Live Review : Sweet + Novatines @ Parr Hall, Warrington on December 6th 2019

It’s Friday, and tonight I am off out to re-live my childhood by watching one of the best pop/rock bands that the 70s managed to thow at me. As a young and impressionable pre-teen my musical journey pretty much started in the early 70s, and tonight’s headline band were a big influence on shaping my taste.

Support band Novatines hail from Bath, but they pronounce it Barth. Because Southerners. They are a bright and breezy pop-rock band and I liked them a lot. They had excellent vocal harmonies and good tunes. They were hard enough to slide into the genre of rock but pop enough to be accessible and dare I say it even a bit commercial. Johann thought they sounded like Oasis but I thought that was because they were very obviously also a Beatles-influenced band rather than because they actually sounded like Oasis. If I had to make a comparison the band that sprang to mind for me was The Killers. The songs were summery, pleasant and easy to listen to. There’s a 4-track ep out at the moment called “Wasted Youth” which is well worth a few of your English pounds. There’s also an album due for release that has been produced by none other than Andy Scott of The Sweet so I’m looking forward to getting hold of a copy when it eventually gets released. If tonight’s performance is anything to go on, I think we’ll be hearing more of this band in the future. Oh and bonus – they have good hair too!

The Sweet, or Sweet as they seem to prefer to call themselves these days, surely need no introduction from me. I don’t know about you, but they were as much a part of my childhood as ice-cream and Clarks’ sandals. Just when my musical tastes were starting to form I would be glued to Top Of The Pops on a Thursday night to see who was in the charts. This bunch of guys who looked like builders in platform boots and bright blue eyeshadow and played bouncy pop-rock with just a touch of the Eric Idle style nod and a wink (say no more!) would feature heavily. I was bemused by the satin blouses and false eyelashes, but at the same time entranced by the hard pop that they played. I was even more bemused to discover that their b-sides and album tracks were in fact Proper Rock, and they very definitely helped me on the way to becoming the hard-rock afficionado that I am today. It’s been a lot of years since then, and sadly 2 of the original band (singer Brian Connolly and drummer Mick Tucker) are no longer with us, while bassist Steve Priest has long been resident in the US and peddling his own version of the band over there. So here we have original guitarist Andy Scott with a pretty solid band that he’s built his trademark sound around for the last 30 years or so.
I always though he was rather under-rated, both as a guitarist and a singer, and tonight does nothing to change my mind. Although the addition of old-new vocalist Paul (lost then reclaimed from Cats In Space) is a definite plus, it’s Andy who is the star of this particular show. The set is a total nostalgia fest, I’m not even sure if Sweet have released any new product since about 1976 when they came to the end of their partnership with pop moguls Mike Chinn and Nicky Chapman. But you know what? Those old songs still grab you by the feet and swing you around and onto the dance floor. Tonight there are even some fake wigs, platform boots and satin bellbottoms in the crowd, because why not?

They open, as I think they always have, with ‘Action’. So many people have covered this song over the years but somehow no matter who has a stab at it they never quite manage to top the original. The hits then come thick and fast, and include crowd pleasers like ‘Little Willy’, ‘Wigwam Bam’, ‘Fox On The Run’, ‘AC/DC’, ‘Hellraiser’, ‘Love is Like Oxygen’ (my personal favourite) and of course ‘Blockbuster’ and ‘Ballroom Blitz’. There’s a bit of an odd moment in the middle where they play ELP’s ‘Fanfare For The Common Man’, which doesn’t really fit the groove and leaves the crowd a bit confused, but apart from that it’s all good clean fun. Andy’s wry sense of humour shines through between songs, and an hour and a half in the company of him and his band is very definitely time well spent.
I leave the building feeling a bittersweet mixture of nostalgia and happiness, and wondering where I put my flares…….