This is mainly due to the fact that tonight's band, The Pretty Reckless, is fronted by a young lady called, Taylor Momsen, who made a name for herself acting in TV's Gossip Girl, before deciding that an Alt. Rock band is they way she'd like to earn a crust. She also happens to be incredibly attractive, slightly contraversial, and 17 years old. All of these things combined to reinforce my cynicism as to why this band have managed to sell out the Manchester Academy on their debut UK tour.
Turns out I was rather wrong.
The bands main material is, to be honest, not much to write home about. I haven't been into that kind of stuff for many years now- having got over the various injustices, problems and emotional trauma in the world. However, the band rock out, audience love it and Taylor keeps everyone suitably excited. Taylor turns out to actually be a very competent vocalist, at times sounding remarkably like Karen-O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (cue the refutations from hardcore YYY fans, but she bloody does!).
Interspersed into their own material, The Pretty Reckless also squeeze in a few covers. The first is introduced as "a song we wanted to play on French TV, but they wouldn't let us because they didn't think enough people would know it. I hope more of you know it." This put me on edge, 'how bad could it be!?' i'm thinking.
Not bad at all, as it turns out. The cover is of Audioslave's 'Like a Stone', a very good song that I've not heard in quite a while. I think the only people in the building who know it are me and the band- most 15 year old girls yet to acquaint themselves with Chris Cornell's back catalogue- confirming the French media's suspicions. But full credit to them for having the balls to play a song they wanted to, despite not fitting into the 'target demographic'.
The final cover, during the encore, was a medley of Oasis' 'Supersonic' and Muse's 'Time is Running Out'. Again both of these aren't the immediately obvious tracks you'd expect someone to cover, and again, most of the audience don't have a clue about them, but they're both very well executed and keep me suitably entertained!
So all in all, a show with a few surprises, and a lot of my cynicism dashed. The Pretty Reckless, it turns out, are a real, decent band, who all know what they're doing. Theres a lot of mediocre rock in the music industry nowadays and, as far as mediocre goes, I'll but them towards the top end of that scale.
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