Making Friends is Good
Much like the last time we saw them here Sweden’s Backyard Babies are a refreshing return to in your face rock and roll and they pull a good crowd in the Tuborg tent. The sound is a bit quiet but the guitars sound great, which for these guys is a mandatory requirement.
They easily get the crowd going early on with the appropriately titled ‘Everybody Ready?’, which not surprisingly facilitates the required response! As the sound picks up the better they get, this is just big, loud rock and roll delivered with real purpose and passion. There have been collaborations and there’s no denying that they are born from the same stable as The Wildhearts (& at times sound remarkably like them) although you’d have to say Backyard Babies are always half a length behind at the finishing post. That’s the only area they fall short on, they have some great songs and when they go into ‘Making Enemies is Good’ you have to be impressed but in the back of your mind you just know there’s other bands that do it just that little bit better.
That aside, today they are one of the highlights and when you watch guitarist Dregen in full flight they have a sense of fun about them that you can’t help but get swept up in. ‘Degenerated’ is the second half of the set highlight, the forty minutes has just flown by and it‘s another solid showing on the back of last years self titled album.