I always love the heightened sense of occasion when a crowd packs into a small venue to see an act just as they approach lift off. For the past six months Florence Road have trailed around Europe and America supporting and learning from Wolf Alice and The Last Dinner Party (bands that are clear influences on their sound) building both their reputation and craft, so it was no surprise that as they hit the Wardrobe in Leeds as part of their largest headline tour to date that tickets sold out in a flash such that it was only thanks to those good people at Twickets that I managed to attend.
Often on my trips to see new bands I use part of my journey predicting what the demographic of fans will be at the show. In this case I wasn’t prepared for quite how youthful the crowd was going to be, to the point where spotting anyone who I was confident was older than me proved to be a bit of a challenge. Being surrounded by excited voices attending their first ever concert and how it was so much smaller to the ones they’d watched online was quite a difference to the normal pre-gig conversation with 6 Music Dads comparing their decades of live music experiences.
For a band with only two EPs to their name the seventeen song set showcased a group who had already identified their sound – whether it was the Tik Tok era earworms of Heavy or eventual finale Break the Girl or the acoustic balladry of Rabbits can Swim or Caterpillar. But where the band truly excelled was when they leant on their Irish roots and infused a dash of Celtic menace into epic Storm Warnings, a song so ambitious in its nature you’d normally expect a band to be several albums into their career before unleashing it.
If there was one major complaint on the performance, it was the slight lack of stage presence shown by the group. Whilst singer Lily Aron looked every inch a star, hair flying fitfully in the breeze of the stage fan, the rest of the band spent most of the show as by standers, verging at times on looking disinterested at what was happening around them. Maybe the small stage of the Wardrobe may take some of the blame for their restricted movement, but those long months on the road with bands that know the power of aesthetics didn’t seem to have rubbed off on them.
Despite that minor quibble (which I will stress is a very minor quibble) there’s clearly something about Florence Road, an unquantifiable combination of youthful ambition and effervescence combined with song writing beyond their years that seem to have captured whatever zeitgeist we’re currently in. A band that definitely need to be caught before they grow much bigger… although whoever decided to schedule them at the same time as Wolf Alice at this summer’s Tramlines festival has definitely earned my ire!
Have you caught Florence Road on one of their live recent live dates? Make sure to leave a comment below
Florence Road performed:
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Figure It Out
Hand Me Downs
White Smile
None the Wiser
Storm Warnings
Heavy
Rabbits Can Swim
How Does it Make you Feel
Hanging Out to Dry
Surprise Surprise
Miss
No Better Woman
Goodnight
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Caterpillar
Break the Girl
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