More like the Home Guard
Brigade have a tough job on their hands following the crowd pleasing Army of Freshman on the third stage and unfortunately it appears that AoF have taken most of the crowd with them as Brigade get the smallest crowd we’ve seen all weekend.
It doesn’t start well as the sound is way too quiet and the mid paced opening song lacks any bite, all of which means they make little initial impact. As the set moves on I’m surprised at how light sounding they are, the real problem though is they just have no cutting edge, no punch at all and this is a shame as from what you can hear of the songs they are decent enough.
Three or four songs in and the sound does improve although it’s still nowhere near loud enough. Whilst they do have some good dynamics in the tracks they just seem to be missing the magic ingredient and although guitarist James Plant tries to inject some energy into the performance they just fall a bit flat. The crowd banter is all very polite and it’s all a bit too nice. Will Simpson’s vocals are too clean, too non-descript and his performance lacks any excitement; perhaps he should ditch the guitar as there doesn’t seem to be any need for it with no evidence of dual guitar parts. On the plus side, the crowd might be small but they are enthusiastic and give the band their full support throughout.
In short Brigade are disappointing, they need a firecracker up their backsides and an out & out front man to take them up a gear.