There are few things quite as British as spending a sunny summer Saturday afternoon at the races before swapping the horses for guitars and Newmarket Racecourse provided the perfect setting for a fabulous evening of live music on Saturday 22nd August.
With Scouting for Girls opening the evening and Kaiser Chiefs topping the bill, the promise was for an evening built round big choruses, nostalgia and plenty of crowd participation – and it certainly delivered!
Scouting for Girls were a fitting choice of support, bringing a sense of familiarity to the evening with their infectious piano led indie pop style and their knack of writing songs that seem tailor made for a festival crowd. There was an easy warmth to their performance with the group’s biggest songs landing exactly as expected – huge crowd singalongs that warmed the audience up nicely for what was about to come.
As the sun began to set over the racecourse, anticipation for the headliners grew. Kaiser Chiefs are a band whose songs have become woven into the fabric of British indie and seeing them in an outdoor arena such as Newmarket provided the chance to hear those anthems on a suitably grand scale.
When Ricky Wilson took to the stage the response was immediate and the second song, “Everyday I Love You Less and Less” provided an explosive way to start the evening while “Ruby” transformed the crowd into one huge backing vocal, as you would expect! It is impossible to resist a song that infectious when you are surrounded by hundreds of people singing every word, even if Ricky does tell us ‘It is just a song’!
The set worked well balancing the band’s more raucous material with songs that have become modern indie staples. “I Predict a Riot” was a definite highlight with its familiar opening bars provoking an eruption from the crowd. “Oh my God” provided another reminder of how well Kaiser Chiefs combine punky energy with catchy pop hooks.
Ricky is an incredibly engaging frontman confidently working the large Newmarket crowd with little sense of distance between the band and audience.
As the last light faded over the Suffolk countryside, the inevitable encore brought the evening to a close and we all left slightly hoarse and euphoric from an evening singing along to anthems that we know so well.
Photo credit – Newmarket Races
