On February 19th, Between You & Me continued their ‘Shit Yeah’ UK tour in Nottingham alongside openers Young Culture and Broadside. The Australian group took the city by storm, and performed one hell of a show.
Young Culture hit the stage at around 8pm, chatting with the crowd about strolling round the city before the show. Playing a seven song set, the New York-based band captured the crowd’s attention and put on a notable performance, a crew member even joining them on stage to sing for a moment.
Following Young Culture’s captivating performance, US band Broadside took the stage with energy and hype. One of the first sentences said by the singer was a dark joke about his dad. However, he didn’t receive the anticipated reaction, which he was slightly offended by. Met with laughs from the crowd, the band continued to mention the differences between US and UK crowds, and then flew into continuing their set. After performing with an insane amount of energy and being adored by the crowd, the band headed off-stage as the final attendees filed in ready for BYAM.
Between You & Me’s set started at 9:45, the purple lights brightening the empty stage as the crowd anticipated their arrival. The band burst onto stage, jumping into their first song ‘Dakota’. The singer immediately shouted for a circle pit, and the crowd delivered. BYAM’s ability to capture and energise a crowd so quickly was incredible to see, and proves the band’s ability to put on a good show right off the bat. Not only were the band lively with their music, they also chatted to the crowd casually and with a comedic manner, immediately joking about Nottingham being a particularly ‘stabby’ city. The band evidently have a very fun and interactive relationship with their fanbase, themselves and the crowd chanting ‘Shit Yeah’ back and forth in a break between songs. Singer Jake laughed and informed the crowd about how Broadside’s frontman had come off-stage complaining about the crowd’s lack of response to his jokes, before quickly returning to performing.
Continuing further into their set, BYAM performed an incredible, and honestly unexpected, cover of Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’, singer Jake giving a personal shoutout to Shrek. The crowd received this extremely well, carrying on the fun, chaotic energy already put in place by the band’s lively performance so far.
Moving into an older song titled ‘Overthinking’, singer Jake stepped down and stood on the barricade closer to the crowd. Fans seemed to take this song very well, arguably at its most energetic point yet. Following this, the band played a new song that the crowd maintained its energy for. Once again chatting with the crowd, BYAM asked the Nottingham fans if they had any city-based chants they could replicate. However, not one single member could seem to distinguish what the crowd were chanting, so this was given up on quite swiftly.
Despite providing extreme energy and many, many circle pits throughout the entire show, the crowd only grew more hyped moving into the final two songs, Deadbeat and Butterfly. Joined by a member of Young Culture during Deadbeat, the crowd maintained an almost consistent circle pit for the entire song. As Butterfly reached its peak, singer Jake commanded the pit and encouraged fans as the circle pit intensified on the drop, crowd surfers appearing one after the other and finishing the show-off with a bang.
With a total of 3 questionable knife crime mentions, a performance of a song best known from the hit film Shrek, and an artist-crowd relationship like no other, Between You & Me put on a show to remember. I can strongly say that a BYAM show is not one to miss.
