October Drift

October Drift should be playing the biggest of stages, I hope 2025 sees this happen for them.

Making a triumphant return to our fine city, October Drift arrive on the back of their third and best album ‘Blame The Young’ and storm the Studio stage.

Once a band is three albums in you can often get a feel for where exactly they are going to go. With October Drift you get a sense of shift in momentum, a real movement towards bigger stages and bigger audiences.

They sound bigger and better than ever. The sonic boom of noise bleeding from the speakers and the supersonic energy that flows from the stage completely gets into your soul. It moves and shakes you to the core, and leaves you full of joy and wonderment.

Opening their set with ‘Demons’ a song taken from the new record is a real call to arms. It’s a driven, melodic beast of a song that sounds huge on record and yet even bigger live. ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’ follows with an equally raging, full on force of nature. ‘Webcam Funerals’ get the crowd engaged with its harmonies in full flow despite the dark theme, being stuck in a lock down doom.

Other highlights include the album title track ‘Blame The Young’ the gentle yet ginormous ‘Everybody Aches’ There are moments where lead singer Kiran Roy joins us in the audience, beckoning everyone in the room to come closer and embrace the joyous and extremely loyal fans down the front (some of which are following the back across the UK on this tour)

‘Bleed’ and ‘Insects’ taken from the second album ‘I Don’t Belong Here Anymore’ are further highlights, ‘Bleed’ especially is atmospheric and beautiful. The closing set one-two punch of ‘Oh The Silence’ and ‘Not Running Anymore’ bring the performance to a stunning close. It’s 80 minutes of high-octane Rock N Roll that draws me back into the early days of Idlewild, where the band were just full of energy and passion.

October Drift should be playing the biggest of stages, I hope 2025 sees this happen for them.

Opening the night was London based three piece ‘CarPark’ their set was wonderful, there’s a real art/pop vibe to them which reminded me of early Paramore and have been on tour with The Libertines as well as their own headline UK adventure.

Songs like ‘Happy On Mars’ and ‘Blow Me Out Of The Water’ really have a great vibe to them, and their musicianship was fantastic, I was especially impressed by lead guitarist Hattie. This trio are absolutely ones to watch.