The Welsh band The Royston Club played a sold out show at the Nochtspeicher on November 22nd as part of their ‘Songs For The Spine Tour’. They played in the city before November of 2023 at the Molotow Skybar.
First on was the English singer Jasper Hodges, he walked on stage and said ‘Good evening Hamburg, make some noise’. Right during the first song ‘Here & Now’, he asked the crowd to sing along to ‘Oooh. Try my best to live in the here and now’, whenever it comes up during the song.
‘We Ain’t Coming Down’, is ‘about an even rougher Friday night’, as he explained before he performed it. For ‘Whitstable Bay’ he said that it’s ‘about my hometown. This is the place I was born and raised. This is the place my family were born and raised. And this song is about a summer I spent on the beach with loads of my mates. And we found a boat on the beach and we fixed it up and we took it out fishing. And we just spent the summer just down at the coast’. Jasper summarised then that the song is about him having big aspirations, however he’d be happy for the rest of his life living in the small town he grew up in. After it he went on to sing ‘Risk It All’.
The songs he played up until now, were all from his newly released and first ever EP British Summer Time. Jasper then went on to the unreleased songs ‘Final Life’ and ‘Balancing Move’. Jasper thanked the crowd for having come down early to see him perform. Then he started his last song of the evening ‘When The Sun Comes Up‘. The audience sang along whenever the lyrics ‘La La La La’ came up.
Next on were The Royston Club, consisting of Tom Faithfull (vocals, rhythm guitar), Ben Matthias (lead guitar), Dave Tute (bass) and Sam Jones (bass). Already excited for the band to start their set, fans repeatedly shouted ‘Royston, Royston, Royston …’. Then the band went on stage, with a Palestine Flag behind Ben, and started their set with ‘The Patch Where Nothing Grows’, the crowd already singing lyrics back to them right from the start. The next songs were ‘Glued To The Bed’ and ‘Blisters’.
Tom called Hamburg a ‘wonderful city’ and thanked the attendees for being at their gig! Before ‘Mariana’ Tom said ‘So give us everything you got, c’mon’. The room was filled with hands in the air during ‘vulnerable’ and when the band played ‘oh such a shame, I checked my melody, make history’ someone was on someone else’s shoulders! The venue room was super packed the whole night, fans brought the noise, people singing along and clapping in community. The band reciprocated the energy and gave the crowd an amazing evening.
