The Subways live at Manchester Academy

This was my second time seeing these folks, which means obviously I enjoyed them the first time round. But they topped that performance with this one. The Subways seem to be a bit of a conundrum in that they are a good, solid band yet haven't really hit the big time or much commercial success, even though this was the biggest of the venues at the Academy and was sold out containing around 800-1000 people. They are still really only have a cult following. Which is strange because their music is actually pretty good and when you think in terms of potential marketing, they cater for both genders in that they have a gorgeous female bassist while the male vocal/guitarist along with the male drummer were more than happy to play the whole show topless. They are a band that definitely deserve to be bigger considering how much rubbish gets played on the radio these days.

The crowd was magnificent all night and really, really into all the songs. It was well worth the money too clocking in at just under 1-and-a-half hours and entertaining throughout. This included a lengthy encore which may or may not have been deliberate because when they were due to finish with Rock And Roll Queen, the lights went out so the lead guy got everyone to point their phones up at the stage to generate some brightness and that was fine but then shortly after they started, the electrics went on the mic, guitar and bass. So they had to improv to the crowd for a bit until it got fixed but that awesome so it wasn't a big deal. Things then sorted themselves and they finished up grandly.

I would definitely recommend checking them out if you like all things rock & indie and they only have two albums, Young For Eternity and All Or Nothing, so it wouldn't be a huge back catalogue to hunt down. I'll leave you with some of their bigger songs.


Rock And Roll Queen




Oh Yeah



Shake Shake