Blood Brothers
What a difference a few years make! We interviewed the Cribs here a few years ago not long after they’d been signed when they were occupying a fairly lowly spot on the bill. Here we are 3 or 4 years later and the Wakefield four piece are making something of a triumphant return to headline the NME stage.
It’s a well established fact that I’m no great fan of indie music but The Cribs are the perfect example of what’s good about it. There’s no shoe gazing or melancholic laments going on in this tent, just in your face and up beat guitar driven singalongs. The crowd is big and the performance bigger, they just go for it from the first note and deliver every song with an urgency and aggression that has been sorely lacking on this stage. The crowd love it and take every opportunity given to shout out the lyrics, no more so than on ‘Hey Scenesters’.
There is the odd song that doesn’t quite cut it but the performance really does make up for it. The Cribs have always had a reputation for their live shows and it’s good to see that success and having 3 albums under the belt hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm or taken away their edge. I’m surprisingly sorry not to be able to watch the whole of their set but Metallica are calling on the main stage, a fact not lost on the band who point it out to the crowd who respond by booing, to which a Jarman brother quips “Damn us all to hell for daring to boo the mighty Metallica”. The Cribs continue to fly the flag for fast and gritty indie rock in the face of much mediocrity, maybe there is hope after all?