Stereophonics & Tim Burgess - Hull Arena 10/11/2003 By Nick Quantrill

I'm not quite sure why I was actually at the gig in the first place. I think it was the fact the gig was actually in Hull. With Hull suffering from an acute shortage of larger venues, you kind of get accustomed to either travelling around the country to see bands or catching them at small venues on their way up or sometimes down.

Maybe it was the novelty of only having to catch a bus into the city centre instead of driving on the M62 that affected my brain as I reached for the premium line telephone number all those months ago. I'd like to think though that it was memory of those first two Stereophonics albums, which still sound great today.

Maybe it's just the idea of three people from the same village sticking together through thick and thin to become one of the UK's most popular bands (well, there's only two of them now but that's the way the rock 'n' roll cookie crumbles..) that appealed to me so much.

First up though was Tim Burgess, late of indie also-rans, The Charlatans, to convince us he doesn't deserve another ten years fronting the band (remember kids, you can get less for murder..). Burgess and his band threw a variety of styles at the audience from soul to funk, to reggae and pop in what appeared to be an attempt to see what tickled our fancy. Nothing really stuck and a rather bland set was tolerated by all. Tim Burgess deserves some credit for attempting to stretch himself artistically but it really didn't pan out too well.

For whatever reason I was there, I thoroughly enjoyed half of the Stereophonics set. There was a definite correlation. The earlier the material; the more I was enjoying myself. I don't want to sound like a 'I saw them first at the Adelphi back in (insert as applicable) and bought the limited edition, demo version of the first single on vinyl' kind of person, but the new material stinks worse than Hull docks. It stinks so bad you'd rather watch Pop Idol.

The Stereophonics looked the part; they've got the rock star look, the light show and the backing singers, the only things they seem to have forgotten on the latest album are the tunes and choruses. I suspect I wasn't alone in drawing this conclusion, as the bar was suspiciously busier when the new material was being aired.

Conclusions? Well, Tim Burgess will soon be back in the day job and The Stereophonics should seriously consider hiring a producer for the next album. I'm probably being a little harsh as a couple of thousand people seemed to thoroughly enjoy their night out with one of the countries most popular bands. Me, I'll be more careful with those premium rate telephone numbers in the future…

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