Don Broco at Hevy 2011
Every festival could do with some Don Broco. Bursting onto the Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage on Friday night, they rather willingly became some sort of 'warm up' act for the weekend, making band recommendations and thanking their sizeable crowd for making it down early. Their humility was only matched by an abundance of charisma and some really good tunes making them one of the most likeable bands of the weekend.
Their sound is alt rock but with a surprising amount of soul and funk hidden in there like carrots mashed into a fussy kid's dinner. Live, this sounds brilliantly fresh and lively, inspiring movement from even the most reluctant. I have plenty of reason to believe that the party atmosphere propagated in this set was as natural as the sulk in a shoegaze band's face- the Don Broco boys stayed all weekend and possibly went at it harder than anyone else all weekend. I'm pretty sure whenever I spotted frontman Rob Damiani on Sunday he was never seen without sunglasses... I knew how he felt. When he's up on stage he won't give you a second to take your eyes off him as he doesn't keep still- kind of like how it's impossible not to do the 'wee wee dance' when you really got to go.
With the announcement of each track he would promptly drop into the rhythm, bounding around stage and feeling each note in moves that just tell you how much this band love what they do. 'Beautiful Morning' shaped up to be one of those anthems you get stuck on repeat on your internal jukebox, albeit vastly untrue when one wakes in a tent wiping the crust of an overindulged night of Jagermeister from their eyes.
Don Broco were the most successfully interactive band of the weekend, quite happily having a bit of a chat before convincingly encouraging circle pits in the large stretch of field being occupied by their audience. There's no point suggesting something you won't do yourself though, so Rob was more than happy to vault the barricade to get involved. Delegating a 'team captain' for the other side, Hevy enjoyed its first wall of death of the weekend. Their set was very well timed, setting up the mood for the festival to be full of Christmas Eve level excitement. With BBC Introducing sets at this year's Reading and Leeds, this is a band that you should be adding to your festival must-see list.