The Kooks + The Vaccines + Daisy The Great @ MTelus▪

The line-up at MTelus is as stacked as the venue is packed, with “Sold Out” signs plastered across the box office windows upon arrival tonight. Brooklyn duo Daisy the Great are first on deck and sound like First Aid Kit discovering Sleater-Kinney at their rockiest and Soccer Mommy at their mellowest. The crowd response is surprisingly good for a 7 pm timeslot, loud cheers after every song, and when Kelley elicits a sea of waving arms on set closer, Time Machine, the floor is more than happy to oblige! A great 30 minutes to get things going.

Daisy the Great setlist:

Glitter
The Record Player Song
Dream Song
Ballerina
Dog
Liar
Time Machine

According to The Vaccines frontman Justin Young, “By my reckoning, it’s been 13 years since we were last here!” The band wastes no time making up for lost time, arriving on stage to Wings’ Live and Let Die and tearing into their set with all the ferocity of a Bond villain in the shape of Love to Walk Away and Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra).

The raunchy Post Break-Up Sex, the breakthrough from their 2011 debut, gets the attention of anyone who wasn’t paying full attention up to this point. Headphones Baby from their recent Back in Love City record sounds equally anthemic tonight, drawing a huge clap-along from around the room.

The floor finally explodes on the furious Jump Off the Top and Handsome, running through to the furious beats of Teenage Icon, and culminating in the mammoth I Always Knew. The singalong at the chorus is the loudest yet, and strobes glare as the band huddle in centre stage at the breakdown. It would have been the perfect set closer, but that responsibility ultimately falls to the thumping If You Wanna to round out a whirlwind 45-minute set. A fantastic return, and hopefully, a full headline set will follow in the near future!

The Vaccines setlist:

Love to Walk Away
Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)
Post Break-Up Sex
Wetsuit
Your Love Is My Favourite Band
Discount de Kooning (Last One Standing)
Headphones Baby
Jump Off the Top
Handsome
Heartbreak Kid
Teenage Icon
I Always Knew
If You Wanna

The Kooks have been here a little more recently, last playing at Theatre Corona in 2015, but that’s still far too long! Touring in celebration of their stellar 2006 debut Inside In / Inside Out, the 75-minute set draws heavily from that record, playing 10 of those 14 songs, including the first 6 songs of the set back-to-back. This has me losing my mind (and my voice) pretty early on. The set begins with frontman Luke Pritchard singing the wonderful Seaside alone, with deafening accompaniment from the sold-out crowd, before the rest of the band arrive to detonate the set with See the World, Sofa Song, and Eddie’s Gun, everyone’s favourite ode to erectile dysfunction.

Luke soon declares, “It’s so good to be back after all these years; I’ve got a feeling it’s all going off tonight!!!” It duly does when Ooh La and She Moves In Her Own Way promptly follow. The latter sees Luke drop back from his mic entirely to let the adoring crowd take over vocal duty on the final chorus.

Always Where I Need To Be is a personal favourite, a 3-minute masterpiece of indie pop perfection, so when Luke introduces it as “an opportunity to lose your sh*t!” I am happy to do just that. I’m kind of the only one though, bouncing around like a madman, but Luke points at me appreciatively during one of the verses, so I feel vindicated!

Guitarist Hugh Harris is the other, more understated star of the show. New song Closer is a little AOR, but ends with Hugh busting out a huge hair metal-esque solo on a bright pink guitar, while Around Town ends in similar shredding fashion. Although not singing much throughout the set, he is part of a stunning 3-way vocal harmony to end Matchbox, which is testament to the talent that spends most of the time at the side or the back of the stage. Naïve closes the show and unsurprisingly gets the biggest singalong of the night, ending the show in a euphoric manner.

It’s been a welcome return for The Kooks and The Vaccines; here’s hoping it’s not another 9 to 13 years before we can do it again!