Oh Yeah
There was no doubt, looking at some of the t-shirts being worn and talking to the festival-goers at Hevy, that a lot of the tickets were sold on the back of this particularly interesting booking. For a band with such popular appeal as The Subways to appear right under the more 'cult' interest of Glassjaw, was yet another of the interesting line-up decisions made this weekend. Unperturbed by any of this Billy, Charlotte and Josh bounded onto the stage and didn't waste any time in whipping the main stage crowd into a mini-frenzy that saw one of the largest and more enthusiastic 'pits' of the weekend.
With a set featuring a mixture of hits from both of their albums "Young for Eternity" and "All or Nothing", there was little evidence here of any kind of follow-up to the latter, except from new song 'It's a Party' which met a good reception from what wasn't necessarily a partisan crowd. Perhaps understandable that a festival set should be aimed to please the crowd, but many fans went home disappointed to hear little of where The Subways plan to go with their garage-rock sound with no releases since mid-2008.
What was on show here, however, was The Subways' highly honed technique to bring an unsure crowd on-side, and any shouting contests between two sides of the crowd, or 10-minute versions of biggest hits, might induce slight cringing from some, but the fact is they know it works. And work it did at Hevy, and this crowd went away happy that they endured a weekend of bands perhaps not to their normal tastes, to get an hour with The Subways that they may not have for at least until next year when they have a new album to tour.