There’s a powerful sense of victory in the air tonight. Since the incredibly huge response their debut single ‘Sarajevo’ gleaned back in 2017, The K’s have spent the intervening period slogging their hearts out around the UK’s small venue circuit, living on the breadline and, as frontman Ryan Breslin alludes to later on in the set before ‘Throw It All Away’, questioning whether the whole enterprise would ever come good. Today’s announcement that the Warrington boys’ debut LP ‘I Wonder If The World Knows?’ is this week’s third best selling record in the whole of the UK behind only The Libertines and Beyonce sees their efforts sweetly vindicated.
Cardiff heroes The Malakites take opening such an occasion in their stride, delivering a set brimming with confidence. An impressively sized crowd have formed early to catch their home town show, a set of psychedelic indie rock and strong riffs featuring their singles to date – debut release ‘Roses On The Doorstep’ in all of it’s early Stone Roses ‘Sally Cinnamon’ paralleling finery, giving ‘Morning After’ a suitably colossal outro.
Second on the itinerary are Birmingham’s The Clause who stride on stage to Oasis’s ‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory’ broadcast over the sound system, frontman Pearce Macca possessing plenty of Liam Gallagher presence, leading a set of glam stomps and energetic rock.
The setup for the ‘I Wonder If The World Knows?’ album tour sees a giant initialism of the record’s title in lights across the back of the stage providing a suitably grandiose backdrop for what feels a culmination of The K’s sustained endeavour, as well as a similarly grandiose backdrop for when the band surge onto the stage calling “Happy fucking Friday” before hurling into an empowered version of ‘Icarus’.
It seems an accomplishment for the band to finally be able to play their songs with a complete album’s worth of material out there, as noted by frontman Jamie Boyle at the closing of ‘Circles’, with all it’s lightshow and full musical breakdown, the singer observing the show is the first one since the album’s release where it feels like the audience truly know the record: “Thanks for being so fucking nice about the new songs”.
Although much of the setlist is made up of ‘I Wonder If The World Knows?’, old favourites ‘Picture’ and ‘Glass Towns’ are rapturously received. The first few lines of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ also get a reaction but the rendition then morphs into their second biggest tearjerker, a tale of drunkenly falling in love with a stranger while staggering to a payphone, ‘Hoping Maybe’ which has plenty of mobiles rising into the air and filming causing a sea of accompanying swaying lights.
The genuinely moving moment is halted when Boyle demands “Let’s have a fucking party” and ‘Black and Blue’ comes crashing out of the amps, guitarist Ryan Breslin lurching about the stage, a sheer guitar hero, as the frontman keeps the crowd in the palm of his hands from behind the microphone with three false ending shouts of “Black and black and black and…”, to bassist Dexter Baker’s visible amusement.
Slowies ‘Throw It All Away’ and ‘Lights Go Down’ provide a breather for both audience and fans but the celebration manages to spill over into mild chaos during ‘No Place Like Home’, one fan being granted asylum behind the front barrier to save them from a clamour during ‘Aurora’.
The first one back on stage after the encore, Breslin positions himself behind a keyboard creating a poignant moment leading into their second heartbreaker, ‘Valley One’. There’s a rampage through ‘Hometown’, Baker making one final check on the beleaguered crowd, noting Cardiff’s audience are a “rowdy bunch”, and then an incendiary performance of ‘Sarajevo’ gets kicked off by a version of ‘Dirty Old Town’.
It’s possibly a kicker for The K’s to think that on a week when adored celeb-indie veterans The Libertines and global megastar Beyonce weren’t releasing albums then their debut may have been a contender for the top spot after a recent run of new guitar bands made the grade. Tonight’s show, however, finds the group relishing their number three LP status as the success it is, noting Beyonce actually only beat their sales figures on the final day, a fact Jamie Boyle mockingly states he’s not happy about, bidding a final humble request of the crowd: “if you see her, you can tell her”.
The K’s ‘I Wonder If The World Knows?’ is on all of the streaming services and you can bag yourself a physical copy over on their official site.
Their tour continues at pace and if you want to catch them then some remaining tickets are still available, also over on The K’s site.
If you still need your appetite whetting at this point then we’ve put the video for the magnificent ‘Heart On My Sleeve’ down below for you to watch. We promise you, it sounds even better live: