LIVE REVIEW: Buckcherry @ The Ritz, Manchester
When used correctly, nostalgia can be an incredibly powerful tool in live music, with fans often more than happy to flock to shows in order to reconnect with artists or songs they hold dear for whatever reason. To that effect, this year sees a double-bill of early noughties Californian nostalgia hitting venues across the UK, as alt-rock heroes HOOBASTANK team up with LA titans of sleaze-rock BUCKCHERRY for a co-headline run. We trekked down to Manchester’s The Ritz for opening night to see how it’d all pan out.
For this evening’s opener ADELITAS WAY, their performance this show is a rather special occasion. Despite having been around for 13 years now at the time of writing, tonight sees the Las Vegas trio playing the UK for the very first time in their career, and the band couldn’t seem more excited about that fact, despite the fact they seem to barely be playing to 200 people or so as their set starts. Clambering onstage and launching into Still Hungry from last year’s Live Love Life EP, the three-piece quickly have a small pocket of evidently-dedicated fans bouncing like lunatics as they proceed to power through a set of punchy US radio rock anthems that highlight exactly why they’ve become so successful in their homeland. Ready For War (Pray For Peace) sees the band going full-on INCUBUS, whilst Last Stand showcases an impressive knack for power-balladry, as vocalist Rick DeJesus belts out some impressive DAUGHTRY-esque melodies that lead to some of the first of many singalong moments to come throughout the night. Not everything goes perfectly, sadly, and their overall mix seems more than a touch diluted and muddied for pretty much the entirety of the set, but that hardly seems to matter to the band themselves, nor the hardcore fans that know every lyric, though it’s a touch disheartening for an occurrence on such a long-awaited show. Finishing up with one last up-tempo anthem, Invincible, a song possibly best known on these shores as a former theme song to WWE Superstars, the band leave to considerable applause from those aware of who they are, proving clearly that for fans of ADELITAS WAY, it’s definitely been worth the wait.
Rating: 6/10
There’s a real case to be made on tonight’s performance that HOOBASTANK frontman Doug Robb might well be one of the most infectiously cheerful people in all of alternative music. Indeed, barely a second goes by during the band’s hour-and-change performance tonight where it seems like the vocalist isn’t displaying a Cheshire cat-level grin. Of course, there’s a perfectly good reason for him to be so cheerful, with the band having announced mere days prior to tonight’s tour launch that their set for the trek would include their seminal album 2003 The Reason being played in-full to celebrate its recent 15th anniversary. How this essentially pans out tonight is the band coming out onto The Ritz’s stage and opening with the wiry alt-rock stomp of Same Direction, before proceeding to spend 42 minutes or so blasting out said record cover-to-cover in one of the most nostalgia-fuelling sets many here are probably likely to see for a while.
This is only augmented further with the realisation that 3/4 of the band’s original lineup are still active to this day, with Robb still flanked by lead guitarist Dan Estrin and drummer Chris Hesse, with bassist of the last decade Jesse Charland more than making up for the absence of Markku Lappalainen some 14 years prior. Easily the most impressive thing about HOOBASTANK’s performance tonight though, is the manner in which they pump out their material in a manner as if no time had passed between its release and now, let alone a decade and a half. Energetic cuts like Out Of Control sound arguably just as charged as they did all those years ago, whilst soaring anthems like Lucky still elicit ludicrously huge roars from the increasingly-full building. Of course, one notable factor of taking an in-order approach to the album show format means that HOOBASTANK end up having to break out possibly their biggest hit, The Reason, at just around their set’s mid-point rather than as a closer or encore piece. This naturally ends up being probably the strongest moment of tonight’s performance, as Doug’s voice is almost drowned out by the backing chorus of hundreds of fans, however, it’s testament to the band’s tenacity that they’re able to plough on for another six songs afterwards, finishing off the album with powerful cuts like Unaffected and Disappear, before capping off their set with a one-two punch of Running Away and Crawling In The Dark from their 2001 self-titled debut – the latter in particular proving another massive high point. Tonight may have been intended as a celebration of HOOBASTANK’s glory days, but their performance here also highlights an impressively adept band who remain a formidably tight live force more than worthy of continued attention.
Rating: 8/10
If watching HOOBASTANK was like witnessing a finely-tuned machine at work, then watching BUCKCHERRY perform tonight feels more akin to sitting through an unhinged live celebration of 80s classic rock excess. Staggering out to colossal roars of approval from a now packed-out and heavily-inebriated The Ritz, the Anaheim quintet waste almost no time kicking things off with their cover of NINE INCH NAILS’ anthemic Head Like A Hole. It’s an interesting choice of opener, and perhaps not a cover that necessarily works brilliantly when compared to the classic original, but any issue is quickly left behind as the band soon move onto their usual sleaze-rock fare with songs like It’s A Party, Ridin’ and Broken Glass ensuring the party atmosphere keeps coming thick and fast.
Frontman Josh Todd is of course the centrepiece of BUCKCHERRY‘s entire affair, his constant gyrations in between sneered lyrics leading to constant female screams from seemingly every direction all night as he leads the band through a set that constantly feels like it’s on the verge of falling right off of a cliff. By the mid-point they’ve already broken out fan-favourite drug-use anthem Lit Up, which sees almost everyone present bellowing along to its ever-ridiculous “I love the cocaine, I love the cocaine” refrain, and the absolute conviction with which Todd snarls said line proves hilarious to an enormous degree as he stumbles around the stage, tambourine-in-hand and revelling in the love from his audience. Easily the most ridiculous moment of the night though, comes as the band hit their infamous cover of ICONA POP’s chart-bothering single I Love It, which BUCKCHERRY of course rework as the much more explicit Say Fuck It. As with just about every other moment of their set tonight, it feels hilariously ramshackle, but with the sleaze turned all the way up to 11 and beyond, also borderline impossible not to be at least amused by.
Too Drunk… follows next, as Josh recounts yet more tales of debauchery, before the excellent balladry of Sorry sees a near-total change of tone as lighters and phones are raised in unison for the affecting, if a tiny bit cheesy, track. This being a BUCKCHERRY show though, the tempo change doesn’t last long, and new song Bent from the band’s upcoming album Warpaint is quickly wheeled out to bring back the band’s more hard rock stylings, with Todd pausing only briefly to comment on the nature of the track’s title on these shores not being quite what he intended. Gluttony comes next, with its satirical commentary on the titular concept of excess set to a brilliantly-punk pacing, before the band hit the only possible choice for a closing song, 2006’s Crazy Bitch. This is, of course, the precise moment where the audience of The Ritz hit their absolute peak of the evening, as clearly evident in the sudden amount of flying drinks and writhing bodies in a brilliantly fun-to-witness cavalcade of utter carnage. Things perhaps go a little bit too far when the band break out into an extended bluesy jam of the song after a good few minutes, even throwing in a singalong snippet of CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL’s 1969 classic Proud Mary at one point, but it’s hard to blame them for wanting to extend such a beloved song in as many ways as possible. They might not be the most polished live act in the world, but there’s no denying that BUCKCHERRY are a hell of a lot of fun to watch in action, and a strong way to end what’s been an overall great evening of rock entertainment.
Rating: 7/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Manchester from Christopher James Ryan Photography here:
