Snow Patrol - Leeds July 14th 2006
I have long and chequer history of going to see bands I don’t like and occasionally I’m openly hostile to but,  I think there is something to be said for the atmosphere and watching a band go through their paces. More often than not when I see a band live who I thought sucked , they win me over with their enthusiasm and often  their music live sounds considerably better than it does on their studio recordings.

In Mid July my girlfriend was lucky enough to win tickets to see Ulster sons Snow patrol in the glorious surroundings of millennium square in Leeds. Surprisingly the trip down and finding the venue was without incident, made more surprising by the fact that we had less than week to organise, hotel booked, coach booked and the cats safely deposited in the PDSA(free boards not bad really , walk in say ‘I found these cats, they will look after them and then when your back from your holiday, send someone else into claim them.. every bodies happy. I am of course joking)

We found our hotel,  a rather nice plush number called Bewleys just down from Granary wharf/ Dark arches on Neville street. Left our bags and went about finding the gig venue. Which as my map indicated was pretty much a straight jaunt up one of the main streets of the city , what strikes you about millennium square is that well, it’s open air and not unlike the area around the monument in Newcastle, big and open with a mixture of contemporary and 19th century architecture, many buildings and bars look on to it and you could probably have stood outside and listened to the concert or like some of our more stingy brethren, took to the roof tops to watch, snow patrol and support jump around on the makeshift stage.

Happy we knew where we were going we popped down to an O’Neil’s, normally I am adverse to Mock Mick pubs but this Is one of the better ones and the food was good, had a couple of pints of guineas some food and then up the concert.

Millennium square doesn’t really look that big , you could perhaps fit top 2,000 people in it, it also benefits from the corner where the stage is set up to sloping down towards it. So even wee people have the opportunity to see the band.

The sunny was splitting the rocks as I settled down about 20feet from the stage and gulped down my beer…

The first band came on at 7.30pm a local band by the name of Pigeon patrol, they played on the Leeds connection a lot as you would expect, they played the usual brand of badly produced garage rock in the vein of so many of their contempory's, instantly forgettable.

The second support was completely different Tale, Ed Harcourt, is not what you would expect from a support act, a lead singer and pianist, supported by a fiddler, double bass and drummer. Hardly a rocky outward appearance , but they really hit chord with the crowd, now this is does not happen to me often but the music was fresh and interesting and reminded me of a number of  excellent bands (merz, morten abel, ben folds) for me he really was the highlight of the evening and I will be spending pennies on buying his latest album beautiful lie

Snow patrol finely took the stage just after 9.pm to rapturous ovation from the baying crowd, by now the venue had filled up and lots of tall people stood in front of me, snow patrol touring in support of the their fifth album …..? herald from the small town of Bangor just outside Belfast, now I remember them from their early days about town and having never actually heard them. I thought their band name sucked. and yes I still think it sucks. And having only recently been exposed to their new album I was only ever aware of them because of their singles which in hindsight I wasn’t aware it was snow patrol.

The new album seems to be very mellow and I was interested to see how it interpreted to a live environment, this did not seem to be a problem, a set that was interspersed with the hits form their last album (light up and chase cars) got the crowd going and kept them going through some of their less well known songs. The stand out track and it will make me buy the album is ‘olive grove by the sea’ where they where accompanied on stage by a trumpeter, that added a certain something to the song.

Snow patrol also had a bit of crack with the crowd which has been sorely lacking from the last couple of gigs I have went to where bands just seem a bit bored and go through the motions,

Snow patrol played for just over an hour and fifteen minutes and because of the tight curfew I did not knock around for the encore, in fact I’m not even sure if their was one.

On the way back to the hotel I discovered I’m the only man who can get lost walking in straight line, got back to the hotel and crashed out at about 11 because we had been on the go since six in the morning to be woken up by screaming an arguing. which was nice

Overall the pigeon patrol where awful, Ed Harcourt was excellent , Snow Patrol made me want to listen to there albums(which is no mean feat considering how set in my ways I am.)