slowthai: Live in Leeds
Last Friday, I along with thousands of other drunk students crammed into the University of Leeds’ Refectory for an iconic set from Northampton’s slowthai, in a legendary venue rich with musical history. A particularly revered concert hall in the 1970s, with performances from The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Elton John, and countless others, it’s definitely strange to see it practically transform into a university cafeteria in the day. It marked Slowthai’s return to Leeds after performing at the intimate venue, Brudenell Social Club, in Autumn last year. It would have been amazing to see this considering it’s my local and has a capacity of only 400, but this made it impossible to get tickets for…
After a moody set of grunge-tinged bedroom pop from Deb Never, the States’ singer known for her catchy collaborations with Kenny Beats, BROCKHAMPTON, and her impressive 2021 debut Where Have All The Flowers Gone, fans were eager to see Slowthai take to the stage.
As the lights dimmed, Slowthai, real name Tyron Frampton, burst onto the stage with his response to the NME awards’ situation ‘ENEMY’. As the Matty Healy sample plays, slowthai threateningly shouts ‘Keep my name out your dirty mouth’. There is no chance to catch your breath as he moves into ‘CANCELLED’, ‘DEAD’, and ‘WOT’, three standouts from the aggressive first half of one of last years best albums, TYRON.
Finally, the energy cools down as we move into the bittersweet sounds of ‘nhs’, ‘i tried’ and ‘focus’, from the latter half of TYRON. These were particular standouts, as although his set at Parklife was fantastic, he didn’t play many of his slower songs, as he riled the crowd up throughout the course of his performance. ‘i tried’ is a particular favourite, one of my favourite songs from last year, with its eerie sample and College Dropout sound.
‘MAZZA’ sent everyone back into a frenzy, along with ‘VEX’ and ‘Psycho’, which made for an almost uncomfortably sweaty part of the night as people got thrown around by the constantly moving crowd. As we moved into the second half of the show, slowthai made time for favourites like ‘BB (BODYBAG)’ and the severely underrated ‘Toaster’, whilst bringing Deb Never out for ‘push’, which was a particularly great moment.
‘adhd’ was one of the most touching songs of the evening, and the deeply personal lyrics hit even harder in a live setting. He then moved onto a few more favourites from his near perfect debut Nothing Great About Britain, with ‘Drug Dealer’ and ‘T N Biscuits’. He even made time for some new material, including a blissful drum and bass track, which had the crowd of students particularly excited, and a new collaboration with Fontaines D.C.
The last leg of the night was maybe the best, as we got into ‘Deal Wiv It’, the fantastic Mike Skinner influenced Mura Masa single, and the incredible ‘Momentary Bliss’ (which we also got to see at Gorillaz last year, but unfortunately came on the wrong night to see Slowthai come out!). Whilst he was doing collaborations, I got my hopes up for ‘My High’ with Disclosure and Amine, however that was quickly forgotten about when the sound of ‘Doorman’ was heard…
It was the moment a lot of fans were waiting for, and it got very hectic very quickly. Slowthai re-started the song as someone fell down, shouting ‘when people fall down, we pick them up’, something which needs to be said by performers following the Astroworld tragedy. He controlled the crowd, demanding that half the crowd go clockwise, and the other half go anti-clockwise. It was a great performance of a perfect song, perhaps only missing the surprise element of him coming out to perform it at BROCKHAMPTON (which you can read our review for here).
‘feel away’ was the perfect note to end the night on, cooling down after the past few tracks, and swaying to the euphoric sounds of James Blake rattling through the speakers. Slowthai delivered an amazing setlist, and whilst some tracks like ‘Thoughts’, ’45 SMOKE’, ‘Gorgeous’, ‘Crack’, and ‘Missing’ were missed, asking for more would just be greedy.
Check out the rest of his tour dates here.