30th August
Liverpool’s fusion festival over the past few years has become a staple part of this musical cities musical calendar. Previous years have seen acts such as Olly Murs, Take That and Little Mix headlining, but there was a drastic gap in the market. There was a distinct lack of guitars! Until now. I’m delighted to say that Fusion Presents this year catered for all us rock and Indie kids, with a fantastic line up culminating with a great show by Nashiville’s Kings of Leon.
Arriving at Sefton Park, surprisingly there wasn’t the familiar sitting in traffic for hours to get in. A lot of people it seemed to either walk in or use the excellent public transport links and shuttle buses from Liverpool’s city centre. That meant of course, we got to the music straight away!
I arrived just in time to catch the end of Liverpool’s Circa Waves. I’ve seen these guys at a few festivals over the summer and they always put an excellent show on. They seemed to give it a bit of extra oomph at Sefton Park! Whether it was because they were playing to a home crowd, I don’t know, but they were on fire.
After Circa Waves, Jake Bugg was up. Jake Bugg is only 25, but his guitar tone and vocal delivery sounds like he’s come straight from the sixties. His first album was massive and I really enjoyed it so to hear those songs from his first album live, ‘two fingers’, ‘lightning bolt’ was a real treat. He played some of his newer stuff too, which I can confirm was just as good, if not better. His guitar sound slightly heavier. Jake Bugg was definitely a highlight for me.
By the time Echo and The Bunnymen came on, Sefton Park was filling up. It was getting busier and busier. I have to say, I thought it was a shame for the people further back in the crowd, the screens didn’t have the usual close ups of the band, they just featured the Bunnymen logo, which was slightly disappointing. I always like to see who I’m listening to. I also noticed for the first few songs, the volume was a bit low and a few people were commenting further back they were struggling to hear. Perhaps more speakers are needed half way up the arena. Thankfully, by the time they played ‘Lips Like Sugar’ the volume was cranked up and everyone could hear the end of the set, at least. It was great hearing some of the songs from the first Bunnymen album, they opened with ‘Rescue’ and then went into ‘Do it clean’ and then played ‘Villiers Terrace’ towards the end of the set. They brought the set to a close witha fantastic rendition of ‘The Killing Moon’. Echo and the Bunnymen really did deliver a great set, if you haven’t seen them, you’re missing a treat.
Another nice thing about Fusion, I mentioned the time it took to get in and it being really quick. Well, because it isn’t a huge festival the queues for the various bars and toilets were pretty much nonexistent. I’ve waited longer at the bar at my local pub to be served, it was so quick. That is unless you had tickets to the VIP area. There was a VIP bar and the queue was ridiculous. Taking a good 20 – 25 minutes to be served. In fact, a lot of people who had VIP tickets were going to the normal bar for drinks… Yes, the queue was that bad!!
Anyway, back to music. Franz Ferdinand were up next and they delivered a fantastic set. Playing all the old classics, ‘Take Me Out’ was brilliant, not their final song, that was reserved for ‘This Fire’. Other songs included ‘Walk Away’, ‘Lucid Dreams’ and ‘Michael’. Frontman Alex Kapronas is an excellent showman and really interacted with the audience well.I particularly enjoyed the song ‘Lazy Boy’, which was a track from their latest album ‘Always Ascending’. Great that in a festival gig such as this, they still managed to throw a new song in!
Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for. The sun had just set, plunging Sefton Park into semi darkness as The Kings of Leon entered the stage. What followed was an hour and a half of top drawer stuff. The band hardly said a word and didn’t have to either as they played their way through their extensive back catalogue. The crowd were loving it.
Opening with ‘Slow Night, So Long’ from their second album, from point they walked onstage to the point at which they played their final note, they had the crowd in their hands! Amazingly, Caleb Followill’s voice sounds exactly the same, if not better than they do on the records and the four piece were so incredibly tight. Unleashing four songs from their latest album Walls, released three years ago, here is a band that have developed over time, but don’t worry, the new stuff is just as good as the old stuff.
Speaking of the old stuff, ‘Sex on Fire’ well and truly lit the crowd up. I don’t think there was a single person not singing along. Surprisingly, they didn’t play it as their last song either, it was their penultimate, which was quite nice as the final song ‘Black Thumbnail’ just brought everyone back down to earth.
What a fantastic day and a brilliant headliner. I really hope Fusion Presents continues in the future as it was such a great day of live music. I for one, will definitely be back for more next year.
