The Hot Soles open up the night with typical aplomb, a class act in rock and roll, all sweat and frenetic riffs, blustering drums and yelping vocals, it’s a call to arms and The Hot soles are definitely armed and dangerous. The crowd are ready.

Following on are the High Hazels, producing their own style of dreamy, psychedelia, imbued with Miles Kane and The Coral styled skiffle rock. The layering of the melodies adds a sense of sweeping, grandiose melancholy to proceedings, and giving people a chance to catch their breath.

Let’s Buy Happiness continue with the grandiose, but this time it’s Sigur Ros melodies and channeled percussion with ghostly, sweeping guitars, all combined with a collage of ambient minimal vocals. The sheer size of the music being performed makes the band sound genuinely epic, Lanterns On The Lake turned up to eleven!

So, that brings us to Hey Sholay, confidently striding on stage, immediately owning the evening. It isn’t an arrogance that’s on display, just a sense of achievement, a professional display of skill. The band hold the audience in the palm of their collective hand, powering into their set and setting the crowd alive. Fan favourite ‘The Bears, The Clocks, The Bees’ is a raucous affair, the crowd swaying and singing along with the band, a collision of band and fan, one entity, an expression of joy and art.

Lead single from Cloud, Castle ________, the band’s new E.P.‘Wdyrwmtbh’, is a sumptuous progression of the band’s sound, employing Midlake and Maccabees style synths, with indulgent bass lines, against Liam Creamer’s Supergrass sounding vocals, it all builds to a cacophony of glitches, synths and swirls, ending with the delicacy and fragility of Creamer’s vocals asking “Who do you really want me to be?/Just who do you really need?” With a display of raw emotion and pure entertainment, collective joy and communal celebration, all we need Hey Sholay to be are themselves, and that’s all we need as well.

Editor’s note: Thanks to Hey Sholay for tweeting our reviewer the setlist

Words: Fuzz Caminski