening with some of my best friends, which is always a plus. I also had the absolute pleasure of sharing the evening with a beautiful, brilliant crowd, who showed this band a whole lot of love - I think they were impressed, and guitarist Luke Rockets wouldn’t stop thanking the crowd and saying how crazy it all was.

I wish I had more words than that, but I’m still coming to terms with the fact that my next With Con show is the Set It Off tour, and then Slam Dunk, in two months. One day I’ll learn. One day I’ll know that the comedown after several shows off the same tour is always a bit painful for someone prone to nostalgia like myself. The thing is, it was all worth it. Five shows, three different countries, 4384 kilometres, four awesome bands, one conversation about camembert. It doesn’t really get any better than this.

Yesterday, I went to see Busted live.

I don't know how I started listening to Busted. I think I got lost on YouTube a whole decade ago, found the music video for What I Go to School For and liked it. For some reason, I stuck around even when I found out they had broken up years before, wanting them back even when I knew it was near impossible.

Yesterday wasn't even the first time I had seen Busted live. I've seen them at the NEC in Birmingham with Marie, in May of last year. We got better seats than we should have and I cried a whole lot during Year 3000 of all songs. This is, after all, a song about a time-traveling machine and a future where women have three breasts and Busted have outsold Michael Jackson. Why did it make me cry, go wonder.

I have also seen them at the Hippodrome of Kingston in December, right after I'd come back from Glasgow. It was a half hour set in a club and the two girls next to me got into a fight, one of them threw a drink at the other and clearly missed her target as I ended up covered in beer, but it was so, so worth it. Singing along to your favourite songs never gets old.

Yesterday was the most special of the three, though. 

It was the most special because I got to spend it with my friends, old and new. We were all reunited, enjoying an easy beer and one of the first warm evenings of the year on the terrace of the Trabendo, reminiscing the good old days when we could go clubbing without our legs hurting for three days and when our favourite bands were still together. Memories of a girl throwing herself at the feet of Dave Strauchman of Every Avenue, of a half empty You Me At Six gig in that same venue or of our first Slam Dunks were thrown around the place, with laughter and smiles. There were people I hadn't seen in years and people I'd seen the week before ; people I'd known for seven, eight years and counting, and people I'd known for a week, tops. Plans for catching up drinks and a reunion of all the Frenchies at Slam Dunk were made.

A couple of years ago, for some warped, twisted reason I couldn't explain (but could probably file under crippling social anxiety, the height of my depression, a toxic environment or maybe all of the above), I convinced myself that everyone in my local scene hated me. Going to gigs had become really awkward as I felt everyone thought I was unsufferable and annoying, and when I decided to move to England, I couldn't wait to get out of here and leave all of my anxious gig days behind. When I came back to Paris, earlier this year, I felt awkward again. Of course I did. I felt like all eyes were on me, for some reason. And not in a good way.

It turns out all the gigs I went to since my come back have been a giant mates fest, and maybe, all those years ago, my brain should have shut the hell up. 

Yesterday, as we were all dancing around to Year 3000, bouncing up and down like we were fifteen again, trying to open up a moshpit or crowdsurf, I realised that those people are family. They understand me like no one else ever will, and I love them more than the world.

Busted are one brilliant pop band, aren't they? A knack at creating catchy tracks, a talent at turning lines like "I messed my pants when we flew over France" (Air Hostess), "Can't tell my friends 'cause they will laugh, I love a member of the staff" (What I Go to School For) or "Triple breasted women swim around town totally naked" (Year 3000) into something iconic, and boyband good looks that have lasted through fifteen years, a break up, musicals and a post-hardcore band have earned them a spot at the top of the early 2000s pop pile in the UK. Breaking up right when they were, pretty much, the biggest band in their home soil ensured them some sort of legendary status, creating an unreal hype around their comeback. You should have seen people when they announced their return with the original line up. Even my superior at work, all suits and £100k a year goals, couldn't believe his ears.
Breaking up before most of us could see them live, especially us on the mainland, created a sense of excitement very few artists from the early 2000s can actually still provoke in their fans.

No one is really there for the new songs. They may be really good, and, if we're fair, Night Driver is a very solid pop album, but all of us only really want to sing along to Who's David?, Crashed the Wedding or shed a tear or ten thousand to Sleeping With the Light On or Meet You There. The keyboards and the 80s inspired sounds may be excellent and dance moves material, but we're probably all going home cherishing the memory of Charlie Simpson unexpectedly screaming to 3am. Last night, our teenage years mattered more than anything else in the world.

Many a time, I have joked about a day like yesterday, and I have said more times than I care to count that I would plainly refuse to leave the building without meeting Charlie Simpson. Thanks to his work with Fightstar and his solo albums, he has become one of my favourite musicians in the world, and meeting him was a dream of mine. 

And last night, it came true.

I might have uncontrollably sobbed looking at my picture with him, back at home, and the memory will probably get me choked up for a long time.

I also got to meet James Bourne, and if you add to that me meeting Matt Willis with Alice in the winter of 2012, after the premiere of Wicked, you can safely say that I have met the entirety of Busted, now.
If you'd told me.

Only three days after seeing them in a small, Parisian venue, I jetted off to Birmingham to watch Lower Than Atlantis embark on their biggest headliner tour to date. There’s a little over a thousand people in the room. That’s just a tad bit more than Paris then.

Eastbourne boys Roam open the night (well, it’s 6:15pm when they take the stage, so maybe “night” is pushing it a little bit. Evening? Late afternoon? Tea time celebrations?) with their infectious pop-punk tunes, their Sum 41 inspired riffs and, as always, enthusiasm by the truckload. Have we finally found a band that’s more stoked to be on a stage than Roam or have we called off the search because it’s hopeless? Every time they play, anywhere it might be, never mind if they headline or support, they give off some sort of “fuck, we’re actually DOING THIS, guys” vibe, and it might just be my favourite thing about them, if I’m completely honest. That, and how stupidly catchy every single one of their songs are. That, but absolutely not the fact they dared saying Eastbourne was better than Brighton. Come on, now, boys. You might have had Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, but we have Sticky Mike's and Architects.

It sadly seems, though, that Lower Than Atlantis’ fans aren’t in this for the pop punk, and the circle pit for Deadweight was one of the worst, if not the single worst one I’ve ever been a part of. The crowd seems to take a liking to Head Rush or Hopeless Case, though, and shy but well-deserved sing alongs are heard across the venue.

You can’t fault Roam on any of this. Not at all. They played beautifully and brilliantly, and they will get to that big stage level sooner than we think. Last Friday night, they just deserved a better crowd.

And then the world will have to follow.

I won’t beat around the bush when it comes to Hands Like Houses : they fully deserved to be main support on this tour. Watching them play only six songs, six tiny songs, only twenty-five minutes is like being given a present and then having Santa snatching it off your hands to give you a broken stick instead.

Maybe I’m grossly biased because they are at the top of the list of my favourite bands, but Christ, now that was a perfect set from start to finish. It’s not just the set any support act dreams of playing, it’s the set any band does and should dream of playing. Everything about this band and their performance was absolutely flawless : the way they played, Trenton Woodley’s vocals, the sound quality, the cohesion and communication between the band members, the way they inhabit the stage and make it their own, the message of honesty they are conveying (especially through a song like I Am), the fact that they are so confident in their new material that their setlist will only consist of songs from their excellent latest album, Dissonants, guitarist Matt Cooper’s shiny lamé shirt. Everything about the way these five extremely talented men play on a stage is pure gold, and I strongly believe they are one of the finest bands in the world, as we speak.

Christ that was frustratingly short. You barely have time to get pumped that it’s already over.

As closer I Am resonates across the overall impressed Academy, loud and proud, like everything they do, I am sure of one thing and one thing only : Hands Like Houses deserve to conquer the entire planet. We’ve slept on them for far too long, now. Let’s finally give them the popularity they so rightfully deserve.

Watching a band you love slowly fading away is the most painful thing there is, as a music lover. When you’ve poured a lot of your time, your love and your energy into a band, it hurts starting to fall out of love.

There’s a part of me that will love Young Guns forever, as sure as the sun will set tonight.

But there’s a part of me that’s trying to come to terms with the fact that I’ve grown out of them and it breaks my heart.

I’m not going to beat around the bush when it comes to them either - I don’t think they should have been main support. I know they’re more established than Roam and Hands Like Houses, but surely, a band on the way up should have been given more stage time.

They sound really, really good. I can’t deny that, and I never will. It’s not because I’m growing out of them that I will be awful for no valid reason. They do sound good. The older songs (Bones, I Want Out or Weight of the World) still get a strong reaction from the crowd and sing alongs can objectively be heard.

I, though, have a feeling it falls flat after Hands Like Houses’ brilliance. It’s good, but it feels incomplete, and the only thing I can do is clutch my drink and repress the tears because all those years ago, the last thing I was when I listened to Young Guns was incomplete.

It’s nothing short of brilliant to see Lower Than Atlantis fill such a big room. I’m one of those people that fight real hard against my natural underground music lover urge to keep my favourite bands in tiny venues, but I also like big props, fireworks, giant screens and singalongs more than anything else on the planet.

The Academy in Birmingham is not exactly the perfect theatre for fireworks, we’re not exactly there yet, but we still get nice, big fancy screens, a platform for drummer Eddy Thrower and amps decorated with the wavy lines of the band’s latest album, Safe in Sound. (Spoiler alert, these amps will be thrown across the stage at the end of the show by frontman Mike Duce. When in a rock band, I suppose)

The Academy in Birmingham might not be the time or place for fireworks and smoke cannons, but it definitely was the time and place for singalongs. The setlist was the exact same as the one in Paris on the Tuesday, but this time, the crowd’s answer wasn’t “shy at first” or “ew, feelings” moving on to “FINE, I actually like this band, might as well sing along”. The audience started belting out the lyrics to opener Had Enough from the first line and didn’t stop until the last words of closer Here We Go. It was a strong, beautiful hour and a half of a crowd who loved a band so much they were willing to replace their lead singer by singing much, much louder than him.

Said lead singer helped a little bit and didn’t really sing that much, in the end. I have a feeling I have sung more than him, which is, to be completely honest (and maybe a little bit picky) here, a little disappointing. (And probably what the people next to me paid for)

I love my singalongs. I repeat it in every single review I write. The best live moment of my entire life included sixty five thousand people involved in a singalong. But there is such a thing as too much - like when you start questioning if you’ve paid to hear the crowd sing or the band play.

Apart from this small glitch, Lower Than Atlantis delivered an incredible performance and showed the Midlands (before showing the rest of the UK) why they were going to the places they are. It’s no surprise they’re becoming one of the leading forces in Britain’s rock music. It’s no surprise they’ve been announced as support on blink-182’s upcoming German tour. They work hard, they have a knack at writing catchy songs, they have an array of dedicated fans willing to replace their frontman and open walls of death at inappropriate moments - clearly, they’re on the way up, and up, and up again, and it’s fully deserved.

They also have one of the best drummers of our generation. I’m no musician myself, I couldn’t play Wonderwall to save my life and I’ve never been able to play a note on a recorder, but I can tell when someone stands out, and boy, does Eddy Thrower stand out. I found myself being absolutely stunned and amazed by his drumming more than once, and it’s not something that happens a lot, believe you me. I know he is an excellent drummer, and I always known. I remember my friend Alice telling me about it five years ago. I suppose it had never struck me until that night.

What else can I say? This tour is a career defining moment for Lower Than Atlantis. And I’m excited to be by their side for what comes next. 

This is an ode to the young girls at gigs. The girls everyone makes fun of because they hold signs, they cry and they have a favourite member in the band, because they don't crowdsurf and they want to be at the front, because they value a pick like it's the apple of their eye, because they are overly emotional and they squeal. 

This is an ode to them because this scene desperately needs them. This scene cannot just rely on people getting old and sipping a beer with their mate at the back of the crowd. Imagine this from a band's point of view : if you're playing upbeat pop-punk or metalcore and everyone's staring at you, clutching their drink for dear life, you're probably going to be really confused and the show won't be that good for you. This scene needs those girls who cry at the front and who sing the lyrics at the top of their lungs, so loud they'll go to school without a voice the next day. This scene needs those girls who hold posters and have favourite members because as cringey as it might look to the older people, at least, they haven't just got lost at the show because there was a rock show. They are here because they genuinely want to be here, and they wouldn't trade places with anyone, ever, they wouldn't rather be at home watching Netflix and they don't care if they're going to fall asleep in math class the next day. Chances are, they want to be here more than anyone else in the room. They've saved up for months or they've pissed off their parents to buy them a ticket and drive them to the gig, maybe they've had to concede to their parents coming to the gigs with them. But they want to be here, they want to see their favourite bands, they want to have the time of their life and we may need them more than we need older people drinking beer and being clever on social media because being blasé is the new cool.

This is an ode to them because they don't care about being cool. They just want to have fun. When you go to gigs and people have to be asked to move forward by the band because they're all standing by the bar, it's refreshing seeing hordes of people being stuck to the barrier and the stage, just wanting to have the night of their lives. They'll talk about it for ages on social media and they'll be nostalgic by next week. They'll eagerly wait for the next tour and they'll count the days 'til the next gig. They're enthusiastic and someone has to be, because the second you become a grown up, being enthusiastic, passionate or emotional is a swear word and no one in their grown-up days wants to be associated with the girl who cried because she met the guitar player from her favourite band. They're here to remind us that being enthusiastic and having fun aren't crimes. They're having a better time than us old fucks with our beers. They're having fun shamelessly, fully, recklessly, unapologetically. They are living more than the rest of us are. They're here to remind us that having fun is okay and we'd probably be better for it.

This is an ode to them because whatever you say about them, we've all been there. Look back at your first gigs. Mine were almost a decade ago, but Christ, I was having the time of my life, even when stuff got cringey. I wouldn't hold up a sign for Josh Farro to give me a pick because it's my birthday, or for You Me At Six to play Contagious Chemistry because it's my friend's birthday anymore, but back then, I was having harmless fun. I don't mind remembering those signs and those cringeworthy moments because I lived. I was having fun. I was feeling confident and safe enough to try and get the band's attention from outside the stage. If it wasn't for those gigs where I gave a hundred and ten percent of myself, never mind how cringey it was, I'm not sure I'd still be going to gigs. We've all been there. We'll move on to the beer at the back stage soon enough. Let people have fun. We weren't harming anyone. They're not harming anyone either.

This is an ode to the young girls because whatever we want to say about them, even though we're too blasé to see the harmless fun in sitting on your friend's shoulders in a hundred cap gig, these girls, they buy merch. I've followed tours quite a few times in my lifetime. I've followed Bury Tomorrow on tour twice and despite the thousands of people who had seen them, they barely even run out of posters, let alone of t-shirts or sweaters. I've seen With Confidence four times over the past two weeks, the gigs are much smaller and yet, they were running out of sizes at merch by the end of the UK leg of the tour. These girls who are mostly still at school and have no income are here to buy all the merch none of us are buying anymore (probably because we're too busy splashing all our money on Ubers and beer), they literally financially support the bands more than we do, more than the moshing dudes do, more than the cool people do. Let's give them credit where credit's due.

Let these girls teach us a lesson or two, if we don't mind. Let them remind us how fun it is to scream the lyrics at the top of our lungs, who cares if we can talk the next day. Let them remind us how fun it is to live fully, to seize that stupid ass day instead of complaining we'd rather be at home and we're going to have to take the metro home. Let them remind us that if we're at the gig, it's not because we got lost in the streets of Pigalle and had twenty euros to waste - it's because we love music, we love live music and it's a part of who we are. Let them remind us that we've all been young and we've all done cringeworthy things in our lifetime, we've all been there. Let them remind us to own up to our youth, our mistakes and our shortcomings. Let them remind us that every once in a while, we probably should spend our money on a record rather than an overpriced pint - the venue will be okay without us, the band, maybe not. Let them remind us to take a break from being barely functioning adults the way they are taking a break from being functioning teenagers. 

Let them remind us that they're the future. In those young girls we make fun of, there's the future of our scene. Those girls are the ones who are going to create websites and magazines. Those girls are the ones who are going to write about their favourite bands. Those girls are the ones who are going to become photographers. Hell, those girls might even start our future favourite bands.

Let them remind us that we have been them and we turned out alright. 

Let them remind us that we better have their backs because they're the future. 

Just before they start their biggest headline tour to date, British rockers Lower Than Atlantis treat themselves (and us!) to a short set of shows in the mainland.



They have brought fellow British rockers Young Guns in tow. They are in a weird position as we speak, Young Guns. Back in 2012, they were at the top of the pile when it came to British rock music. Everyone and their goldfish was convinced in their heart of hearts that they would make it big, big for real, and save the dreary state of rock music.
And then, they went traipsing around America for three years, lost their drummer along the way and, five years after the hopes and dreams, they're back at square one.

For us French fans, it isn't even a surprise seeing them at le Badaboum. Formerly called la Scène Bastille, it hosted many a Young Guns gig in a short amount of time back in the day, and these shows are the sole reason any of us set foot there. Tonight, Young Guns' set and the oldies they brought back (Stitches, You Are Not or Weight of the World), could easily be a nostalgic nod to olden times if the band didn't have so many pieces to pick up. And they try, real hard. Newer material, extracted from 2015's Ones and Zeros (I Want Out, Daylight) or 2016's Echoes (Mad World) genuinely sounds good and when they went away, they didn't lose their talent along the way, nor did frontman Gustav Wood lose his incredible charisma.
I think they just lost momentum.

Their set was wholeheartedly, genuinely, objectively solid. I can't fault them or their performance in any way. They're still the talented bunch I fell in love with seven years ago, and the blandness of their Slam Dunk sets is forgiven and forgotten.
It's just... I have a bad feeling about this. The truth is, I don't know what the future holds for Young Guns, and with the rose tinted glasses of 2012 off, it doesn't look shiny or promising.
And it breaks my heart, because as I found myself in tears during You Are Not and Stitches, I realised that despite the highs and lows, the moments of enless joy and those of heartbreak, I'll probably love Young Guns forever.




On the other hand, the future looks brighter than ever for Londoners Lower Than Atlantis. Their most recent album, Safe in Sound, got to number 8 in the UK charts, has been critically acclaimed and they're only two days away from the start of their biggest headline tour.
They're not exactly on 5000 capacity rooms level on the mainland, but thanks to an ever growing reputation on the other side of the Channel and last years' successful tour alongside You Me At Six, they clearly are on the way up - and tonight's turn out and atmosphere show it. The crowd seems a bit shy at first, as is often the case in cold-hearted, nope we don't do feelings Paris, but it quickly picks up and dancing could be witnessed (I myself had my dancing shoes on from start to finish) and the singalongs during Work for It or Another Sad Song were a sight to see.

This tour is the very first the band does to promote Safe in Sound, only released last month. Only five songs are being played at le Badaboum : singles Had Enough and Dumb, the absolute classic I hope Boomerang will become, the aforementioned Work for It and the incredibly positive Could Be Worse, which is slowly but surely finding its place among my favourite Lower Than Atlantis songs - no pun intended, but your girl needs PMA more often than not. The best part of the setlist is dedicated to 2014's self titled album, and, unbeknownst to me, songs like Emily, English Kids in America and Words Don't Come So Easily have found a solid place in the minds and hearts of the French.

The thing is, I don't know if it's Lower Than Atlantis' turn to have momentum and the responsibility to do something with it, I don't know if they really are at the cusp of something gigantic. I don't want my rose tinted glasses back and I don't want another band to have to carry the weight of being rock music's designated saviours, for fear they might break. I just know that, as of the 7th of March 2017, I have seen Lower Than Atlantis a grand total of eighteen times over the past six years or so. I have seen them in five different countries, in big rooms and sweaty clubs, as festivals and at headline shows, and what I do believe, for real, is

a) they are one of the best sounding and most consistently solid live bands I have ever seen. I don't have the memory of seeing them play a bad show, ever, and
b) they are a breath of fresh air. On stage, they are honest and they bare themselves, they are pleasant and sometimes not (I could have done without the story of guitarist Ben Samson's inability to pee at the right times), they are class and yet so unclassy at times and in the end, because you know it's not fake, you find yourself rooting for these four, because they might just be the only ones who dare showing their flaws and shortcomings as well as their strengths.

During closer Here We Go, a portion of the audience invades the English's stage and is met by bright smiles all round. Frontman Mike Duce immediately jumps off the stage and ends up crowdsurfing. It feels like a suspended moment in time, something special. If you had told me, six years ago, that one day, I would watch Lower Than Atlantis killing it in my hometown ten days before they headlined Brixton all by themselves, I'm not sure I would have believed it, and here we are.



I don't want Lower Than Atlantis to save anything for anyone. I just hope that they will carry on being that breath of fresh air, sincere and unapologetic. I hope they'll carry on bringing people together like they've done for me, Carley, Alice or Emily. I hope they'll put smiles on thousands of faces like they do to me and to so many people I know. I don't care, ultimately, if they become the biggest band ever or not, though it'd be great and fully deserved if they did.
I just hope they never, ever lose their fire. 

Tuesday and Wednesday marked my first endeavours on British soil in 2017, and I couldn't have picked a better band than With Confidence and better cities than Leeds and Manchester to do it. I'm currently in London, waiting for my coach home, and I'd trade places with anyone in Glasgow for another night with my new favourite Australian band.

Both nights, the evening is opened by the only English band on the line-up, Milestones. I had discovered them at Mildtfest, last summer, and had been impressed by their catchy songs and all the emo that was lying around in there. I can now officially say I am in there for the long haul. Both days, their set has been solid and an easy explanation as to why they are on every single tour you can think of until the summer (they are embarking on Mayday Parade's 10 year anniversary tour for A Lesson in Romantics at the end of this, and then, they'll be traipsing around Europe alongside Simple Plan). They have a fair amount of fans in the crowd (especially in Leeds, overall one of the best crowds I've shared a gig with) and singalongs are easily heard. If I were you, I wouldn't sleep on Milestones. At all. That band is going to blow up.

Coming straight from Ontario, Canada is Safe To Say. They are different from everyone else on the line up - they're not a pop punk band (as they will explain in Manchester, they made friends with With Confidence during Warped Tour, and the rest is history), but still, there's a whole lot of talent lying around in there. How do I start to explain Safe To Say? They're a little bit emo, a little bit alt rock, a little bit "shove them on every line up in Brighton and they'll blow the roof off the venue" - in the best possible way, a little bit Canadian enough to thank the crowd fifty times in the space of fifteen minutes, but most of all, a little bit very good. They're also a band I'm definitely going to keep listening to in the future. They were different, but I liked it. A lot.

There's not really a main support on the tour, but if you had to pick one, it would be California pop punks Broadside, mostly because, in sound, they're closer to the headliners than the other two, and also because they've received the strongest reaction out of the three.
Both nights, most people already knew who they were and, in Manchester, someone was already donning Broadside merch before the show. Their sunny pop punk tunes are infectious and catchier than the catchiest song you can think of right now, and my favourite thing about their music is that they are a pop punk band with true, genuine pop elements - I mean, it's called POP punk for a reason. If you're looking for a pop punk band whose frontman has a true pop voice (and you probably should), then, Broadside are for you. I don't think I was expecting the storm they've been both nights and I am coming back home a fan, wishing they were on the mainland Europe leg of the tour. If you're not convinced yet, I should probably tell you there's one hell of a key change in closer Coffee Talk, and you really, really cannot say no to a band that reminds you key changes are the single most satisfying thing in the world.

As Australian pop punk outfit With Confidence walk on stage both nights, I realise one thing -  it's crazy how a band can have the biggest impact on your life in the smallest amount of time. I only started listening to them at Christmas, because I was sad and you can't not have a smile on your face at some point if you watch the music video for Voldemort ten times in a row, and two months later, here I was, spending fourteen hours on a bus to see them play in a different country. Already.

About ten seconds into opener Voldemort, I knew I'd literally go anywhere in the world for this lot, and I wish it was an exaggeration.

These two shows have been everything I wanted them to be and so, so much more. I'd heard lots of people saying With Confidence were excellent live, and I can only confirm this - they were, indeed, brilliant. They have that quality I adore that made the live renditions of their songs sound like the studio recording, just a little more emotional at times (which is never a problem for yours truly the queen of emo) - Keys, mostly sang by guitarist Inigo Del Carmen, absolutely floored me both nights. I don't want to make generalisations, but it's often tough finding pop punk bands that sound as good live as they do on record, and I think we have a winner here. Sound-wise, With Con offered both Leeds and Manchester a perfect performance.
(I should also point out that frontman Jayden Seeley got sick at the beginning of the tour, and if it wasn't for them reminding us on stage, I wouldn't even have noticed. That's how good they sounded)

One thing I wasn't expecting, though, was how rowdy the crowd would be in Leeds (and, to an extent, in Manchester too). As the crowds are getting younger and emigrate to pop punk from pop lands, you don't expect crowdsurfers going at it the whole time, and you don't expect finding yourself in a circle pit during London Lights, but here you are. Quite simply put, the crowd in Leeds was just as perfect as the band. In Manchester, though, the gig was upgraded to the bigger part of Sound Control two hours before the show, and the much bigger room and barrier didn't help crowdsurfers - but still didn't stop them doing their thing. If I wasn't expecting rowdy crowds, I sure as hell wasn't expecting some dude trying to punch a guy first song in and in front of the band. People.





If you're going to a show in Leeds, one thing to expect is some chanting, and if the crowd hasn't shouted "Yorkshire, Yorkshire" at least once, you should probably ask for a refund. The best thing about, roughly, a hundred people chanting "u wot u wot Leeds" was the look of sheer confusion on Jayden Seeley's face as he admitted that "the only word (I) understood was Leeds". Australian people being confronted to typically English slang and also, to a whole crowd of people singing Wonderwall at random because, well, you're in Manchester is nothing short of amazing. Blame it on the years I spent, myself, learning English slang and being confused, blame it on the fact that this doesn't really exist in the French language, blame it on me studying English and linguistics and maybe blame it on the boogie, but man, I probably enjoyed it more than I should have.

The truth is, I have loved every second of both sets. The fact that my legs barely function as we speak and that I walked about forty minutes under the rain, then snow last night, and the punching idiot haven't ruined anything for me, and, I don't want to make this emotional or soppy, but nothing can take those two hours away from me. I have so many hightlights - the perfect singalongs are one. I'm not just a sucker for a good key change, I am one for a good singalong, too. The live rendition of Long Night, this time not featuring a piano but a guitar instead, was just gorgeous and hit me (and many more people) right in the feels. These shows felt like rediscovering songs I have been listening to on repeat for the past two months - I'd never realise I would cry at Dinner Bell, Gravity and Waterfall were as powerful as ever, having a boogie to oldies Tonight and Godzilla was blissful and... Can you believe a song makes you ten times happier live than it does on record? That's also what happened. 

Overall, there's no fault anywhere on these shows. I have finished writing this review and I am still sat in the food court of Victoria Coach Station, still wishing I was in Glasgow, Newcastle or Nottingham for another night of this. They're playing Paris in two weeks, and it feels like decades away. 

I'm not going to lie : I was scared about 2017, music wise. Most of my favourite bands have released their new albums in 2016 already, and I wondered who on Earth would be there to provide me with new sounds. Fear not, myself - so far, 2017 is a very solid year for music, and February is yet another proof of it.

Tours & Festivals

It's that time of the year again : festival season is coming closer and closer, and names are dropped by the ton every hour of every day. My two favourites have followed the tradition, of course. Download opened the month by announcing over 45 names, including the likes of A Day To Remember, Northlane, State Champs, As It Is, Moose Blood, The LaFontaines or Dinosaur Pile-Up. It was announced the day after I was starting to come to terms with not going this year - now that's just plain rude.

Slam Dunk, which I am very much going to, announced about twenty names this month, and I like a whole lot of them : Deaf Havana, We Are The Ocean (for their last ever festival appearances), The Maine, Sorority Noise, Stray From The Path, Seaway, Boston Manor, The Ataris, Neck Deep and Turnover. Someone will have to try and find a way to split themselves in two. That someone is me.

(There was also another Reading & Leeds announcement, and I find it a bit sad, empty and samey. Eminem again, really?)

Bury Tomorrow have finally announced the bands that will support them on what will be their biggest headline tour ever. Alongside the excellent Crossfaith (who will most definitely bring the party) will be the equally excellent Black Peaks, and Any Given Day, that I have yet to listen to. I trust Bury Tomorrow, though. They're probably excellent too.

As if blink-182 going on tour wasn't great enough as it is, they are offering us brilliant support acts in the process. The UK will have Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls and one of my favourite bands, The Front Bottoms, on their shores, and mainland Europe gets none other than A Day To Remember. Winning the lottery seems a great option right now.

The spring will be very busy for Cambridge boys Mallory Knox. After finishing their own headline tour in April, they will accompany Enter Shikari on their European stint to celebrate the ten year anniversary of Take To The Skies, and then, will join Canadian pop punks Simple Plan for the fifteen year anniversary of No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls. I shall be everywhere. How, no one knows, but I shall be there.

I have started listening to Lower Than Atlantis with World Record and, since then, I have been a firm fan of the London quartet, supporting their every endeavour and accumulating the live experiences. I was very excited to hear their fifth album, Safe in Sound, and I have not been disappointed. One of my favourite things about their work, and one of the things that made them stand out for me is how accessible their music is, and then, when you think twice, it's not that easy to get into. The structure of their songs and their lyrical content is different from the trend - they've never really been a trendy band, to be fair. Safe in Sound, in that regard, is a true Lower Than Atlantis record. The songs are raw and disconcertingly honest (Had Enough, Money), and when they're about the most sung about subject of all, love, they have a twist no one else really has (the beautiful I Would and its subtle Jimmy Eat World like influences). In Safe in Sound, LTA have experimented with new sounds - the excellent Boomerang is more electronic than anything they've ever done, I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore features strings. All those changes and risks taken showcases Lower Than Atlantis' extreme versatility and strengths : Mike Duce's songwriting and the fact that you can never, absolutely never pigeonhole them. Safe in Sound is evolution done right, grand at times and pure, unalterated LTA the whole way through, and hearing it live is going to be a treat.

Decade hadn't released a new album since 2014's Good Luck, and let me tell you one thing - Pleasantries was more than worth the wait. It is desperately catchy from the get go, to a point where it would make you sing along to literally anything - I mean, Anaemia is about vocalist Alex Sears finding out he had a hole in his heart and heart murmur aged fourteen, and yet you find yourself tapping your toes to the beat and echoing the words. I'm not going to beat around the bush here - Pleasantries is nothing short of perfect. It has all the elements I have adored in Good Luck, the charm and the catchiness that made me fall head over heels in love with Decade in the first place, and yet it's not a carbon copy of its predecessor. The nineties sound that was hinted at in Good Luck is explored more this time in songs like Wasted or Geist. Pleasantries is more mature, follows a more logical path (Wasted,  Sunbeam and Brand New Again are a little story of their own), and it keeps everything that makes Decade the brilliant band they are. Every song is beautifully crafted and created, the song writing is stunning and full of metaphors (Sunbeam, Peach Milk), and it ends in the little explosion that is Capsules, a track about existential dread and the common "what the fuck am I doing here?" worries. If you needed a sensitive, wonderful reminder that you're not alone in this little thing called being a human being, listen to Pleasantries. (There's also a lot of tambourine, Smart Casual era Kids In Glass Houses vibes in Daisy May and Alex Sears' heavenly high notes in Human Being. What's not to love about that)


In Boy Blue, The Menzingers wonder "Is it finally true we're not getting any younger?", and I can't think of a better way to describe After the Party. At first glance (and listen!), it's catchy pop punk with hints of the early noughties and, at times, 80s influences (Lookers, Living Ain't Easy). Once you scratch the sunny surface, though, you realise it's deeply deceiving - kinda like the noughties song you sing along to in a club, dancing beer in hand without stopping to realise how damn sad the lyrics are. After the Party is a giant metaphor about getting older and growing old, thirteen different ways of wondering where did our youth go, and now the party's over, what the fuck do we do and where do we go from here. It's full of nostalgia (Thick As Thieves, Tellin' Lies), full of reminiscing (Lookers), and full of disillusion about the trials and tribulations of becoming an adult, a real life one, with troubles and worries (Midwestern States). It's an album that tries to come to terms with growing up, with dreams that haven't come true, with other people growing up and you feel left out. It's a beautiful, bittersweet tribute to the good old days and the growing pains of your mid to late twenties.


My interest for Ryan Adams' music was sparked when, in 2015, he released his very own take on one of my all-time favourite albums, 1989 by Taylor Swift. Prisoner, though, is the first of his albums that I properly discover. The eighties vibe I had loved in 1989 is still there, alongside some country music elements I didn't know to expect (harmonica, anyone?). There's something about his music that makes me feel like the cool girl in an eighties film, and there's something about his music and his way with words that is so vivid and colourful, so full of emotion, it feels like every single one of his songs is soundtrack material. I don't know much about Ryan Adams, but I am getting hooked, slowly but surely, and I can tell Prisoner is one beautiful album. When someone writes songs like Shiver and Shake or To Be Without You, so powerful I could actually shiver and shake over an imaginary someone I'd miss, I'm usually on board, because this is what music is all about.


This month's pop-punk fix is provided by Farnham's very own Homebound and their newest EP, The Mould You Build Yourself Around. I could play it cool and say it's just pop punk with a lot of angry finger pointing and pizza slices being thrown around the place but a) I like the vocals way too much for that, there's something I can't quite pinpoint that gets to me more than your average shouty dude and b) the Four Year Strong vibes, especially in Distrait, are so much more present than your average "we're trying to be The Story So Far" pop punk vibes. The Mould You Build Yourself Around isn't reinventing the wheel of pop punk, but it's surprising, and it's bringing its own, personal vision to it, and I am very much on board with it.

An album I didn't like as much as I thought I would is Zombies in Broadway by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. I love Andrew McMahon, I do, and I've always loved Jack's Mannequin and Something Corporate a great deal. I find it hard to get into Zombies by Broadway. It's not a bad album per se, it's good, solid pop music with catchy hooks and a song like So Close could easily stay stuck in my head to the point of insanity. But I can't get over the twenty one pilots vibes everywhere (I mean, Andrew is almost rapping in Brooklyn, You're Killing Me) and where it's not twenty one pilots, it's inspired by One Republic, and I can't do more than the odd song here and there.  It's a shame because I love Andrew, I really do.

THE PLAYLIST