On Friday it was pleasure to witness Witness perform their new material in what was one of the best gigs and most intimate I've been to and after seeing Muse the night before they had a lot to live up to but pulled it off amazingly and I think won over everyone in the audience that were unfamiliar with them.
I booked the tickets as soon as the tour was announced and went along with my girlfriend and two friends. I was a tad pissed off when it seemed as though the majority of the crowd were friends and family of the support act, Standoff. We were sitting in the bar when a pile of Standoff flyers land on our table and we were then given a life story of the band who were from what I gathered basically a school band from Ayr playing what appeared to be their first gig outside the local boozer or town hall, and all the mums, dads, aunties, uncles, grans, grandads, mates, local yobs and groupies had all come along for a pogo up and down to what was basically an M.O.R Oasis Britpop guitar sound with a dullard American vocal twang. They were annoyingly bad and appeared convinced that their shot at the big time was just around the corner as their frontman telling the audience "Sing, you all know the words"....Erm, do we??. I'm probably being a bit hard on them as they were only young and were quite capable musicians but big things arent around the corner, but then Toploader were one of the biggest newcomer Indie Acts last year.
Having said that the opening act Zobi were not very impressive either, their sound was sort of ska-punk kind of like the Clash "Rock the Casbah", "Bank Robber" era. I soon lost interest after their opening song, with the lyrics "Nick Nack Paddywack Give The Dog A Bone". Nuff said.
Witness then took the stage with most of the band looking virtually the same as they did when touring "Before the Calm" besides the relatively new addition of Julian Pransky-Poole on Guitar and keyboards and Gerard`s hair is a bit shorter but still the curliest I've seen on stage.
There was very little applause when they came on, my girlfriend was saying "C`mon people a bit more enthusiasm for fuck`s sake".
It didnt surprise me as most of the 100-something crowd had retreated to the backstage area to hail the local heroes, Standoff.
Witness didn't seem to care and made the two support acts look like a right bunch of chancers straight away. With the now three pronged guitar attack of Ray, Gerard and Julian it made the opening song "Scars" all the more dense and meatier and in my opinion the better for it.
Gerard stated the fact that they had a new album due to be released soon and they were playing the new material to answer the crowds shouts for "Hijacker" and "Zero Zero", even though these two songs were not on the set list, nobody left the gig disappointed as there was a mix between the old and new.
The old included "Freezing Over Morning", "Cause And Effect", "Still", "Quarantine" and the sublime "So Far Gone".
The new songs sounded absolutely excellent and had what seemed to me a more upbeat sound on the next single "You Are All My Own Invention" along with the new album title track "Under A Sun" and "Until The Morning".
They closed the set with "My Own Old Song" where the seemingly modest and shy Gerard smiled as he was given a handshake by a smitten guy in the audience before they left the stage.
The general opinion in the car on the way home was the old stuff sounded as good as it ever has, the new album promises to be amazing and christ they deserve a bigger audience!!!.
It doesn't end there though, I bought tickets for the Tom McRae gig at King Tuts and I have been led to believe that Gerard and Dylan will be playing an Acoustic set before Tom McRae comes on, it should be immense.
I'm a bit disappointed to see that Witness aren't appearing on any festival line-ups. Well, I'm probably being a tad greedy.