Live: The Coronas

22^nd October

Soup Kitchen

7/10

The Coronas have been established for around 11 years now. They have supported the likes of Justin Timberlake, The Script, Paul McCartney and KT Tunstall. This year has seen them tour parts of Australia, and they released their latest album All The Others last month. Performing in one of the infamous Northern Quarter hotspots, the Soup Kitchen, set The Coronas up to be a good night. And they did not disappoint their sold out audience.

Their support sounded a little off throughout their performance, and so The Coronas seemed really fresh when they began their set. There were a few fumbles with instrument exchanges between songs, but I suppose that’s to be expected in such a small, and packed out venue.

Despite what sounded like a hyped-up fangirl audience—typical of any small-town Irish boyband—the audience was in fact a mix of ages. The gig saw fans get their money’s worth as Coronas played an album worth of songs, mixing the old with the new, including one they’d never played to a live audience before. It wasn’t difficult to tell which songs were the older ones, as people were buzzing to hear them, and seemed to know them word for word.

For the encore, the lead came back out, alone initially, and took centre stage on keyboard.  He performed a beautiful acoustic version of ‘Heroes and Ghosts’ from the new album. Suddenly being surrounded by a sea of little screens recording this one-off massively took away from the fantastic atmosphere he was creating.

The band clearly enjoy what they do, and engaged with the audience throughout the evening. They also showed appreciation to friends for favours, as well as the support of loyal fans before leaving the stage.