The Cribs @ Rock City

The Wakefield indie rock legends come through town on the tour for their brand new album, Selling a Vibe, with support from Courting. Liz Clarke reports.

I love it when a support band seemingly does not care that they’re the opening act and that a majority of the crowd will not know who they are, and this was exactly the experience I had watching Liverpool’s Courting, performing with a desire to merge with the crowd that many would reserve for their most hardcore fans. Throughout their set, the lead singer spent as little time inert on the stage as possible, instead choosing the barrier and trying to structure a singalong in time with the drums on one track. This energy and commitment at all levels was a reflection of their brand of frenetic, angular and slightly messy indie rock, laced with Windmill Scene-adjacent guitar interplay but altogether more in line with the early 2000s NME era.

I’m going to pedantically start my review of The Cribs’ gig with a criticism that has very little to do with their actual music or performance, but instead, their choice of lighting set up. The floor was lined with blindingly bright white lights facing out into the audience, for a reason I couldn’t quite decipher. This occasionally took me out of the gig because, to be completely honest, my eyes hurt, a sentiment that I feel was echoed by others around me from the constant brief squints and turns away. Not that this is unforgivable by any metric, but it did not seem to help anybody near the front’s immersion.

With that out of the way, I can now safely say that, of the million British indie rock bands who emerged in what has been coined as the “Landfill indie” era, The Cribs are among those who are growing up with the most grace. It doesn’t hurt that they themselves are clearly having a great time: the banter between the Jarman brothers on stage is strong and genuinely funny, including claims that they had their own Beatlemania, “Jarmania,” which only didn’t take off because of COVID coming about straight after the release of Night Network. A drunk and slightly unruly fan, celebrating his birthday, also hands his ID onto the stage to prove that he deserves to hear Tonight (which they do later play a few bars of), prompting Ryan Jarman’s characteristic snark: “Oh, I thought you were proving you’re old enough… Not that I’d be opposed if so”. 

The excitement doesn’t end with the inter-song jokes, as the energy throughout the whole set is immense. Early in the set, Hey Scenesters! sets the bar high with its fist-pumping hook and vocal harmonies, prompting a singalong that then, a few songs later, carries comfortably into We Share the Same Skies' jangly guitar anthemic bliss. The tracks from their new record, Selling a Vibe, also sound great live, even if the audience enthusiasm naturally isn’t quite as high. For instance, the lead single, a sentimental and slightly uncharacteristically sentimental ballad called Summer Seizures is given space for its beautiful chorus to thrive in a live setting, its romantic underpinnings and use of reverb-heavy guitar charming the audience. 

Other tracks from the recent album that really work in a live setting include ode to the Jarmans’ family bond and working class roots, Brothers Won’t Break, complete with a twinkling slide guitar sound, and A Point Too Hard To Make, which I initially dismissed but which contains an infectious chorus. But of course, The Cribs are a band who know that people still want to hear their hits, and specifically, know why these songs are hits, and this is showcased towards the end of the show, particularly through Mirror Kissers and Men’s Needs being played back to back towards the end, with all of the fervour that these tracks require. Men’s Needs emerges from a haze of foggy noise, with the first iterations of its iconic riff being slightly obscured before a knowing cheer descends upon the crowd. It’s the kind of track that inevitably bursts with a rapturous applause, just on the merit of its chorus, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t put a shift in to make sure that the weight of its rhythm is felt. Mirror Kissers, similarly, is a song that just works, a snappy and brief power-pop cut that earns it place at the set’s climax on the back of its purely anthemic nature.

The band end the night on a rendition of the down-tuned Be Safe, with the spoken word section by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo not simply ignored or repeated by a member of the band, but played over the speakers in a way which builds nicely to the song’s grand ending repetition of the phrase, “Be Safe.” I like the track as a closer to send us into the night, bringing us back down gently with its elegantly grungy garage rock. And with that, it’s the end, no encores, no thrills, no over-the-top displays of appreciation, just an evening of good indie rock that knows it.

Liz Clarke

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Edited by Liz Clarke

Photographs sourced from The Cribs on Facebook, by Tom Atkin