The Cribs, Academy, Sheffield

Photo by David Mirzoeff
‘Are you ready to rock? Thank fook fer that’

Walking onstage to ‘God Gave Rock And Roll To You’, The Cribs are out in the full spirit of Halloween tonight: Ryan is dressed as Paul Stanley from Kiss and Ross is Freddy Krueger.

The band kick off with recent single ‘Come On, Be A No-One’ followed by the equally riotous ‘Our Bovine Public’. ‘Girls Like Mystery’ and ‘We Share the Same Skies’ follow which collectively put the crowd into fifth gear and form an instant testament to the strength of their material to date. Objectively viewed, the Jarman vocals are shambolic, yet this has become their trademark along with their Wakefield accents, their zany antics and their undeniable live energy. Ross particularly delights fans by standing up to pound his drums on new song ‘Jaded Youth’ whilst Ryan and Gary are at their best when they are trading vocals and bouncing across the stage like boys having OD’ed on too many blue smarties.

The band play a decent slab of songs from ‘In the Belly of the Brazen Bull’, with numbers like ‘Chi-Town’ slotting comfortably around the fan favourites such as ‘It Was Only Love’ and ‘Another Number’. However, it is the modern classics such as ‘Mirror Kissers’ and ‘Hey Scenesters’ that find the most fervour and inspire the biggest singalongs.

A highlight comes in the form of the guest appearance from Lee Ranaldo’s spoken voice for ‘Be Safe’, which is a good example of the other strings to The Cribs’ bow and shows that they can manage to be rousing and anthemic without a ‘Woah-oh’ in sight.

During the show, The Cribs were reminiscing about playing the Sheffield Barfly with The Kills and Mooney Suzuki back in the early 2000s. Five albums later and comfortably filling Academies, they have become a healthy indie fan staple whose popularity shows no signs of slowing down. For Sheffield tonight, the lads from Wakefield show us the musical evidence of why everything really is better in Yorkshire.