| Artist | Sam Fender |
| Venue | Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham |
| Date | 20 March 2022 |
| Opener | Will We Talk? |
| Closer | Hypersonic Missiles |
| Highlight | The Dying Light |
| Undertone rating | 4/5 |
Sam Fender will play cleaner sets than the one that opened his grand arena tour of the UK, but that didn’t ruin an evening of rousing singalongs and pinch-me moments.
More than the vast majority of mainstream acts today, Sam Fender is a man and an artist intimately tied to his hometown, namely Newcastle and the nearby town of North Shields. His Geordie accent is unmistakable and thick, his lyrics are often sharply focussed on the struggles of adolescence during the decline of the mining industry in the North East and his entire artistic image is black and white in keeping with the colours of Newcastle’s football club. He’s so loved that much of the crowd around me at the start of his UK tour were compelled to buy t-shirt merchandise that looked remarkably similar to a Newcastle United kit; I have no doubt sales will be just as high in the more contentious footballing cities of Manchester and Liverpool as he continues his tour.
It was a not insignificant disappointment, then, that a twist of fate had landed me with a ticket to see Fender in the unfamiliar and relatively unexciting city of Nottingham, rather than one of his two nights in front of what will surely be an extraordinary crowd of supporters for two nights in Newcastle in a few weeks. Sitting on one for the city’s clean and modern trams bound for the formidable Motorpoint Area, I consoled myself that at least I was seeing the first night of the tour, and perhaps that might help the gig feel a little special, even if the city wasn’t.
Another special thing was that this was the first time I’d ever attended an arena concert, let alone one on my own. I almost gasped as I strolled into the mostly empty Motorpoint Arena at 6:45, taking a moment to gawp at the web of ventilation pipes and giant metal beams that hung high above me before finding my spot a dozen or so rows from the front. It was remarkable just how far away the back of the venue was and when the gig got underway it became easy to forget the staggering amount of people standing and sitting behind me, all watching the same man. Arriving early meant I found myself amongst the Sam Fender ultras, invariably young and ready to party with their countless Fender-branded bucket hats. Even two hours before the great man was to make his entrance, the atmosphere was electric.
The static fuzz of Will We Talk? announced his presence, the room erupted and I was treated to my first of several dowsings of beer from the uncontrollably excited fans around me. Despite my dampness, it was a strong singalong starter that had several teens aloft on the shoulders of friends within minutes, arms outstretched in rhapsody. Chilling Dead Boys was another early highlight, with an enormous screen behind Fender coming in to good use in tastefully visualising the intense melancholy of Fender’s powerful ode to victims of suicide. The chorus of those singing every last word around me multiplied the song’s poignancy tenfold.
An unexpected hitch with attending the first gig of the tour was Fender and his band’s slight rustiness. A respectable but occasionally misjudged guitar solo on The Borders was quickly pointed out by Fender, who said it was the worst he’s ever played it (“it had lots of passion, just lots of wrong notes too”). The soaring trumpet solo on Mantra should have been a highlight of the night, but instead it was distractingly botched by the trumpeter. Still, issues with technique weren’t a complete dealbreaker. A huge part of Fender’s appeal is just how relatable and ‘laddish’ he is. He did, after all, come across as a dazed (and very talented) indie lad plonked on an enormous stage with little prior warning. In some ways he was – Fender’s career didn’t skyrocket until the pandemic, and so his new life as an arena-filling rockstar understandably takes some adjusting to. “I don’t know how we got here, but we’re gonna give it some,” he told us in the beginning, and we bellowed back in support.
Fender certainly stuck to his promise for the rest of the gig, whether endearingly singing to his father in nostalgic-feeling Spit Of You or launching into Spice’s raging chorus. “It’s time to see what the Midlands has got in terms of moshing,” he teased before the thunderous Howdon Aldi Death Queue, easily the nastiest song he’s ever written. Having got well acquainted with the crowd around me over the course of the evening, I was doubtful there’d be any moshing at all, but I was proved wrong when a particularly blistering chorus from Fender saw the bodies tighten around me. I mostly enjoyed it, making the most of the stageward current I found myself in.
An immense lighting rig hanging above the band turned blood red and descended to metres above Fender’s head for Play God, adding to the song’s enticing sense of menace. An unpleasant and dangerous sudden crowd surge backwards at the end of the song seemed to discourage those around me from giving brilliant followup The Leveller the enthusiasm it deserved. Fender’s vocals, however, were as searing as ever, and the pure exuberance of keyboardist Joe Atkinson in particular was enough to get me hollering along with the rest of them.
Pre-encore closer The Dying Light – one of several songs that Fender was excitingly performing for the first time ever – saw a surprise when Fender took to an upright piano at the back of the stage, his playing refreshingly tender and beautiful. The song, both live and as its studio version, is an absolute stunner: a devastating, piano ballad about suicide that blooms into a euphoric, soul-stirring stadium rock finale. I could feel my heart lift and my eyes tear up as the piano riff gained momentum, Fender’s heart and soul completely laid bare in the music. Confetti cannons kicked into action as the climax reached completion and I briefly lost myself in the magnificence of the moment. Few artists can write songs that special.
And yet there was an encore still to come. Fender’s unusually long absence from the stage indicated an issue at hand, namely Dean Thompson’s malfunctioning guitar. Cue a shaky, unrehearsed rendition of the unremarkable Leave Fast in which Fender repeatedly forgot his own lyrics. Seeking help from the audience, he broke out into laughing when he only received a faint chant of “Shearer! Shearer!”. The song ended and Fender was left pacing around the stage with palpable anxiety, Thompson’s guitar still unfixed. His most monumental songs were still to come, and for a moment I wondered if we’d ever get to hear them.
A few tense minutes later Thompson’s guitar seemed to be back in action and the show just about survived. The four-song encore was flawless, with the perfect Paradigms more exhilarating than ever. Then, of course, there was the small matter of Seventeen Going Under, truly a once-in-a-generation rock song that will forever be one of my most treasured pieces of music. I resisted the temptation to record any of it, instead screaming out every last word and trying my best to live every last moment. Ever since, I’ve been wishing I could live those five minutes again. Hypersonic Missiles followed before we could get our breaths back, a predictable but very solid choice of set closer. The “woah-ohs” of the epic bridge were perfectly designed for an arena performance like this one, and the sound of 10,000 of us singing along was spine-tingling. A second set of confetti cannons and air blasters marked the final chorus of what had been a remarkable night. The high-budget effects had been nicely incorporated throughout – sparingly used and never at odds with Fender’s underlying humility. Effects also added greatly to the intensity of the moment. Perhaps more than any song on the night, Hypersonic Missiles was utterly thrilling to witness, in large part thanks to how much joy it clearly gave every last one of the thousands of fans around me. It’s performances like those that make my thankful to be alive.
For all the show’s endearing flaws, Fender really had ‘given it some’, although the often so-so crowd response on some songs had me wondering just how much better his two upcoming nights in Newcastle will be. Regardless, the set was one to be cherished and instrumental fluffs and technical faults were trivial behind the clouds of confetti and the roar of the crowd. “A friend told me you should stop to take in moments like these,” Fender told us at one point, before standing back from the microphone and gazing out at the many thousands of loving fans in disbelief. There was a sense that the lovable young lad’s rockstar fairytale had reached its happy ending. For Fender as well as us, it was a reminder that nights like these don’t come around very often.
Undertone 
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