Foals / Tom Vek @ The Warehouse Project, Manchester

PHOTO:
BURAK CINGI

This show should have been a celebration; a glorious swansong for live performances at a venue that’s housed the mighty Warehouse Project since 2006.

Likewise, this review should act as a positive bookend for a phenomenal year of live music. It should regale you with tales of how Tom Vek, silhouetted against a red LED screen for the duration, turned in a performance that justified every single piece of praise that’s ever been bestowed upon him.

It should also tell you how Foals – a band that, lest we forget, is still only two albums old – continue to amaze us and remain one of the most effortlessly energetic bands you’ll ever see.

However, as you may have guessed from the rather lengthy preamble, it will not. Whilst we don’t for a moment wish to reassess our judgement of the performances (both were indisputably excellent), this was a night sadly overshadowed by events largely outside of either band’s control.

The real flashpoint was a surging crowd that began to lurch around like a punch-drunk boxer during the first bar of Foals’ set. A lively crowd can make a gig all the more memorable, we know this; however, the swift influx of additional bodies joining from the back and sides (often pushing forward toward spaces that were never there), coupled with the high level of lateral sway and archway setting, left it feeling particularly dangerous.

Overall gig enjoyment tends to disappear when, against your own will, you find yourself lifted, tilted and moved in four directions at once – and a straw poll of several gig goers who had also escaped the mild crush seemed to agree with this assessment.

This should not be misconstrued as a blanket labelling of this venue as unsafe because history (and, indeed, our own experiences of it prior to this) will show that it is not. We’re also well aware that a fair portion of those who also attended will disagree with this review – and that’s fine, too. This is simply our experience and, from where we were stood at least, it seemed that the crowd profile had been
misjudged and there were problems as a result.

Our only hope that this issue is addressed when the Warehouse Project moves to its new venue, wherever that may be. It’s genuinely been responsible for some of our most memorable nights out and it would be a great shame if further nights ended in a similar fashion.