A CELEBRATION OF COMMUNITY: THE FRANK TURNER ARMY SHOW UP IN FORCE FOR ROUND 3000

LIVE REVIEW | FRANK TURNER w/ The Lottery Winners, The Meffs | LONDON ALEXANDER PALACE 22nd February 2025 by Ollie Hayman

After nearly 20 years of being a solo artist, on Saturday night Frank Turner finally hit his 3000th show, at London’s beautiful Alexandra Palace. The show marks an incredible landmark for any artist, which many others can only aspire to. His lineup to mark this incredible night included “Brit-punk” duo The Meffs, Leigh-based standouts The Lottery Winners and of course, the main man himself, Frank Turner.

Unfortunately due to travel and security issues, I could not get in the venue in time to see any of the set from The Meffs – but what I can say after seeing them support Frank before is that they are a must-see. Their on-stage energy linked with relevant and to-the-times music keeps you captivated through their set, and the chemistry between Lily and Lewis is just incredible. Definitely a duo to keep an eye on for the near future!

Everyone must have heard of The Lottery Winners by now, and if you haven’t what are you doing?! 2023 marked their true breakout year, releasing their #1 album Anxiety Replacement Therapy, as well as consistently touring. 2024 was another incredible year for the band, including going on an incredible tour with rock legends Nickelback and also announcing their next album, KOKO due out in March of this year! Songs such as “Letter To Myself” and “Worry” proved that the crowd already knew who this band were, with 10,000 people singing back the lyrics in full harmony. Also playing a recently released track in “Turn Around” – which frontman Thom said to look out for on Radio 2 next week. It was safe to say he seemed extremely proud of what he had achieved during that specific song, getting every crowd member dancing to the newest song the band released.

The last couple of years for Frank Turner have been nothing short of crazy. Non – stop worldwide touring, releasing his 10th album and breaking records for most gigs played in 24 hours, it’s safe to say it’s been a wild one. But playing your 3000th show in front of a sold-out and packed Ally Pally must be up there with some of the best moments of that time period. Citing live on stage the legendary John Otway as an influence so to speak, shows the great length he wants to go to in his career. He also hinted on stage at his 4000th show – aspiring to hit that next landmark in his career. 

He opened with a couple of slower and solo songs in “The Ballad of Me and My Friends” and “I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous”, before getting the full band of The Sleeping Souls on stage, who have been his longtime touring band. The now five piece rocked out to “I Still Believe” and “Do One”, both instantly lifting the crowd with 10,000 people jumping up and down with no end in sight. 

Even though it’s been 3000 shows, Frank Turner isn’t shy of making mistakes on stage. He managed to sing verse 2 twice during “The Next Storm”, but laughed and joked about it afterwards, saying how it sounded better than the original and that they’ll keep performing that! It definitely added a lot of humour to the night. 

The 25 – song setlist contained many hits from across his years of being a musician, from his very first album Campfire Punkrock (2006), to hit album Tape Deck Heart (2013) and obviously a few newer songs from FTHC (2022) and Undefeated (2024). Frank introduced “No Thank You For The Music” as a song about people who are only in the music industry for money instead of for passion. With more and more people only interested in this industry for pure greed, this track can definitely be labelled as a song for the times now. There was a strong sense of community with the majority of the crowd shouting back the lyrics “honey tastes better than shit!” in unison with Frank. This came a few songs before “1933” – which he introduced shouting “this is an anti-facist song!”.

Later in the set came “Somewhere Inbetween”, a song off of his latest album that is rarely played live. After telling us his story about when he was younger, and not feeling like he was welcome in his local punk scene, he played the song while holding back tears on stage, which showed the deeper meaning behind the song hit a nerve personally. This also came just before a short 3 song solo set, just a man and his guitar, including playing “Long Live The Queen” which he dedicated to a fan called Daisy who recently passed away from cancer. 

Almost as quickly as the gig started it felt like the encore came. The 4 song encore consisted of the title track of his most recent album, “Undefeated”, a ballad which finishes off the entirety of that album and the close of that chapter of music. Then came “Polaroid Picture” and “Get Better”, a total contrast of songs, with the former being a slow song about taking time with life, and the former being more upbeat punk song, readying the crowd for his usual finale of “Four Simple Words”, which well and truly blew the roof off of one of London’s most iconic music venues. 

Show 3000 was about closing another chapter of the Frank Turner career path, and that is an incomprehensible amount of shows. It’s nearly 10 years of doing one show per day, whilst also writing music and getting life done, yet he seems to do it all so effortlessly and always gets better whenever he does a show. Frank isn’t stopping though, and is touring the UK again in April this year before bringing his popular Lost Evenings to Edinburgh in September! Get your tickets and see all live dates here!

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