Despite the news of the queen’s death the show goes on. It’s been five long years since Alynda and chums, aka Hurray for the Riff Raff, last graced these shores with a phenomenal show at Koko in 2017. Tonight though they are at newish venue Lafayette in Kings Cross. It’s a nice sized room with good sight lines and it’s pretty full. A word to the overzealous security guys who were confiscating chewing gum!!! from people as I can only guess it’s classed as food.
They are over here in support of this year’s fine album ‘Life on Earth’ and naturally these tracks dominate the set. It’s a simple setup with bass, drums and guitar although everyone apart for the drummer has a keyboard in front of them too.
There are no frills to the plain black backdrop or lighting and they just let the music rightly take centre stage. As so it does, Alynda’s voice is a unique instrument in itself which dominates the room but does not overpower the music and props to the sound guy who had the balance set perfectly.
As is true for many of these personal songs it’s an emotional night and the story behind ‘Precious Cargo’ and its tale of two asylum seekers particularly hits home and Alynda’s personal involvement in helping these guys provides the perfect example of the goodness in people.
The set is perfectly balanced and the energy of the performance, its shift between song pacing was spot on. It was great to hear one of my personal favourites from the new album ‘Pierced Arrows’ get a run out too.
The show ends with a brilliant 'Hungry Ghost' and then another stirring version of Pa’lante with the crowd belting out the chorus at the tops of our voices.
It’s another great show from this band and the lasting impression is the power and force of that voice telling important stories to an attentive crowd. My only gripe was that is was all over far too soon but what was lacked in quantity was more than made up for by the quality.
Keep on rockin’ y’all.