lucia & the best boys live at leeds hyde park book corner

★★★★★ (5/5)

LUCIA & THE BEST BOYS PERFORMING AT LEEDS HYDE PARK BOOK CORNER
PHOTOCREDIT: JOHN HAYHURST @SNAPAGIG.COM

It beggars belief that an artist like Lucia Fairfull is playing such a small dingy club here in Leeds Student HQ tonight. Having watched her play over the last few years at festivals in the Leeds area this is effectively her first UK headlining tour, but there is a feeling of playing it safe with small venues to ensure they are sold out here. She was at The Wardrobe as support to Dream Wife the last time she was in the City and that venue would be more appropriate, consequently, getting hold of a ticket was difficult at the last minute.

Lucia and the Best Boys take to the small stage by walking around the side of the room and past all the empty kegs from the bar above. However, once that has happened the place is transformed into a ‘select’ club with some very sparse lighting and a mirrorball behind the front standing punters. With Lucia in the spotlight they deliver a poignant and quite beautiful opener of ‘Butterflies’, 1st track on the blistering ‘Burning Castles’ album which was only released a few weeks ago.

Expert musicianship from the Best Boys, and Lucia cleverly worked her small 6ft square space with a combo of some diva poses and smart fierce dance moves, hardly stopping for a breather unless the track demanded a slightly softer approach.

Having used a floor tom drum for 2nd track ‘When You Dress Up’ she moves it out of the way to make more space and with ‘Angels Cry Too’ she is quickly in the faces of anyone in the front row, occaisionally dropping down on to the floor for a boogie with the gaggle of her student girl fans.

The last time she was in Leeds was on the BBC Introducing Stage at Leeds Festival, they suffered the dreaded technical difficulties and were reduced to just 2 songs, Lucia tries to make light of that by cracking a joke but vowing to make up for it tonight.

The setlist was dominated by the ‘Burning Castles’ album, and rightly so as they seemed to be more progressive, commercial and better live tracks than their earlier ventures. Although we did get an interesting diversion into 2020’s The State of Things EP and ‘Perfectly Untrue’ still holds its own as a great pop song that should have been a massive hit everywhere.

Favourite track for me ‘So Sweet I Could Die’ is a stomping tune that really should be heard all over the UK, it transcends their dance based style to a much more powerful rock orientated sound and it hurts that there aren’t 2,000 people singing along to it.

That is the overriding feeling here, are we the lucky ones watching what should be the next incredible pop band in the style of Florence and the Machine?, or, has the rest of Joe Public just switched off to new bands and are happy stinking in their X-Factor Voice Karaoke Slop. The reality is a bit of both, and at least the 150 or so here tonight will go away and hopefully tell several more people what they have been missing. If Lucia and the Best Boys aren’t at the Academy in the next 18months then there is something seriously wrong with the music industry right now.