Rival Sons Review

Rival Sons, Birmingham Institute, 11th April 2013

It’s that time I have been waiting for, West-coast based band, Rival Sons were back in the UK and were about to rock to a packed audience at Birmingham’s Institute.

With great anticipation of seeing them again (the first time being High Voltage festival a few years back) I could tell that I wasn’t the only one looking forward to this gig, there was a great buzz around the place tonight and it couldn’t have been better.

But before they took the stage, bluesy Australian two-piece, The Graveltones, took to the stage. Featuring Jimmy O on Vocals /Guitar and Mikey Sorbello on Drums, they appeared to be Australia’s answer to The White Stripes. And though this type of band has already been done before, The Graveltones shone a new light on it. I highly recommend checking them out if you can.

When the lights dimmed, Rival Son’s Scott Holiday kicks the show off with the song, ‘You Want To,’ from their critically acclaimed album ‘Head Down,’ rolling on very quickly to ‘Get What’s Coming' and Planet Rock’s favourite, ‘Wild Animal.’ The band played one song after the other, roaring on with the song ‘Torture’ and ‘Until the Sun Comes,’ after which lead singer Jay Buchanan finally took a breath to address the audience. "We're gonna give you one now we’re gonna slow it down. And when I say slow it down, I actually mean be quiet if you can.” With the audience in the palm of their hands, the band showed their breadth with the ballad, ‘Jordan.’

Jay Buchanan then went on to tell us about the manifest destiny of North America, a speech of which most of the audience quickly forgotten about as soon as they went into the beginning of ‘Manifest Destiny – Part One,’ with Jay then disappearing from the stage whilst the rest of the guys carried on. When the song ended he explained to us that he wasn’t feeling very well, but up until that point I don’t think anyone had noticed anyway!

Slowly slipping into a short intro for the song ‘Face of light,’ Jay expressed that "This song is for my son, ten more days as we'll be together,” which followed onto Mike Miley then demoing a short drum solo to lead into ‘Burn Down Los Angeles’ and finishing the evening off with the song, ‘Soul.’

 It’s not hard to imagine that these guys are going to go far, with album number 3 already hitting a big impact on the classic rock generation of today; they’re becoming one of those bands you’ll go and see whenever they come to our shores, because you know it’s always going to be one hell of a good show.

Set List for the evening was as follows:

 You Want To 

Get What’s Coming 

Wild animal 

Gypsy heart

Torture

Memphis sun 

All the Way

Until the Sun Comes

Jordan 

Manifest destiny part one 

Keep On Swinging

Pressure and time 

Sacred Tongue

Face of light 

Burn down Los Angeles 

Soul