It has been over five years since American post-hardcore band Our Last Night toured through Europe. Therefore, it was definitely time for them to come back with their ‘You’re Up Europe tour’, which started on the 20th of September in London. The band took to the stage in Tilburg’s 013 on the 22nd of September, playing an almost fully sold out Main Stage.
At 7 p.m., the doors to the concert hall opened to the fans, several of whom had been waiting in line for quite some hours – fortunately, the weather was quite lovely at the start of this autumn. The audience only had to wait about 30 minutes before support act Lifespark. came on stage. Existing of lead singer Dave, guitarist and backing vocalist Justus, bassist Marcel, and drummer Dome, the “heavy pop” band hailing from Koblenz had half an hour to warm up the crowd for the next two acts. The band was extremely enthusiastic, with Dave making the most use of all the space the 013 stage provides. In their music, the band combines both clean as well as dirty vocals, with Dave and Justus differing between the styles throughout their discography. For their third song, ‘Stay Away’, Dave said that he “want[s] everybody to bounce” – and the crowd definitely did, while drummer Dome was playing around with his drumsticks, throwing them to the ceiling and catching them again. The first three songs, which were all quite intense pop rock tracks, were followed by the slower ‘So Long’, so the crowd could catch their breath for a hot minute. This was definitely necessary, as Lifespark. continued their set with a cover of Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘Unwritten’ – which obviously every fan in the audience had to sing along to as loud as possible. While an unexpected choice, it worked out great. After finishing the cover, there was a small technical issue with the drums, which was easily fixed while Justus took his time here to thank the audience for coming out early to see them perform. The band ended their set with two of their own songs, ‘Sympathy’ and ‘Lucid Dreamer’.
After Lifespark.’s set, there was only a fifteen minute break before it was time for the second support act, Normandie. A post-hardcore band from Sweden, they went on their own headline tour across Europe earlier this year, and came back already to support Our Last Night. The band consists of lead singer Philip Strand, guitarist Håkan Almbladh, and drummer Anton Franzon, with Jules Wildblood joining them on stage as bassist. Before the band took to the stage, a spoken introduction sounded out over the speakers. “Hello, welcome to the Dopamine clinic. Treatment will begin shortly” it said, referencing Normandie’s latest album Dopamine. For this album, the band released several singles on the first of each month from August 2023 until February 2024. The last of these singles was ‘Serotonin’, which they opened tonight’s set with. There were quite a few fans in attendance who knew every single word right from the start and so the crowd loudly sang, clapped and jumped along to pretty much every song. After the third song, ‘Holy Water’, Strand took some time to address the crowd and said “I wanna fall in love with you tonight, Tilburg, so I hope you fall in love with us too” before jumping into non-single ‘Overdrive’. Fifth on the setlist tonight was ‘Hourglass’, which in the studio version is a collaboration with Dani Winter-Bates from Bury Tomorrow, who sings the bridge. For the performance, Strand himself took over Winter-Bates’ dirty vocals – and did so perfectly. Strand’s vocal range is amazing and he sounded flawless during the entire 45-minute set. While most of the songs played were from Normandie’s latest album, Strand wanted to test the fans and see “if anybody has been with [them] since 2016”, introducing the song ‘Awakening’ from the band’s first album Inguz. “You’ve made a good impression on us” he said afterwards, before playing the final three songs of their set. They ended with their most-streamed song ‘White Flag’, the title track of their second album.
Thirty minutes after Normandie came off stage, it was time for headliner Our Last Night to play their set. The band was founded in 2004 by brothers Trevor and Matthew Wentworth, with both of them providing vocals for their songs and Matt also playing the guitar. The band also includes drummer Timothy Molloy, and on stage they are joined by bassist Sean Everett as well. While on their American tour, they almost exclusively played covers – hence that being called the Covers Only Tour – the band decided to also play more of their own work for the European leg, opening with ‘Graveyard’ from the album Empires Fall. The band followed this up by covers of Masked Wolf’s ‘Astronaut in the Ocean’, featuring some intense dry ice fog machines, and Tove Lo’s ‘Habits (Stay High)’. While there were definitely fans in attendance who were also there to hear Our Last Night’s own repertoire, most people were louder for the covers – which makes sense, as covering pop songs and making them their own is what the band is known for. However, during the fourth song on the setlist, which was ‘Same Old War’, they still managed to create a beautiful sing-along moment during the bridge. “Stay strong, keep moving, can’t let the darkness blind us” they sang, backed up by softer instrumentals.
Immediately moving on, the band continued with a cover of ‘Shape of You’ before playing their newest single ‘PAY ATTENTION’. The heaviest song on the setlist, Trevor introduced this by telling his band members that the audience “wants to go mosh, they wanna go crazy” – and there definitely was a huge mosh pit and lots of headbanging going on in that crowd! After covering Tate McRae’s ‘you broke me first’, the band played more of their own music. During ‘When We Were Broken’, the band asked the audience to put on their lighters or phones with flashlights to create a beautifully intimate moment. The crowd was also enthusiastically clapping alone while shouting out the lyrics. After playing this track and ‘White Tiger’, Our Last Night continued with covers of ‘STAY’ and ‘hot girl bummer’. While the audience – and honestly, also the band – was distracted by the fog machines, a fan at the front had thrown his phone on stage so that the band could record a video for him. Trevor saw it and was extremely confused at first as no one had seen the phone being thrown, but upon finding out who it belonged to, he recorded a video for him and threw it back. Fortunately, the fan did catch it and got his phone back, with a video of his favourite band on it!
The final six songs of Our Last Night’s setlist were a mix of original songs as well as covers. They played Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’, GAYLE’s ‘abcdefu’ – with the audience all enthusiastically putting up their middle finger – and Benson Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’ as covers. Furthermore, they played their own songs ‘BURIED ALIVE’ – with another, bigger moshpit opening up in the centre of the crowd – ‘F.E.A.R.’, and finally, upon asking if there were any “old school fans” in the crowd, ‘Sunrise’. This was absolutely a fan favourite – even those who may not have been actual old school fans were singing along to this song that came out over ten years ago. The band left the stage for a few seconds before coming back to the encore, which existed only of a lovely rendition of The Goo Goo Dolls’ ‘Iris’. Before the song’s final chorus, Trevor thanked the crowd in Tilburg one last time for “an incredible fucking evening” and asked the audience to “sing this with [him] one more time” – which they enthusiastically did.
