Admittedly I never used to be a fan of Rat Boy, even turning down the chance to see him on a previous tour when it was only £8 because his music didn’t interest me. That was until, for reviewing purposes, I listened to SCUM and loved every single second of it. From Rat Boy’s brutal honesty to the heavily garage influenced DIY beats it was everything I thought Rat Boy was and now is. And if you saw my albums of the year list then you’ll know that I placed it pretty highly on that and deservedly so. So when he announced a tour in support of the album I couldn’t help but snatch at the opportunity to get a ticket to see him in my hometown.
Bad Sounds were the only support act I saw on the night, and despite knowing none of their songs I have to say, they were fun to watch. Their incredibly energetic performance of their highly infectious indie pop was something I grew to love as they were performing on stage, jumping around and just genuinely looking like they were having fun, something that is missing from a surprising amount of performances.
And it was a good show, there was very little crowd interaction apart from shouting ‘jump’ in the breaks in the song, which is just pretty standard at a highly energetic gig but I really enjoyed the renditions of the songs that I’ve grown to love since SCUM was released last year, songs such as ‘Laidback’ and ‘Get Over It’ were just as infectious live as they are on tape.
I did enjoy the extension of some songs, for example they added a few more choruses to the end of ‘Revolution’ and had a few guitar solos thrown into the middle of some songs, it showed that they were thinking about their live show rather than just going out and performing each song to the letter.
I feel there needs to be a special shout out to the merch as well, because as you may know Rat Boy is venturing into the fashion industry with his premium clothing designs but the tour merch was very nice, I got a Tee that displayed the Haribo logo of the child holding the sign except the child has long black hair and an ear ring and the sign says Rat Boy (Obviously). Decent stuff. Except them hideous Tees that just have the album covers on…