Kodaline frontman, Steve Garrigan really likes being in Manchester. He said so to the crowd at Manchester's Academy on Wednesday night numerous times (I lost count at twelve), but rightfully so, what's not to love about Manchester.
The band are in the middle of their epic world tour. They're currently in the UK but there are another twenty cities to hit as they take off to Australia, Italy, Spain and back again for V Fest. I'd be surprised if Manchester was the peak of this incredible journey.
Having recently won the EBBA's 'Public Choice Award', the foursome from Swords, Dublin, are definitely on the up. Their debut album In A Perfect World reached No. 3 in the UK album charts, and No. 1 over in Ireland. Expectations were high on Wednesday evening, and they didn't disappoint, kicking things off with the explosive After The Fall.
They followed swiftly with One Day, to which the crowd erupted. In fact I don't think Garrigan did that much singing as the audience enthusiastically took over.
Unfortunately, Manchester Academy never seem to get the acoustics quite right and the backing music often drowned out the vocals, not that it mattered particularly, the audience were plenty loud enough.
After the first few songs the lights dimmed, Garrigan greeted the crowd saying: "Well this is awesome. About a year ago we played in the Night and Day cafe so this feels bigger! It's nice to meet you all!"
The next song saw their Irish roots shine through as the lights turned green and Garrigan took centre stage with a harmonica solo to introduce Love Like This. Love and heartbreak seem to be a common theme for the Kodaline boys, with Garrigan writing on their website: “Break-ups make it really easy to write [...] When we write music, the first thing we think of is, it’s therapy for us. Then we think of how we can use that feeling to touch as many people as possible.”
The evening turned nostalgic with the next couple of songs as Garrigan explained: "We've known each other since we were very young, since we were eight years old" before going on to sing Way Back When, followed by a very moving tribute to Woody – a friend of the band who had passed away.
The crowd all got involved with the next song, Lose Your Mind as Garrigan had everyone sing along, "I'm going to try something, I'm going to sing something and I want you to sing it back as loud as you can. Are you up for that?"
After annouce their final song of the evening All Comes Down, the band went on to thank the supports James Bay and Amber Run as well as the audience: "I want to thank everyone in this room for coming out and supporting us."
Kodaline leave the stage and by this point I am praying they come back on to play my favourite song, Latch. The shouts of the crowd finally tempt them back onto the stage and they play their final three songs, including the immensely popular All I Want.
Unfortunately Latch was not to be, but judging by the ecstatic atmosphere of the crowd, I feel I was the only one to notice.
Tagged in Kodaline