Live Review – Yellowcard/ Story of the Year/ This Wild Life – o2 Academy Birmingham – 14/11/24

Yellowcard bring the ‘Celebration of 20 years of Ocean Avenue Tour’ to UK soil with a sold out show at Birminghams o2 Academy.

The doors are open and there’s an excitement in the air, its not very often we get a band like Yellowcard playing in venues this size, it feels like its been a very long time since Yellowcard performed their own tour in England excluding festival appearances so we know we’re in for a treat tonight.

First up were This Wild Life, an acoustic duo who compared themselves as a “Discount store Dashboard Confessional” were on top form despite claims that 94% of the audience won’t know who they were by frontman Kevin Jordan.

The duo soon got the crowd on their side with some sing along songs plus a bit of ‘Country Roads’

Kevin told a nice story about how he was fired from his job for printing 4,000 flyers to distribute outside a show in their local town, that show was a Yellowcard show, and now all these years later they’re supporting them on their UK tour.

Those print outs were definitely worth it!

Next up were rockers ‘Story of the Year’ who instantly turned up the energy bouncing onto the stage and opening with ‘Tear me to pieces’ which the crowd loved; as Dan, Ryan and Adam sprung from platform to platform bringing the Birmingham crowd up to a frenzy.

Worried that they may be scaring fans with being too Emo joked frontman Dan Marsala they didn’t let up by going into one of their biggest tracks ‘War’ which sounds so good live.

The St Louis band talked about how they’ve been friends with Yellowcard for over 20 years and it’s an honour to warming the crowds up for them on this tour.

The stage is set, and Yellowcard make their entrance to loud cheers from the passionate crowd who are desperate to see their favourite band, who are surprised by how popular they seem to be again and don’t know the reason why..

It is hard to believe that the album Ocean Avenue is 20 years old and the band announce that tonight they will be playing the majority of that album with some extra songs thrown in, and that’s exactly what this show was.

Opening with ‘Way Away’ from said album, was a great way to get the crowd singing along and the band to showcase their jumping abilities!

As this was a celebration of 20 years of ‘Ocean Avenue’ the album wasn’t just played in order like many bands have been doing, and was great to hear some of the newer tracks get played. Sadly there was no room for anything from their newest release – ‘A Hopeful Sign’ but fingers crossed that means they’ll be back soon for another UK tour to showcase that album.

The crowd were eating out of lead singer William’s hands as he told tales from the history of the band and stories of the tracks from the album saving their biggest track and album title ‘Ocean Avenue’ for last to leave the Birmingham crowd super happy!

Setlist;