Photo Credit: Victoria Smith
With a sold-out show in Sheffield in the middle of their run, Liverpool quartet COURTING embarked on their biggest UK headline tour to date, fresh off the release of their third album Lust for Life Or: “How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story.”
As the youthful band was already welcomed by a packed venue, local boys MARPLES opened the show to attract a number of new admirers on the night. Their contemporary indie rock sound combined with vintage dreamy guitars is enough to keep the audience entertained throughout their performance. While the original song ‘First Kiss‘ is their most mature yet, a rendition of ‘A Certain Romance‘ by fellow Sheffield band Arctic Monkeys was a welcome surprise and a true crowd delight to get the room singing along.
The place was now bursting at the seams, anticipating COURTING‘s entrance after the locals had warmed up the crowd. The room exploded in applause as the Liverpool band arrived, waiting for the new album’s opening track ‘Rollback Intro‘ to kick off the show before truly starting the performance with ‘Pause At You‘. The audience was boisterous right from the outset, jumping in on ‘Jumper‘ and ‘Tennis‘ to get the show off to a positive start. Murphy-Oneill continues to be incredibly animated on stage, swinging around his microphone and following the tight-knit band as they perform one crowd-pleasing song after another.
While ‘Grand National’ songs ‘Crass‘ and ‘Popshop!‘ kept the original fans entertained, the set list was loaded with more new album material. Throughout COURTING‘s performance, the audience kept up their energy, and since there wasn’t much space around the venue for people to avoid the chaos, they had no choice but to join in. ‘Famous’, ‘Flex’ and ‘Grand National’ set up the finale of ‘Likely Place for Them to Be‘, which gave the audience one final opportunity to let loose, and they certainly delivered.
COURTING‘s return to Sheffield was nothing short of entertaining for everyone in attendance, and set’s up the future to perform in bigger venues next time around.
Taped Magazine 