"Come on Bangor!"
Snow Patrol are half of them from Bangor. The rest of them got adopted when Gary Lightbody brought them home with him the first time. Also, they're a fantastically loyal band and believe in turning up and playing where you got your start. This means, that when they play a gig in Ward Park in Bangor, it all gets a bit emotional. Hometown gigs are special.
Started with 'Open Your Eyes', and demands that we put our hands in the air because 'It looks so pretty!' And two songs in Gary lost the plot slightly and went 'Wow!' for five minutes while Paulo looked mildly dazed at the applause level. Which was perfectly reasonable, because it's the biggest gig in Northern Ireland ever. I'm proud they beat out U2, because unlike U2, these lads make a point of paying it back to their roots. Yes, I'm nursing a grudge, shush. And then they went into 'Shut Your Eyes', so of course he had to make the monkeys dance. It's some strange quirk of all the bands I love, that they make the audience compete against each other. We drew. Allegedly.
I'm watching the ATL taped show now, and we were right up the front and seriously, I was sure everyone sang every word, but I hadn't realised that in places we pretty much drowned the band. And oh, in the first bridge of 'Run' Gary just went 'Thank you' very quietly and sincerely and look, I love this band. Completely and unironically and without any kind of perspective whatsoever. Gary is a massive dork who talks about his wee neice Honey like she's the best thing since air, Nathan is a shameless poser, Paulo is too cool for school but seems to only own one tshirt and Johnny and Tom nod along and do the bandmate equivalent of 'Yes dear' while Gary flails about the place. And Iain Archer ambles about singing with his hands in his pockets and is terribly placid about everything. And I don't care. I love them and their dorky lead singer and their origami backdrops. And Gary and Nathan singing 'Just Say Yes' with their heads together like a love song to the stage. A new song, the first outing, just for us. Taking a chunk out of their sales to put on the best show they can put together because this night is not about the money. Getting the support acts cheered, one by one. Making a festival happen, because they made a promise three years ago in a cricket pavillion in the rain.
And most of all I love that because Gary Lightbody is actually a total stoner with a fixation on shiny things as his ground state of being, he says things like; "You've all got lighters or phones or something, yeah? Phones, lighters, any illuminating device, take them out, get them out, Davy, can we have the lights out a minute? Hold them up, hold them up! Look at how pretty that is, it's like the sky's on upside down. This song's called 'The Planets Bend Between Us."
I love that song to tiny bits and pieces anyway, but 40,000 people singing it back and lights everywhere? Gorgeous.
And Lisa Hannigan came back out and did 'Set Fire to the Third Bar' with them. I like her duetting with Lightbody much more than Martha Wainwright, mostly because his voice has that startling purity that you never expect to hear him talking, and hers is smoky jazz-club torch singer and where I always feel Wainwright's voice is being drowned, Lisa's just wraps in round his like smoke and water. They sound amazing together. And also neither of them ever know what to do with their hands.
The encore, Gary took his shirt off, to the horror of 40,000 people because skinny shiny-white Irish guys should just not do that, but then he put on the new NI strip and crowed about getting to wear it first and owning a Northern Ireland shirt is basically the national indicator of being an insane optimist, because, well, they get beaten by Andorra. So yes. End of the night, Gary Lightbody, Northern Ireland's biggest optimist, high on life, kneeling on the edge of the stage in a shiny new football shirt and pointing at the fireworks like he's three.
40,000 people, six support bands, one big party. Dancing with my sisters in the dark, sleeping on the train, crawling into bed at 2am, wired to the moon and babbling madly about the music.
Started with 'Open Your Eyes', and demands that we put our hands in the air because 'It looks so pretty!' And two songs in Gary lost the plot slightly and went 'Wow!' for five minutes while Paulo looked mildly dazed at the applause level. Which was perfectly reasonable, because it's the biggest gig in Northern Ireland ever. I'm proud they beat out U2, because unlike U2, these lads make a point of paying it back to their roots. Yes, I'm nursing a grudge, shush. And then they went into 'Shut Your Eyes', so of course he had to make the monkeys dance. It's some strange quirk of all the bands I love, that they make the audience compete against each other. We drew. Allegedly.
I'm watching the ATL taped show now, and we were right up the front and seriously, I was sure everyone sang every word, but I hadn't realised that in places we pretty much drowned the band. And oh, in the first bridge of 'Run' Gary just went 'Thank you' very quietly and sincerely and look, I love this band. Completely and unironically and without any kind of perspective whatsoever. Gary is a massive dork who talks about his wee neice Honey like she's the best thing since air, Nathan is a shameless poser, Paulo is too cool for school but seems to only own one tshirt and Johnny and Tom nod along and do the bandmate equivalent of 'Yes dear' while Gary flails about the place. And Iain Archer ambles about singing with his hands in his pockets and is terribly placid about everything. And I don't care. I love them and their dorky lead singer and their origami backdrops. And Gary and Nathan singing 'Just Say Yes' with their heads together like a love song to the stage. A new song, the first outing, just for us. Taking a chunk out of their sales to put on the best show they can put together because this night is not about the money. Getting the support acts cheered, one by one. Making a festival happen, because they made a promise three years ago in a cricket pavillion in the rain.
And most of all I love that because Gary Lightbody is actually a total stoner with a fixation on shiny things as his ground state of being, he says things like; "You've all got lighters or phones or something, yeah? Phones, lighters, any illuminating device, take them out, get them out, Davy, can we have the lights out a minute? Hold them up, hold them up! Look at how pretty that is, it's like the sky's on upside down. This song's called 'The Planets Bend Between Us."
I love that song to tiny bits and pieces anyway, but 40,000 people singing it back and lights everywhere? Gorgeous.
And Lisa Hannigan came back out and did 'Set Fire to the Third Bar' with them. I like her duetting with Lightbody much more than Martha Wainwright, mostly because his voice has that startling purity that you never expect to hear him talking, and hers is smoky jazz-club torch singer and where I always feel Wainwright's voice is being drowned, Lisa's just wraps in round his like smoke and water. They sound amazing together. And also neither of them ever know what to do with their hands.
The encore, Gary took his shirt off, to the horror of 40,000 people because skinny shiny-white Irish guys should just not do that, but then he put on the new NI strip and crowed about getting to wear it first and owning a Northern Ireland shirt is basically the national indicator of being an insane optimist, because, well, they get beaten by Andorra. So yes. End of the night, Gary Lightbody, Northern Ireland's biggest optimist, high on life, kneeling on the edge of the stage in a shiny new football shirt and pointing at the fireworks like he's three.
40,000 people, six support bands, one big party. Dancing with my sisters in the dark, sleeping on the train, crawling into bed at 2am, wired to the moon and babbling madly about the music.