Humble. That was my first impression of Jack Steadman as the band played their first song for the night, Shuffle. Jack’s eyes was scanning through the crowd, obviously bewildered by the fact that the crowd knew the song word for word. I can’t help but feel as amazed and accomplished as them, for them. How wonderful, I thought, to write songs and create music and have people from across the world know and actually like them.
Needless to say, the crowd was a riot case when the band emerged onto the stage. More pushing and shoving happened here as fans clad in Bombay Bicycle Club T-shirts try to cram their way through, thrusting their fists and elbows at me to get a better view of the boys, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt after The Naked and Famous’ set, it’s keeping my place from this bunch.
Bombay Bicycle Club was honestly the one band I was seriously looking forward to and they did not disappoint (we also did an interview with Jamie here). Jack chatted to us about their day out in Bugis where “there’s a lot of fake stuff” in between their setlist and even though the band seemed to ignore the crowd shouting “Happy Birthday Jack!”, Jamie finally stopped the band as they were beginning to play the intro to a song and had everyone sing Jack a birthday song, with the backstage crew coming out with a cake with candles for Jack to blow out. “Thanks, I’m glad I’m celebrating my birthday in Singapore,” said an amused Jack. I laughed inwardly, thinking along the lines of “yeah right” (though of course he could have really meant it and I was just being pessimistic), but it was still really nice of him, and nice for us too, to be a part of his 22ndth birthday.
The band sounded amazing live and their stage presence was one of the best that I’ve experienced. Jumping from one album to the other, the band continued their perfect tunes and melodious pitch without missing a beat. Uptempo and quirky, this is one band that is probably on every indie playlist. Not one song was left out in the crowd’s sing-a-long, which goes to show how huge the band’s fan base has really become, as the band’s setlist stretches from the first album to the latest album. Even before the lyrics were sung, the crowd was humming to the intro of the songs, at times so loud I had trouble hearing the band’s playing themselves. The band played tracks like Evening Morning, Always Like this, Lights Out Words Gone and more to the delighted bobbing crowd, with applause so roaring that any louder it would have probably blown the roof off the place.
After their last song, the boys left with chants of encore from the crowd, to which it was thankfully heeded as the boys headed back out on stage to play their final song with Jack saying, “We were gonna play this anyway, thanks again Singapore.”
The night soon drew to a close as they sang through the last verse and I was left with raving fans screaming at the technical crew to throw anything the band had touched to them, reminding me of a certain documentary on piranhas I’ve seen somewhere. I would have loved to jump on the bandwagon too but after balancing my chances of actually getting whatever it was that the guys would throw at me and failing, I decided to just make a move.
…And so I walked out of the place feeling contented and pleased with myself than I have ever been in weeks. Good job Bombay Bicycle Club, I wish you all the best for your upcoming tour.
Image credits: Blog.bandwagon.sg & flickr
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I actually heard Jack saying, “It’s an honour to be celebrating my birthday in Singapore.”
Great article by the way!
p.s. the arctic monkeys are my favourite band!!
Listened to your covers. They are good
Hahaha aw thanks!