The Steets - Castlefield Bowl

One thing I didn't realise about the Streets when I decided to buy tickets to see them at Sounds of the City in Manchester was how much their audience had aged since the release of the album 'Original Pirate Material' in 2002. I have a deep rooted love for that album, for me I feel its a perfect hybrid between indie, guitar based music, hip hop and even dance music, using beats and percussion in tracks such as 'Has It Come to This?' to elevate the music - their songs seem to have such a bigger presence than other 'band' music. Although, being born the same year as this ground breaking album, I did feel like the only member of the audience who hadn't had to book a babysitter for the evening, but let me tell you, when old people boogie, they boogie.

As always at Castlefield Bowl, the atmosphere was electric. Granting, that may have been something to do with the support act - Children of Zeus - a Manchester based hip hop duo. I've never wished to kick myself so much for turning up late to a concert as I did when I saw the poster outside the gig with their name underneath the Streets - we'd missed them. To be completely honest, I spent the first half of the Streets set sulking about that, but Mike Skinner knew how to soon plaster a smile back on my face.

Skinner's potentially one of the most charismatic front men I've seen in a band - nothing disappoints me more than the personality you see on stage not living up to your expectations. Although he spent most of his time listing things that he found fundamentally Mancunian (factories, The Suffragettes and generally just feeling cold) he engaged the audience in a way I've never seen before - you couldn't have taken your eyes off him even if you"d wanted to. He made every single person making up the audience know that he wouldn't rather be in the company of anyone else - right there on that stage before them is exactly where he wanted to be.

A highlight of the evening for me was when they concluded their encore with the track 'Take Me As I Am', a song the Streets released with Chris Lorenzo in 2019. As one of their most recent songs, I was unsure how this would go down, particularly as they were playing it to a slightly higher age bracket than the song was made for. I felt like I was there to witness the initial reaction of parents to drum and bass, turns out they love it, they were raving to it much more than I was. Perhaps they were just overexcited about their recently acquired freedom, Granny had their kids for the night and they decided it was time for them to let their hair down while they had the chance.