It’s a chilly night here in Cardiff but Newport’s The Boy Royals do their best to warm up the Clwb Ifor Bach crowd with a set full of hard edged, anthemic rock songs.
Kicking things off with the excellent ‘Voice Of The Future’ the band are on fine form.
I am a little biased when it comes to The Boy Royals, I’m a big fan and think they are one of the most exciting live bands on the scene right now, but they really do give their all in the live setting. Latest single ‘People Like Us’ sounds huge live and ‘Summer’s Playground’ is catchy as hell.
The band play a new, slower number called ‘Celebrate’ which definitely makes me want to hear some more new tracks from them, they end the set with the excellent ‘Teenage Sky’ which gets the crowd clapping along. The Boy Royals are definitely a band to keep an eye on.
This is Natives first night of the small UK run they are doing, but there are definitely no first night nerves in evidence.
The band, who used to be called Not Advised, from Hampshire are a great live act and even though they played a set full of mostly unreleased and unheard material the crowd still got really into it.
The quality of the songs they played, the names I can only guess at, really make me keen to hear the bands upcoming album. They played some songs tonight for the very first time live and they sounded great.
‘Big Plans’ got a great reaction from the crowd, singer Jim Thomas, doing his best to get the crowd singing along.
They ended the set with latest single ‘This Island’, a really great song and definitely a crowd favourite.
I would have liked to have heard a couple of Not Advised tracks, because they did have some great songs, but I do understand that the band have moved on now and Natives are definitely going places so jump aboard.
8/10