Review | Brave Rival at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea: "A well-deserved victory lap"

Given the amount of talent on our doorstep it's a crying shame we have far more acts in the former than latter category.However Portsmouth-based Brave Rival have worked hard to transcend that "local" tag – and are succeeding. With more than 80 gigs and festivals around the UK under their belts in the past year, they've been busy building a growing army of fans, or Bravians, as they call themselves. When they launched an online crowdfunder for their second album in autumn they hit their target in 36 hours, going on to nearly double the figure.

Powerhouse co-vocalists Chloe Josephine and Lindsey Bonnick are entirely capable of leading a band alone, but together trading leads, harmonising and clearly enjoying each other's talents, they make for a dynamic duo.

While often tagged as blues-rock, there are times when they approach full-on metal – see the charging opener Run and Hide, but they can also more than convincingly break it down as they do for the acoustic set-within-a-set. In that latter part, Bonnick politely asks us to "shh" for the deeply personal For The Ones. Josephine takes the more direct: "Shut the heck up."* Sadly even that isn't enough for some who rudely keep talking loudly through the song. Seriously, why pay to go and talk through a gig when you can talk for free in the pub?

NOW READ: Brave Rival on their best year to date and looking ahead to album two

Alongside plenty of choice cuts from their debut there's the fan-favourite cover of Etta James' Damn Your Eyes, which gives guitarist Ed Clarke the chance to show why he was nominated as Best Instrumentalist in the UK Blues Awards 2023. The engine room of the band – bassist Billy Dedman and drummer Donna Peters get their moments to shine as well – these are well musicians well on top of their games.

There are several newer songs too. Fairytale has already been captured on their recent Live at The Half Moon album, and the hard-hitting Bad Choices is also a welcome addition to the set.

Being Christmas they pay tribute to the season with a fine acoustic cover of Joni Mitchell's downbeat River and the rather more knockabout rock'n'roll of Run, Rudolph Run.

For the inevitable encore they deliver a show-stopping cover of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. But that’s not it – they finish with their ode to alcohol-fuelled misadventure What's Your Name Again? which comes riding in on Clarke’s mean slide guitar, and the broad smiles on the band members' faces say it all.

With the band heading into the studio in January to record album two, this homecoming gig is something of a well-deserved victory lap. Here's to the next chapter.

*Other words may have been used.