Live review taken from
Embrace & Ultrasound
On they came. Five good men and true.
Suddenly it all made sense. "Blind", "The Last Gas", "All You Good Good People". Rarely can a band emerge with an opening salvo as lethal as that to open a show. Singer Danny McNamara is best known for his surly onstage attitude, but tonight he was flying, pumping his fist, giving it the Richard Ashcroft "come on!"
His people were here and to their credit, Embrace can rarely have sounded better than this. Noel Gallagher's "he should get some f*cking singing lessons" rang hollow as McNamara sailed with ease through the falsetto of 'Blind'. Stage right his brother Richard pogo'd like some kind of crazy man, buzzing on the grand madness of Embrace's stratospheric rise to fame.
First though, there was the support. And what a support band.
Ultrasound raced out of the traps with 'Same Band', the song that caused a stir when it emerged on Fierce Panda records earlier this year. Live it's the same whirlwind of burbling keyboards and frantic guitar, with singer Tiny's nasal howl caught up in the middle.
Tiny is of course what might be politely termed 'a stout chap'. He's bloody enormous, with a foghorn of a voice and a neat line in guitar heroics. More than once, seemingly overcome with emotion, he retired to the back of the stage to concentrate on his fret"work". The bassist and second vocalist gave a similarly stunning account of herself, particularly on 'Floodlit World'.
Ultrasound delivered one incredible song after another, each ending with the band lost in their music, howling distortion blowing around the band as they stood statue still. It felt almost voyeuristic to watch them wrestling with such potent emotion. It ended too soon, band members leaving one by one in what appeared to be anger. Finally Tiny (full fat-man fold-over belly now dangling inches below his shirt hem) unplugged his effects pedal and said a silent "thank you". Uncomfortable yet exhilarating spectacle.
At that point Embrace looked thoroughly blown away. There was no way they could top that...
At times it痴 hard to work out exactly why the public (if not the critics) have fallen so hard for Embrace. More than half of the set is made up of tender ballads like 'Now You池e Nobody', 'High Sights' and the beautiful 'Fireworks', but no-one has hits with ballads these days, do they?
Yet all the time there was a feeling, an overwhelming notion that a year from now kids up and down the country will eschew crap haircuts and wear their hair Embrace-style. It felt good.
If Embrace do rewrite pop's current penny-dreadful handbook, so much the better. At last, here's a band writing songs about life, love and all that AND getting them heard. They've got vision, they've got ability, and at last they've got their big family. Finally people have stopped talking through the slow songs. They no longer go down like a knackered lift.
It fair sent shivers down your spine. Welcome to the archetypal match made in heaven, two of the finest new bands in Britain going toe-to-toe in a warm-up for their Oxford Sound City gigs. Let me tell you gentle reader, it wasn't half bad. Both bands showed an almost suicidal level of confidence by throwing away their best-known songs straight away: plain craziness, but pulled off with aplomb.
Maybe there is some justice in this cruel, cruel pop world after all.
By ShEP Music Editor John Allison
Taken from: Sheffield Electronic Press