FROM THE TYNE TO THE YARRA: SAM FENDER’S ANTHEM FOR THE HOMESICK

LIVE REVIEW | SAM FENDER w/ Day We Ran, Beddy Rays and Holly Humberstone | SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL, MELBOURNE by Kayleigh Nickson

It’s been a few years since I saw so many Newcastle United football shirts, but over the weekend Geordie royalty Sam Fender brought the North-Eastern charm to Melbourne This show was the first of his Australian leg of the People Watching Tour and the first of the two Melbourne shows at Sidney Myer Music Bowl – a 13,000 capacity outdoor venue. ‘People Watching‘ is the third studio album by Fender, his last album was ‘Seventeen Going Under‘ in 2021. Supporting him at the Friday show was; Day We Ran, Beddy Rays and Holly Humberstone. 

First up was Day We Ran, a guitar-driven rock band from Lennox Head in New South Wales. This was their first show back in Australia after they supported The Kooks on their UK arena tour. Lonely Lands Agency describe their music by saying “The band sits in its own world of dogtown anthem rock made up of driving riffs, unique harmonies and story-driven melodies.” From where I was sat, it felt as though there wasn’t much of a crowd for them until I looked back onto the lawn, I wish that more people towards the front showed up early for them as they could’ve found their newest favourite band but I’m still happy they had a decent crowd overall. 

Second onto the stage was Beddy Rays, a rock band from Redland Bay, Queensland. Their music is described as ‘rollicking coastal punk rock’ and towards the end of their set I understood exactly what that meant. The first few songs were calmer and their energy was more on the surf-rock side of things and as the set went on they got more energetic and lively. I definitely will be listening to these again and would love to see them at their own show too.

The last of the support acts was Holly Humberstone, a solo artist from the East Midlands of England. She was discovered through BBC Music Introducing but her career blew up when she supported Lewis Capaldi on the European leg of his ‘Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent’ tour at the beginning of 2020 before lockdown began. Her music is beautiful but I wasn’t sure she was the right fit for supporting Sam Fender, my opinion was immediately invalidated when I saw the crowd sing and dance along to her music and I am more than happy to be proven wrong.  

Sam Fender opened with ‘Angel in Lothian’ going straight through to ‘Will We Talk?’. Him and his band were very jetlagged but it didn’t stop them from giving the show their all. Joining him on stage was his seven piece band, a lot of them seemed to play multiple instruments depending on what the song required including; keys, synthesisers, saxophone, trumpet, mandolin, etc. Joseph Atkinson, one of the jack of all trades on stage, was the biggest hype man for the show keeping the crowd chanting, clapping or dancing around – it was good to see the band of a solo artist so involved in the show and they all looked like they were having the best time. The newest addition to the crew was backing singer, Brooke Bentham who seemed as though she’d been touring with them for years, it was very wholesome watching the band interact with each other including when Joseph and Brooke danced around the stage together truly living their best lives. 

The whole show was a 14 song set, night two in Melbourne also got ‘Wild Long Lie’ and I’m not sure why we didn’t but that’s okay. They played hits from all three studio albums including my all-time favourite song ‘Howdon Aldi Death Queue’ which was released with the single ‘Seventeen Going Under’. He introduced this song by saying “This is the stupidest fucking song I’ve ever written” then got excited when he realised that Australia also has Aldi. After the song he went on a tangent about how the song was made, they only made two takes of it, “When we recorded it, it was live and I think it was the first take that was the one. I was like ‘that’s fucking shite that’ and then AR walked in and they were like ‘oh my god, I love it’.” 

Fender told the crowd that these were going to be the last 6 shows for a while as he doesn’t want to be oversaturated, he states “I need to fuck off and make something before everyone fucking hates me, so we’re going to go away and come back with another album.” He also mentioned the possibility of making Australia the first and last stop on the next tour but whether that’ll happen, only time will tell.  

During ‘Seventeen Going Under’, the crowd was so loud that as I recorded it on my phone the sound cut out and it made the video glitch which has never happened in all my years of going to gigs. The atmosphere during that song (and ‘Hypersonic Missiles’) felt so surreal, the crowd was from all walks of life, all across the world and we were all joined together in that moment. In the whole year I’ve been over here, I hadn’t been surrounded by so many English and Irish people to the point where I felt like I was back at home.

In true Geordie fashion, I had a group of people next to me who were wasted dancing and singing together with the strangers next to them trying to get anyone and everyone to join in with them. It felt like true happiness. After ‘Seventeen Going Under’ he told the audience that he was going “do that thing where I pretend I’m done and go off stage and come back on, it’s so fucking stupid”, yet he did it anyway. In the few minutes he was off stage, the entire crowd from the front to the back kept the ‘woah oh oh’ part of the song going almost the entire time, I wasn’t expecting them to keep it up so long, it was crazy and gave me chills. He returned to stage on his own and performed ‘I’m Always On Stage’ which is a brand new song off his Deluxe version of ‘People Watching’ (due to be released on 5^th December) before inviting his band back on stage.  

They ended the set with ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ which included a plethora of confetti cannons going off. As the last note finished, I felt so homesick. In the 90-minutes of music and dancing, I forgot that I was on the other side of the world away from everyone I knew. I felt so at home during the show that I felt as though I was in a field at a UK festival while also feeling like I was in the North East again – all I needed was a warm pint of cider and a Greggs sausage roll and I wouldn’t be surprised if others in the crowd felt the same way. All thoughts and problems were left at the gate before the show and it was a night of pure bliss, nostalgia for home life and just overall good vibes. We can’t wait for you to return, Sam Fender.