Brave Rival take their audience to hard-rock heaven at The Wedgewood Rooms | Review
I’ll get the moan out of the way first.
If the band on stage has to call attention to you and your friends in the audience because they can hear others attempting to “shush” you, and even though the frontwoman deals with you with far more good grace than you deserve, you still continue to be an annoyance?
Then have a word with yourselves – this sense of entitlement is ridiculous. People came to see the act, not your witless chuntering.
Right…
This is blues-rock band Brave Rival’s third Christmas homecoming gig, capping their first year as a slimmed down four-piece following co-vocalist Chloe Josephine’s (planned) departure at the equivalent show last year.
The intervening 12 months has seen the band release an EP, 5 to 4, which more fully embraces their rockier side. They open with one of those tracks, and Let Me Rock and Roll is as good a statement of intent as any – a full-throated, impassioned plea to the gods of rock.
Singer Lindsey Bonnick owns the stage and her vocals are as on point as ever. The rest of the band are also outstanding musicians.
The rhythm section of drummer Donna Peters and bassist Billy Dedman are super-tight, and add their own flourishes when not anchoring things down.
Guitarist Ed Clarke is a riff machine who loves a solo – and fortunately so do his fans.
All of the EP’s tracks get an airing – Poison has hints of 80s glam-rock, with a “hey!” refrain you could imagine bouncing around stadiums, while Try Again is a slow-building epic which sees Peters briefly swap her kit for an acoustic guitar.
Stars On My Scars from second album Fight or Flight is an emotional highpoint, featuring an impassioned Bonnick vocal.
Debut album track Run and Hide – always a personal favourite – now features a fine a capella intro from the vocalist before the familiar hard-kicking riff stomps in.
After a soaring Heavy, Bonnick leaves the stage to allow the instrumentalists to indulge in a jam that highlights their awesome abilities.
The sole encore is the dizzying Fairytale, which takes us “further down the rabbit hole”.
It’s 90 minutes of honest-to-goodness hard-rock heaven.
Same time next year, then?