Lightning Seeds - Leadmill, Sheffield, 26/11/2022

  by Fiona Hutchings

published: 20 / 3 / 2023

Trudy and The Romance, the first of two support acts, are just finishing up as we get into The Leadmill on this November Saturday night. It’s already pretty busy with people wandering around, waiting for the merch stall to get its card reader back and getting the drinks in. I’m already leaning on the back wall so can’t really see them. They sound fairly young, playing guitars and get a decently enthusiastic round of applause as they exit stage left. Mr H. and I both survey the crowd, It’s an interesting mix of all ages and genders,, The Lightning Seeds attract an array of fans. Unfortunately for me there seems to be a high concentration of 6 footers, mostly male who seemed to have congregated right in front of 5ft 5 me. More and more people are coming in and it’s getting pretty full. Signs go up on the screens either side of the stage. Between adverts for up and coming gigs and club nights, they tell us the gig is sold out and to keep moving so everyone can get into the building. I’ve moved as much as I can, As a crowd we’ve claimed then relinquished any inch of space to be found. Thankfully my own 6 footer of a husband is basically holding your intrepid disabled reporter upright since seats, like social distancing, are a mere memory now. The mood seems pretty upbeat though and, as Badly Drawn Boy takes the stage, I can just about see his trademark beanie. Damon Gough is a very laid back, quite softly spoken type of guy. All the way through his acoustic-sounding set he moves between guitar and keys. He talks to the audience and occasionally to the sound guys at the side of the stage. He starts and then restarts a song to the extent that it feels more like an extended sound check or jam than a support slot. Still, it fits the laid back. easy going vibe, and besides I am reliably informed this is usual for Badky Drawn Boy. Suddenly, my husband's arms tighten around my waist and he pulls me sharply backwards. I am momentarily confused and then realise that one guy trying to squeeze past another guy in a tightly packed room of bodies has gone wrong. Punches are being thrown and friends are already piling on the puncher to pull him off the punchee. Somehow security get to the melee impressively fast and remove both men quickly. Everyone looks at each other in puzzlement. I mean, yes, it’s packed but who kicks off during a Badly Drawn Boy set? The overall mood remains incredibly calm and relaxed. I see security dealing with some other scuffle later on but only because one of them looks like a viking and moves like Mo Farah. Ten minutes or so later Badly Drawn Boy leaves the stage, music starts playing and we all wait impatiently for the main event. Before we get to the Lightning Seeds I would just like to take a moment to record, for posterity, one of those peak Sheffield moments. The music playing as we wait is a mixed bag, but of mostly older, well-known sorts of songs that don’t really register with the listener. It’s not that loud, conversations continue without too much trouble. Then Human League’s 'Don’t You Want Me?' begins and it gets quieter. The audience starts to sing along getting louder and louder before the whole place is bellowing the chorus in unison in the most Sheffield accent imaginable. Eventually the song ends and we go back to our conversations and waiting like the proceeding 3 minutes 57 seconds hadn’t happened. Love it. Finally the music goes off, the lights go down and the cheering starts. The Lightning Seeds are in the building, we hit the ground running and don’t stop for nearly twp hours. The very last gig of a tour can generally go one of two ways in my experience. The band is either knackered and over all of it, the songs, the patter, the travel and just want to go home. Or they are like the Seeds and still playing with real joy and enthusiasm. From the start they mix in tracks from their new album 'See You In The Stars' such as opener 'Sunshine' with classics like 'Sense', 'Lucky You' and 'Sugar Coated Iceberg'. People seem to know the words to the new tracks as well as the classics. Make no mistake, this is not a greatest hits jukebox gig. This is a band still at the top of their game. When I saw them in December 1999 touring the 'Tilt' album there was a lot of electronic input. It worked well in Sheffield City Hall but The Leadmill tends to demand something a bit different. I don’t know if it’s the acoustics or something more mystical about the space but put guitars, bass, drums and the rest in there and it just sounds incredible. This particular spell The Leadmill weaves is why it retains such an important place in the heart of many a musician. In a recent interview with Pennyblack Ian Broudie happily recalled one of his first gigs being at the venue with friend and some time collaborator Terry Hall singing with him for moral support. Ian Broudie seems much more comfortable on stage these days but was also as self-deprecating as ever, thanking the packed room for coming to see the show as if we were somehow doing him a favour. They breathed new life into the classics, and even the newest tracks sounded different than the album versions. 'Whole Wide World' by Wreckless Eric, a song Broudie told us was a real favourite, was an unexpected treat and while 'You Showed Me' is technically a Byrds song the Seeds version is the best. (The original is too fast and short, The Turtles version leans just a bit too heavily on the sleeze button and the Salt-N-Pepa take is a separate entity entirely. Thank you for coming to me, TeD Talk.) There was a real feeling of funk and almost a touch of disco throughout the whole set. I can’t think of a better way to describe the hypnotic, raw and fresh driving rhythm every song had in buckets. Let’s be honest, pop can easily end up sounding a bit thin in live settings, a bit too pre-programmed and precise. The sound the Seeds created was fat, alive and beautifully responsive. The end of one song segued into a Liverpool mash up of Lennon's 'Imagine' and The Beatles 'All You Need Is Love' as a nod to Broudie's shared home town. There was an encore naturally concluding as we all knew it must with a rendition of 'Three Lions'. By this point the lack of breathing space was solved by most of the audience jumping up and down for the entire song. Whatever your view of football in general, or the location of this World Cup more specifically, (and, believe me I have opinions on the latter) you can’t do anything but join in when it’s played. In 1996 I was singing to that song in a pub in Sheffield, and at the 1998 World Cup I was dancing on a table in Liverpool funnily enough again singing to that song. Twenty-six years later, I am still singing it. All too soon the lights went up and we started waiting to try and leave the premises. In preparation for the crowd outside waiting for the usual Sonic Indie night to begin, someone hit the dry ice a bit too enthusiastically which did catch quite a few people by surprise but also sped up the queue to leave. Ian Broudie has been playing these songs for a very long time but along with the rest of the band, including son Riley (and before you ask, yes, the song is named for him) he continues to produce timeless songs that he plays with whole lot of love. And that includes arguably the world's most ubiquitous football anthem.

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