Live Review : Creeper + VUKOVI + James and the Cold Gun @ O2 Ritz, Manchester on March 19th 2022

The O2 Ritz is not quite firing on all cylinders this evening. To say that they are having teething troubles as we head back to normality, would be kind. Due to the tickets from the previous incarnations of the show (it had been postponed on four separate occasions before this evening ultimately successful staging) not scanning, a large proportion of the audience are left queuing outside for a large proportion of the evening. This leads to a massive logjam at the ticket office, which in turn causes our always punctual snapper to miss his regulatory three song quota for opener James and the Cold Gun. Sorry guys you will have to make do with my words to paint the pictures.

Chuffed is the word I would us to describe them. Chuffed to be playing gigs again, chuffed to be on such a high-profile tour and chuffed that anyone gives a damn about them. They have the feel of Foo Fighters in their heavier and harder moments. What they do is not revolutionary or even evolutionary, but it is good, fast, cohesive alt rock. They suffer from the fact that most of tonight’s punters are still trying to get in, but those who are here enthusiastically clap and foot tap along. However, James gets greedy and wants more. He decides to bribe the crowd into forming a circle pit by promising that his Nan will pay each dancer a fiver. A few take up the challenge but to be honest a fiver isn’t what it used to be and the pit is lacklustre at best. But going back to the chuffed they seem made up that anyone dances and that anyone cares at all. In all that unbridled enthusiasm pulls them through and is probably what most people will remember from their set.

The nucleus of VUKOVI is vocalist Jannine Shilstone, guitarist Hamish Reilly and their trusted sequencer. Tonight, they are joined by an unnamed stand in drummer who apparently split his head open earlier in the tour but still elected to keep on playing (cue lost of drummer jokes). VUKOVI have two things going for them, the bounciness of their songs and the bounciness of their singer. They have managed to craft six infectious rock/dance stun grenades that recall the glory days of the Klaxons and the whole indie Rave scene. Their material successfully treads the fine line between commerciality and cohesion. Tracks like’SLO’ and ‘Run/Hide’ are catchy and lyrically contagious, but they also have weight and depth. They bring to mind those surprisingly good Eurovision entries from a random Baltic state, that ends with Graham Norton exclaiming “Now that’s a lot better than we were expecting”.

 Their other ace in the hole is Janine Shilstone. She is an unbelievably exuberant and ultimately genuine frontperson, gifted with oodles of charisma and self-deprecating humour. She spends most of the duration of most of their songs on the floor rolling around like she is trying to polish it. She is like an aerobics teacher on speed. When she is not cavorting around on the boards, she is demanding pits and good natured heckling the audience. There is a real connection between her and her followers and I think it goes back to that genuineness. There is no rockstar ego at play here, in a million other parallel universes it is Janine down at the barrier and not, say, Karen from Bolton and both Janine and the crowd know that. The final track ‘La Di Da’ is sung with gusto as if it was a multi-platinum international mega hit. Everyone here under the age of thirty seems to both know and love it, the pride in Janine’s eyes is lovely to see. Unexpectedly highly enjoyable.

Creeper are band on the cusp of greatness. They have something very very special indeed going on and the overall impression is of festival headliner and Stadium botherer in waiting. The Killers when they first reached these shores in 2004 or, giving away my age, U2 and Simple Minds in the early eighties are brought to mind. What those bands at that time have in common with Creeper of 2022 is multi-generational appeal. They have managed to hone a sound that does talk to dis-enfranchised teenagers but also manages to resonate with their mums and dads and even grandparents too. They have taken the pure unrefined rock n’roll of the Ramones, married it with the pure schmaltz of Jim Steinman and then added the stagecraft of Bowie. Creeper understand that we all want emotive songs to bellow along to and they provide that in spades.

What is so so special about Creeper is that they have world-built and created an alternative reality that we willingly take refuge in for an hour and a half. Will Gould is a frontman of thousand personas. His vocals constantly shift in style and tone as is adeptly plays the different characters in his tales of teenage lust and tempestuous demons. At some points he is the boy that your mother warned you about and at other points he is the emotionally comprised hero, looking for a way out in a no-win situation. At all times though he is a commanding and articulate frontman, emotive, intelligent, and highly engaging.

The other thing that Creeper have is the songs. They have employed the Ramones’ successful stage trick of short, sharp and often. We get 21 tracks in ninety minutes and there is not a genre that is left unmined. We call in at Punk, country, indie, new wave, goth and Rock-a-billy and all stations in between. Creeper may be young but they have realised all great music builds on the past. They have taken the teenage nihilism and loner mentality that has fuelled Rock n’ roll since the fifties and successfully repackaged it for this generation. Every track tonight is immaculately constructed and designed to be communally sung along with a packed room.

As I said, Creeper are on the verge of great great things, but in many ways the adulation is already there. The Ritz feels like the clandestine meeting of a cult already in on the secret. Everybody here is already emotionally invested in the band and their bottle universe. Everybody here already knows all the words and is intent in screaming them along. There are countless moments this evening where Will just bows into the sheer power of the crowd, lowers his microphone and lets them immaculately harmonise the words. Nobody is here to have a gander because they heard a track on the radio. There is a real ownership going on here, Creeper belongs to every single soul in the sold out venue.

I could have told you about the theatrics (wings, sparks, wedding dresses) and I could have listed the tracks (with just two albums and a number of EP’s to choose from, there is very little that they leave out) but the important thing is how the show felt. It was an extraordinarily passionate affair. Simultaneously immersive, electric, life-affirming and exhilarating. For an evening we were plucked out our reality and allowed to forget that the world is going to hell in a handcart of its own design. That is the magic of rock n’roll and Creeper are the new sorcerers supreme in town.