Live Review: Red Rum Club - Boiler Shop, Newcastle 24/09/2025
Any schoolnight is livened up by the unstoppable energy of your, and our, favourite Merseyside Mariachi band, Red Rum Club. This time it was a wonderful autumnal Wednesday evening, the band set alight Newcastle’s Boiler Shop with support from Falkirk-based outfit Brògeal.
The Scottish, sunglass-wearing, folk punk outfit hits the mark for fans of The Proclaimers, and blends traditional with modern musical influences. Their live show is a surprise from the get-go, bringing the vibes and the unmatchable eclectic musical soundscapes. Brògeal sold themselves to me at north east musical all-dayer A Stone’s Throw and did it again supporting Red Rum Club. They sang songs about getting pissed and being in love, introduced a tambourine, which made the singer look exactly like Liam Gallagher as he swaggered about the stage, and a flute that elevated the last track of their set before they exited the stage and left us all in awe.
After having felt like we were part of a western movie, the anticipation was high for the headliners of the evening. As we’ve come to expect from Red Rum Club, the band entered the stage with a bang, performing a set list filled with tracks old and new, including personal favourites ‘Night Calling’, ‘Crush’, ‘Kids Addicted’, ‘Vibrate’, ‘Would You Rather Be Lonely’ and ‘Vanilla’. As you can tell, there is no way of simply having one Red Rum Club favourite, because this band knows how to write absolute anthems. Their debut was filled to the brim with hits, and sprinkled over their next few albums were a bunch more, so to say the expectations were high, is an understatement. On their second night of their UK tour, Red Rum Club lived up to those expectations, as their energy was sky-high, the band seemed to be having a great time, and singer Fran shone vocally throughout the night. As mentioned in many of the after-show conversations was the importance of the trumpet, which I believe every band should add to the mix.
The band reminisced on the past few times they played the north east, with one of their previous shows being at a 70 capacity venue around the corner as part of Hit The North, when they were being interviewed at the Boiler Shop upstairs, and just last year when they performed at Digital in front of 800 people, add another 200 and that’s the amount that had crammed themselves into the Boiler Shop. Red Rum Club are a great example of a band that have worked hard to get where they are now, and they truly should be an inspiration to many aspiring musicians.
With the release of their latest album ‘Buck’, Red Rum Club adamantly tapped into a new audience, as most of their crowd were able to sing along to most of the songs. As they steadily keep building a rather eclectic fanbase, the Scousers show that music is truly for all ages and that on evenings like these there are no differences between people, there is just one commonality; an admiration for the band on stage. That admiration went both ways, and the band and their audience fed off each other which made for a wonderful atmosphere throughout the night!
Words by Laura Rosierse
Photography by Celia Medina
