Review: Bowling For Soup
The boys are back with the 'How about another round' tour
Two and a half years ago Bowling For Soup broke our hearts when they announced they would no longer be putting on UK tours and that the ‘Farewell' tour would be their last. Imagine our surprise and delight then when they decided that they weren’t quite done with us yet. The ‘How about another round’ tour kicked off on the 1st February in Glasgow and the pop-punk four piece will be intensively touring the UK every night until the 15th Feb.
Most famous for their tracks ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’, ‘1985’ and ‘High School Never Ends’ to name just a few, it was great to see the guys back on the road alongside some familiar support acts. MC Lars who was the host for the evening and The Dollyrots were on hand to perform a mix of covers and their own music. Also joining the tour was Lacey, an English band battling to break the big time and extremely grateful for the opportunity.
In case you’re unfamiliar, the band is made up of lead singer Jaret Reddick, Erik Chandler on bass, Chris Burney on guitar and Gary Wiseman on drums and they had gone all in creating their very own pub on stage for this tour, which they of course made use of.
Some fans were surprised to see that Jaret’s waistline had grown but he quickly made a joke of it asking the audience “Did anyone notice that I got really fat?” The jokes then came thick and fast and throughout the night the band had the crowd laughing along. It’s always been one of their strengths, not only do they sound just as good live as they do on the album but they interact with the crowd and you come away exhausted from laughing as well as jumping around.
They opened up with one of their older hits, ‘The Bitch Song’ and went straight into high energy ‘Emily.’ The pace didn’t slow as they also worked their way through ‘Ohio (Come Back To Texas)’, ‘The Last Rock Show’ and then onto ‘Punk Rock 101.’ They sounded as good as they ever have and the crowd proved just how much they loved the music by singing along so loudly that you could see how moved Jaret was when he let us sing along without him.
The four-piece from Texas are credited with contributing to the genre ‘punk pop’ and they were keen to remind us that this genre isn’t dead by playing a high energy tribute to other bands such as Blink 182, Green Day and Jimmy Eat World in a medley of some of their most notable hits. Over the years the band have always made light of the fact they love that people think they are the ones behind hit ‘Stacey’s mom’ and always manage to squeeze this into the set. The crowd loved it and were bouncing in unison but you have to wonder, did some of the younger ones even know it wasn’t a BFS hit?
They finished the night with ‘High School Never Ends’ and then “the greatest song ever” according to Jaret and probably the audience; ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want.’ Many in the audience looked out of the breath by the end, realising it was a lot harder to jump around than in 2002 when the band first emerged, but everyone looked happy.
Bowling For Soup; great music, lots of laughter and a great time all round. In fact, we fancy another round so come back soon!