Public Service Broadcasting

Well that was a gig and a half! Excellent live performance from Public Service Broadcasting @ The Boiler Shop in Newcastle. Meeting up with Lani and Pete at Newcastle Tap before the gig, we had a chance to sample an ale, although Sheelagh stuck to her guns and ordered wine - despite being a Guinness and Black drinker when she was younger I don't think she will ever develop a taste for craft beers! The ales were so good we decided to move on to Box Social. It's quite small, actually it's very small but again a good range of ales and a friendly atmosphere. By this time we had missed the support, but arrived a good 15 minutes before Public Service Broadcasting were due to start.

Bowie's Sound and Vision filled the Boiler Shop and on came Public Service Broadcasting, opening with Every Valley, title track from new album and followed by The Pit, I wondered if we were going to get a full performance of the album. But then came Theme From PSB and the "even sillier" The Now Generation from their full-length debut  Inform – Educate – Entertain both are good songs in their own right, to be fair, but in the sombre tones of the openers felt like awkwardly intrusive gatecrashers. In fact the new album, every Valley featured pretty heavily in the set list, it's a bit of a departure from their older stuff and can be a bit on the 'serious' side, but then again an album dealing with the rise and decline of the Mining Industry in South Wales is never going to be a toe-tapping singalong! Consequently it's the older songs that are the highlights, Spitfire from their debut album came early in the set and was superb, then it was back to Every Valley, which although good, and probably better in a live setting, doesn't have the energy of their 2 earlier albums.

The whole gig was good but was lifted to the epic status as we came to the closers - Go!, which had everyone calling out and much raised fists and then the encores Gagarin, from The Race for Space featuring synchronised dancing spacemen and finishing with Everest.

Lots of smiling faces as we headed out in to the unseasonable warm Newcastle night air.

A word about the Boiler Shop, it's been converted or refitted to be used as a music venue, it's very much a venue of two halves, one half being in front of the stage and the other off to the side with the supporting pillars of the venue dividing it. Whoever did the sound has done a great job. My one gripe would be that because the bars are at the back there's a constant stream of people moving back and forth. As usual we seemed to be standing on the direct route to the bar - I do miss the years when you couldn't do that and watching the band was why you had bought the tickets in the first place, but it's a small price to pay for another music venue in Newcastle.