Review | Echobelly at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea: 'Not predictable, and better for it'

They are by their own admission in this game of rock'n'roll for life – but they're not taking the easy route.

The path of least resistance would surely be to milk those Britpop-era classics for all they're worth – perhaps go out and play their top five 1995 album On in full – and after the past 18 months, who could blame them if they did?

But for their first post-lockdown tour, they're intent on doing things their way.

And so we get a set that does feature some, but not all, of those early classic singles, a good smattering of solid album tracks from throughout their career, and even a sort-of cover (if playing one of your own songs when you went under a different name counts).

While they do lean on On for a good few numbers, the set draws just as much on their most recent studio album, 2017's Anarchy and Alchemy.

Singer Sonya Madan informs us early on that she fell off stage a couple of nights earlier in Birmingham – not while performing, but walking across it at the end of the gig, and as a result she's injured her leg.

But we are assured that she's getting through it with the help of 'painkillers and red wine', to great cheers. It doesn't seem to adversely affect her performance though – she's in fine voice throughout.

Guitarist Glenn Johansson is a top riff-master, with many of the songs sounding a touch heavier than I remember them 'back in the day' – but that is definitely not a complaint.

King of The Kerb and Great Things unsurprisingly get the greatest audience response, while the more recent (and splendidly named) If the Dogs Don't Get You, My Sisters Will also goes down well, after Sonya invites the audience to shout out songs with dog-related titles by way of introduction.For the encores they dig into a song from their Calm of Zero days (the acoustic duo Sonya and Glenn formed during Echobelly's downtime) – again, not an obvious choice. Giving It All is an upbeat folky singalong that stands at odds with most of their other material, but it's fun nonetheless.

The night finishes with the epic, broody 1996 single Dark Therapy and its chorus of: 'If you close your eyes, then I can take you all the way,' which seems rather appropriate. Echobelly were always ambitious, always reaching for the sky – and even if they never quite made it to the big leagues commercially, then the enduring power of their songs, as proved tonight, should ensure them an audience for as long as they keep playing.

They may not be predictable, but they're all the better for that.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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