I last saw Kim Jennett a mere couple of months ago on this very stage, supporting local Blackpool legends A’priori.  On that occasion it was a much more understated acoustic set, but tonight backed by a full band, she seems firmly in her natural environment of full-on rock star and relishing every second. 

Taking to the stage with a ferocious intensity, Kim is a whirling dervish, a blur of movement, colour and vocal histrionics.  The Myke Gray penned ‘Psycho’ is an apt opener, Kim’s almost manic energy firmly in line with the lyrical content.  It’s a heavy riffing number, Kim snarlingly delivering the lyrics, whilst poised on and over the barrier, pulling the audience into her orbit almost literally at times as she is within touching distance of the front row.  

The tempo, but not the intensity, drops for ‘Love Like Suicide’. Its sparser arrangement allows Kim to show off a more restrained vocal in the verses before kicking up a gear into the soaring chorus. It’s dramatic, passionate and intoxicating, Kim now very nearly in the crowd as she’s so far over the barrier.   This is a physical performance of utter conviction as Kim kicks, spins, drops and bounces leaving barely an inch of the stage uncovered.  How she maintains the level of vocal control whilst being so wildly animated is frankly nothing short of miraculous.  For all the frantic motion, she never misses a note and when she moves into earlier band Voodoo Blood territory with ‘Black Mirror’, blimey, can she scream?  That was of course rhetorical, as scream she most certainly can, and better, longer and with considerably more power than most.  

By this point the impressively inked drummer has already lost his shirt somewhere and is casually tossing his sticks around with wanton abandon.  And whilst the focus is clearly on Kim - it’s a band with her name on it after all - she is surrounded by great musicians, all of whom she interacts with throughout the set and who play their part to perfection, giving her a rock-solid platform from which to showcase that astounding voice.  

It's a brave move for any band to cover a Led Zeppelin number, as their canon is so familiar to all rock fans that done badly it can be the kiss of death, but with a propulsive ‘Immigrant Song Kim’ and her band end this impressive set on a suitably high note (both literally and metaphorically). 

Those brave souls who have braved the wild weather battering the Waterloo are rewarded with a melodic rock masterclass; VEGA’s sound is one that conjures up widescreen, cinematic landscapes, led by Nick Workman’s exceptional vocal delivery.  VEGA have always been on the classier side of rock music and as if to prove this point, the front line emerge resplendent, at least to begin with, in a fine array of dinner jackets, including a particularly fine velvet number for Nick Workman.  Tonight, they demonstrate that class in more than just a sartorial sense, with a set of material drawn largely from excellent recent album “Battlelines”, interspersed with choice gems from across their back catalogue.  The new songs we hear tonight are confident and assured, showing the superb song-writing skills that characterise the new album, the live setting giving them room to breathe and expand.   

First out of the traps, ‘Heroes and Zeroes’ is one of those new songs, and one that illustrates this perfectly, getting proceedings off to a powerful start. ‘33s & 45s’ is a personal favourite, all beautiful guitar lines, emotive solo and crisp vocals.  It also shows a knack for interesting and intriguing lyrics which is seen throughout “Battlelines”.  This theme is picked up again in the harder-edged first single ‘Love to Hate You’, with the vitriolic lyrics providing a fascinating counterpoint to Marcus Thurston’s gorgeous guitar melodies.  

This is a somewhat different line-up from the one I last saw supporting Magnum (in what I incredulously discovered was 2016, in my memory it was only a couple of years ago, surely). Pete Newdeck is a solidly dominant presence at the back behind the kit, stamping his mark on songs old and new, always making the perfect choices, playing exactly what the song requires.  Pete plays with a controlled ferocity, no mean feat, even to the point of finishing one song with a particularly enthusiastic flourish and snapping a stick in the process. This newer line-up completed by Billy Taylor on guitar and Mart Trail on bass seems hungrier than I remember, revitalised and dynamic. Maybe it’s the knowledge that they have such a great album’s worth of material to introduce to the fans that is giving them that extra spark, but whatever it is, it’s evidently working. 

A stripped back ‘Headlights’ from their first album takes me back to my earliest memory of the band and sees the rest of the band leaving the stage with just Nick and a guitar remaining.  It’s elegant and sumptuous in its simplicity and a definite highlight of the set.  The other band members return for another great number from way back when, ‘Kiss of Life’, with lots of wo-ahs and yeah’s.  It’s a glorious number, impeccably played, and shows the depth of VEGA’s back catalogue and the crowd are here for it. 

We get a quartet of up-tempo songs ‘Run With Me’, ‘Sooner or Later’, ‘Embrace the Grey’ and ‘Gotta Be You’, VEGA firmly putting the rock in the Melodic rock tag, showing a harder, driving edge particularly with the newer material, that suits the band down to the ground. It’s no surprise that three of those four number are from the new album showing the contemporary swagger and sophistication of the new material. Fan favourites ‘Every Little Monster’ and ‘White Flag’ sees even more enthusiastic bouncing and crowd participation, before final number ‘Hands in the Air’, unsurprisingly does what it says on tin, and draws the evening to a close with a sea of arms raised aloft. 

If “Battlelines” succeeds as well as its quality really dictates it should, sparkling performances like tonight’s should see VEGA cemented firmly in their position in the top tier of UK purveyors of the finest melodic rock. 

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
VEGA, Kim Jennett