Declan McKenna live at Newcastle City Hall review – a showman back where he belongs

Exactly one year on from a chart-storming album, Declan McKenna brought plenty to sing and dance about for an electrified Newcastle crowd, even if some songs landed better than others.

My friend Lily and I could hardly believe the queue that hugged the perimeter of Newcastle’s City Hall on a blowy, unwelcoming night that certainly felt more early autumn than late summer. It took a lengthy walk to the front to reassure us that these scantly-clad millenials were indeed fans of the Enfield glam rocker, even if the doors had opened over an hour earlier. Such is the mass appeal of Declan McKenna, a man who’s found near-limitless success ever since his understated exposé of FIFA Brazil became an unlikely smash hit back in 2015. These days he’s moved away from woke indie pop to no-holds-barred retro rock on last years’ album Zeroes, which was both an ingenius pastiche of 80s hits or a lazy theft of greater musicians from a previous era, depending on who you asked.

Even if some criticism of Zeroes‘s retro styling has been scathing, it’s clear McKenna hasn’t been listening. After a slightly bizarre a capella rendition of With a Little Help From My Friends, a mulletted McKenna burst on to stage, unmissable in his glitter-coated blazer and trousers, and surrounded by not one but five giant rotating glitterballs. Heavy-hitter Beautiful Faces (Undertone‘s 19th best song of 2020, no less) was a bold choice of opener, and perhaps would have been all the more exultant if saved for a time when the crowd was a little more warmed-up. The track also seemed to lack the raw bite of the studio version; either that or my expectations were set too high for the thunderous guitar solo towards the song’s climax. Tellingly, bouncy follow-up track Rapture did a much better job at getting the crowd leaping up and down for the first song of many.

The bulk of the show was less of a constant post-Covid celebration of freedom and more of an intermittent one, with a set list feeling slightly bloated by forgettable up-tempo numbers (not least the limp recent single My House). When the hits did eventually come, the response from the crowd was rapturous. Emily briefly provided one of the night’s much-needed moments of calm, very much helped by a stunning light show thanks to those spinning glitterballs and a room full of stage smoke. Of the heavier numbers, You Better Believe!!! was a fist-pumping standout that gave impressive drummer Gabi King a good excuse to hammer the skins, sending the crowd into a frenzy the moment each chorus arrived.

However, it must be said that it took until the end of the main set for something really new to happen. McKenna, very obviously coated in sweat by the time, hauled himself up onto a spotlighted raised pedestal to play the solo keyboard intro to the densely-written Be an Astronaut. Sure, the whole thing sounds like a carbon copy of more or less every song David Bowie has released, but the song was still behind one of the most compelling performances of the night night, with McKenna digging deep into the keys and leaning into the microphone like an early Elton John. An anthemic final chorus with a spectacular light show had thousands of Geordies roaring along, fingers pointed aggressively at the ceiling in ecstacy.

A lengthy and rather over-indulgent 5-song encore followed, and both the band and crowd seemed to be waiting for the big finish during monotonous tracks like Make Me Your Queen and The Key to Life on Earth, both of which may have sounded more at home earlier on in the set list. At last, the four bar guitar loop of Brazil gradually shifted into focus. The deafening screams seemed to confirm the fact that McKenna will be singing this fairly unremarkable song for the rest of his career, whether its indie-boy subtleties fit his current style or not. It was a relief, then, that singalong classic British Bombs was the song of choice to finish the night. With its blatant anti-patriotism, it was tempting to read into the intensely appreciative crowd as a symbol of how British politics has lost touch with the young generation, but the truth is that McKenna just happens to have found a particularly compelling, arena-ready melody. In an extraordinary final middle eight, McKenna found himself stood atop an equipment case, arms out, screaming at the top of his lungs as his people below mirrored him a thousand times over. “If it’s not a fucking war crime, it’s a total waste of my time,” we sang, before joyfully leaping up and down to the tune of “great British bombs in the Yemen”. Humanitarian crises never felt so good.

In the end, relatively little was made of the fact that the night was the first anniversary of Zeroes, and reassurance that Newcastle was his ‘favourite city’ felt a little shallow after the largely routine set that followed. Nonetheless, as routines go, McKenna’s is a pretty impressive one and the overwhelming feeling as we returned to the streets was euphoria. It’s good to know that one of the best showmen of my generation is back doing what he does best. Long may that very specific concoction of social awareness and glam rock hedonism continue.