Essex outfit The Bracknall headlined London’s Lower Third for Teenage Cancer Trust last week. It follows the release of their stunning second album ‘Falling Out of View’.
*all images courtesy of Gary Walker
There’s an aura growing around The Bracknall post-release. After ten years of hard graft, everything appears to have fallen into place. The tour supports with The Enemy, plus the Isle of Wight, and By The Sea festival slots have come to a band the guitar scene is desperate to see triumph.
Said desperation was in full voice at the Lower Third. Unsigned bands never used to walk on stage, and have their name bellowed back. As the band rightly said on stage, “What are radio stations fucking playing at” in not playing them and the support bands Rolla and The Slates. The popularity and talent are there, and so, sadly, are a bunch of 90s has-beens with no vision beyond the drudgery of Dave Grohl and reunion tours in charge.
As on the new album, ‘Get Better’ flows into ‘Everything I’ve Ever Known’. The former sends the ultras into a frenzy as frontman Jack Dacey’s vocals hit a fever point that he never ceased from. Then, on ‘Everything I’ve Ever Known’, Kasabian’s early volatility and Noel’s key change magnificence ooze from the soul of the band into the hearts and minds of a sold-out crowd. Every time Dacey melts into ‘I don’t need your permission / I said I’d never listen’, tears filled eyes, and hearts burst forth as the realisation that bands still fucking matter becomes tangible in the room. The guts, the glory, and the utter desperation of it all was a striking moment for anyone lost and downtrodden. Never. Give. Up!
‘Getting Up Again’ and ‘Falling Out Of View’, conjured a great sense of drama. The former soaring and tumbling with heightened anguish, rock ‘n’ roll’s disgrace, and a defiant bravado that legions would line up behind to defend. On ‘Falling Out Of View’, they made the ethereal sound like working-class sublimity. Its potency sucked the audience into their heads, putting their financial worries, relationship woes, and hopes for their kids in full view of their eyelids. Then, the singalong choruses, and the sumptuous licks offered the escapism to blow them away.
Such was the emotive power of the new album in the set; you’d be forgiven for thinking that nothing from their debut cut. ‘Good to the Bone’ and ‘Going Nowhere Fast’ were greeted like old friends, and ‘I Don’t Understand It’ was merged into a devastating performance of ‘Baba O Reilly’.
Nothing encapsulated the evening quite like , ‘I Don’t Understand It’:
“It ain’t the life I'm living / but it’s the one I'm chasing after”.
The industry might have pulled the ladders up for rock ‘n’ roll types in the past fifteen years, but there are other routes to success now. Frank Turner, Shed Seven, and Gerry Cinnamon, among others, have forged paths through the barriers to play massive gigs. May The Bracknall be the next!