Chris Prince

After a 15-year absence of playing a major show in its hometown, The  Beautiful South returned last night perform the first of two sold-out shows  at the Hull City Hall.

The support act, Aberfeldy were one of the better supports I’ve seen  recently at venues of this size, with the five-piece Edinburgh outfit, who  sounded kind of like a hybrid between the ‘Magic Numbers’ and ‘The South’  themselves, making the best use of a range of instruments including,  interestingly, a fiddle, banjo, and dual xylophones. Lead singer Riley  Briggs was friendly and talkative to the crowd, who can’t have been too
familiar with the band or its material. After a half-hour set, which  included the bands “hit single” (which Briggs informed an amused crowd  reached number 60 in the charts before disappearing into obscurity) ‘Love is an Arrow’, the band left the stage to cheers and applause, which was no less than they deserved.

By 9 o’clock it was indeed show-time and the moment many fans had been waiting over a decade for. The Beautiful South stuck with a set they knew would be a winner for the first night home, packed with classics and crowd-pleasers and keeping the comparatively relatively unknown new songs from The South’s recently released 10th album ‘Superbi’ to a minimum.

This seemed a wise move as the audience were on the whole unresponsive as the band opened with a new song, ‘Rose of My Cologne’ but instantly livened up once the first few notes of ‘Old Red Eyes’ rang out across the City Hall. The South’s new single ‘Manchester’, released earlier in the month, received the best reception out of all of the ‘Superbi’ songs from the audience, with many in the crowd singing along to the tune which already seems to fit in well with other classics played during the set, including ‘Perfect 10’, ‘Song For Whoever’ and ‘Keep It All In’.

One interesting addition to the stage set-up was a crude video screen which was revealed to the audience halfway through the main set during ‘Manchester’. I’m unsure as to what effect this ‘prop’ was intended to have upon the concert, as its effects were somewhat hit and miss. For example, the ‘rain’ effect during ‘Manchester’ seemed, to put it bluntly, a little tacky, and during other songs where it was used the video screen seemed either a little redundant being used with all the other lights and smoke effects going on at the same time or there were some technical difficulties going on with it backstage. However, it almost redeemed itself during ‘Perfect 10’, giving a kind of Vegas feel to the song’s performance.

Paul Heaton (lead vocals) seemed in a playful mood, entertaining the crowd
with his dance moves and bouncing around the stage, however that said he was
relatively uncommunicative with his audience considering this was a gig on
home ground.

South saved their best ‘til last with the two encores which boosted the atmosphere at the Hall into party mode, closing with ‘Keep It All In’ and releasing several large balloons for the audience to play with while the brass section of the band came to the front of the stage along with the rest of the band to take in the audience’s appreciation while the rest of the hall swung along to the music.

Overall the gig was good but not awe-inspiringly excellent. I expect the band to improve upon their performance with the second show at City Hall tonight but sadly I don’t have the good fortune of being able to go.  My main criticism was that the main set was simply too short, as one would expect a band of South’s history and back catalogue to play more than an hour-long main set after a 15-year wait to return home. Despite this, the general consensus from the audience was that Hull’s finest had once again done their city proud, and that in itself is no main feat.
 

Rating:

7/10

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