Shed Seven - Mountford Hall, Liverpool University, Liverpool, 21/11/2024

  by Richard Lewis

published: 8 / 6 / 2025

Twenty-five years since they were booked to play a Freshers Ball at the very same uni, York troubadours Shed Seven find themselves in a vastly different situation compared to then. The late 90s saw the band enduring a long, slow decline as Britpop hadn’t so much as fallen out of favour as collapsed and record company politics had begun to swamp the group. While their fellow second tier Britpop contemporaries, including those who were far bigger at the time, are playing in front of a few hundred fans a night at best, the current outfit take to the stage at a sold out Mountford Hall in front of 2,300 punters. The reason for their Indian Summer success is twofold and becomes immediately apparent. Firstly, the group’s route-one singles remain as bellow-along anthemic as ever and secondly, the quintet have absolutely zero qualms about giving the public what they want. Slightly wrongfooted by an earlier than usual start time, the bar queues still stretch into the distance as the whoa-oh-whoa choruses of ‘Room In My House’ reverberate around the sardines capacity theatre at 8:45pm. The culmination of a year when they have scored two number one albums, putting them in an ultra-exclusive club as lead singer Rick Witter points out alongside The Beatles, ABBA, Bowie and erm, Blue, the current dates are effectively a victory lap. Billed as the Thirtieth Anniversary Tour, the two pronged approach celebrates the Sheds’ progress so far and provides an additional opportunity to plug the first number one LP of the two, ‘A Matter of Time’. Spiky renditions of ‘Speakeasy’ and ‘Dolphin’ taken from 1994 debut ‘Change Giver’ logged early doors underline how the band had a tougher sound than many of their peers, while smack ode ‘Ocean Pie’ retains its woozy melodicism. At the other end of their catalogue half of the aforementioned ‘A Matter of Time’ is essayed, with Happy Mondays’ vocalist Rowetta appearing to guest on singles ‘In Ecstasy’ and ‘F: K: H’. As the slick lightshow and TV screen backdrop indicate, the group’s near-nonstop touring schedule has been reinvested into the stage set. With the lion’s share of 1996 commercial high watermark, ‘A Maximum High’ included in the set, ‘Bully Boy’, ‘On Standby’ and brass-assisted blasts through ‘Going For Gold’ and the bludgeoning of riffola of ‘Getting Better’ are greeted like old friends. Alongside the hits the Butlins-esque dedications to those celebrating birthdays and shout outs to kids in the audience attending their first gig underline how the Sheds’ perennial couldn’t-give-a-rat’s-arse-about-looking-cool attitude. The encore of ‘Disco Down’ which sees Rowetta re-appear and calling card hit ‘Chasing Rainbows’ played last, sees the audience drown out Witter’s vocals and much of the band. Able to pip far bigger artists on paper to the top of the charts, the Sheds’ perennial underdog status remains, while their heavyweight live circuit presence is in no danger of fading away anytime soon.

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