Live Review: Taking Back Sunday @ Rock City, Nottingham 17/02/2017

Here's what happened when we caught Taking Back Sunday live at Rock City, Nottingham with support from  Frank Iero and The Patience and Muncie Girls. 

Having released their latest album Tidal Wave last year, Taking Back Sunday are finally hitting the UK to show us their new sound. Despite this new sound, I still couldn’t help but feel like a young teenager again when 'Cute without the ‘E’' gave me all them teen angst feels and when my MCR love was stronger than ever. Supporting Taking Back Sunday was Frank Iero and The Patience, Frank Iero being ex-guitarist of MCR.

However, before both of these bands, Exeter-based trio Muncie Girls came out to provide us with a 30 minute set. Opening for such energetic bands is a tough job but, where many bands would open to a sad excuse for an audience, Muncie Girls pulled it right out of the bag and really livened up the place right from the start. Vocalist Lande Hekt offers note-perfect dreamy vocals that entice you and almost make you feel as though it’s just you and the band in the room. What’s great about Hekt’s vocals is that they’re completely different to the usual British support acts I see at every other gig recently. They provide a nice breath of fresh air that would shock anyone new to their music, especially to be in a venue of it’s size.



Learn in School best showcased this unique sound with a fun and catchy beat. I see Muncie Girls moving on to even bigger things after this, as not only are they dropping some really great music recently, but they also have a genuine kindness to them that makes them all the more likeable.

As Muncie Girls left the stage and the wait began for Frank Iero and The Patience, the room started to fill up a lot more, not only with people, but also with the deafening screams of girls stood right by the barrier in front of the stage. Two girls behind me were literally counting down the minutes till the band came on stage; they could hardly contain themselves. I mean, is it all that surprising they have so many typical fan girls with a member of MCR chucked in there? I can understand their excitement. Having never listened to the band before, I understood the excitement even more when they came on stage. Right from the get go, Frank Iero delivered raw punk energy and went crazy across the stage, interacting with other band members too. The crowd mirrored this energy and as I walked around the crowd taking pictures, I found people pushing each other, crowd surfing, and just having a lot of fun all round.



Despite the want for nostalgia, the crowd were all still excited over the more recent music Taking Back Sunday have released with everyone singing along. I lost count of the amount of time the bouncers had to pick people up from the crowd and escort them back to safety as they were crowd surfing. There were also groups of people dancing with each other faced away from the band, just enjoying the music in their own way, and people just finger pointing and singing along. No matter what people were doing, it was easy to tell everyone loved what Taking Back Sunday had to offer and they were all completely encapsulated by the music. Despite being in such a big venue, the performance felt like that of something you’d expect from Rock City basement rather than the main room.



One slight hindrance to the band may have been playing at Rocky City on a Friday night it meant they had to be off stage by 10pm. They announce this and say they’re not going to be able to do that whole encore thing where they leave the stage and everyone yells “one more song” repeatedly in unison, whilst the band go “no we can’t, no, we’re finished!” to finally give in and perform one more song as if the audience and the band are all totally shocked by this surprise encore. However, they managed to turn it around and make a joke out of it by saying this, as it was so relatable and is something no one ever addresses but in the back of our minds, we’re all thinking it. The ended the night by performing Damn Sure, which we had all been waiting for and the crowd went absolutely crazy. If everyone wasn’t singing along before, they definitely were now.



Also, a side note for Adam Lazzara, this is one reviewer that doesn’t judge your accent so you keep doing what you do and talk to the crowd as much as you want.

Words and Photography By Hayley Fearnley