Words and photos by Phil Wright
Thursday, 27th of February, took me to the Leeds O2 Academy for a night with ‘The Lottery Winners’.
The Mancunian quartet just keep going from strength to strength with brilliant catchy songs and Thom Rylance holding an awesome stage presence.
Thom’s humour is so on point, taking the mick out of the photographers, asking, “What are you a lot of perverts doing?”, then whipping out his phone to take photos of us before taking an Elvis stance and posing for the cameras. For me, if Robbie Williams and Alan Carr had a love child, you would be presented with Thom. A tremendously vocally talented and naturally funny gent.
Taking us back to the start of the night, we were introduced to the extraordinarily talented singer-songwriter Jonny Blade. At just 18 years of age, he was on cloud 9 being on that stage and performing for the crowd. I hope to see much more of this talent in the future. He’s definitely one to watch!
‘The Covasettes’, with their Indie-Pop sound, were next up and were reminiscent of the Arctic Monkeys. The O2 was bouncing the whole way through their set.
As the lights dimmed, and the sound of Robbie Williams `Let Me Entertain You` blasted out. You could feel the atmosphere rising as the band entered the stage for what was to be a night of pure entertainment.
What a way to open the set! A good mix of old and new material including `Worry’, `You Again’ and `Letter to Myself’. There were also a couple of covers in the set `Angels‘ by Robbie Williams and `A New England‘ by Billy Bragg.
One of the highlights for me was the encore, which brought Jonny Blade and The Covasettes back on stage to do a dance routine to ‘ Turn Around’. The band was pure class, sharing the love. I’m already thinking that the next time I see these guys, they will be filling arenas.
