“Better, better together / I feel stronger, stronger than ever”
Last week, Bristol’s Holy Youth Movement kicked off the Friday night on Centre Stage at the Shiiine On Weekender.
In the last eighteen months, we’ve seen HYM support Rolla, The Utopiates, and play (but not headline) This Feeling’s stage at Truck Festival. Their short but devastating sets have always left us with the feeling there is more in the tank. At Shiiine, they brought the tank!
What was lacking from those shows was time and grandeur. The longer set and better-rigged stage afforded them at Shiiine laid bare their ability to look like superstars! Epitomised by the intoxicating instrumental ‘Raz’ opening the set. The snarling electronica and thudding basslines hit a groove that demanded full attention.
Enter the stage frontman Tom Newman to the ecstatic synths of ‘You Thought I Was Dead’. Resplendent in his boiler suit and shades, Newman is supercharged on this Primal Scream ‘XTRMNTR’ classic in the making. The guitars fire into the ether like four-minute warning sirens as the synths distort with kaleidoscopic chaos.
Minute by minute, the Shiiine crowd filter into the late-night venue. Ebbing closer to the magnetic power of their early Kasabian trips. During ‘Better Together’, a moment of unification only topped by The Farm’s ‘All Together Now’ crystalises. Although the tempo drops, the intensity burns just as brightly. The spirit of unification conjured by the Primals, and the dearly departed Weatherall and Johnson in ’91 oozes through the room with a soul-enriching blissfulness.
No HYM gig is complete without the blistering ‘Tranquilizer’. Recorded with Andrew Innes and produced by Jagz Kooner, the Bristol quintet have a weapon of mass distraction in their armoury. With the light show coming at the Shiiine crowd like a technicolour blitz, Newman strutted from the crowd to band members like the pied piper of rock ‘n’ roll leading us to salvation.