Altsounds - New Found Glory [Live] @ The Relentless Garage, London

It was about 2001 when all those pop punk bands started populating Kerrang! TV. Sum 41, Good Charlotte and a whole lot of other bands sounding all pretty much the same, like always seems to happen with new trends. As it always happens though, even in this forgettable bunch some quality emerged, and those few are still around today selling out venues. New Found Glory is one of these few.

The venue is the Garage, I beg your pardon, the Relentless Garage. Can’t have a venue without a sponsor nowadays, anyway I do like energy drinks more than mobile phones, and the flames’ background above the bar is kind of cool. Finally there’s also a photographers’ area of some kind and well coordinated staff, so well done to the organisers for once.

I make my way to the front in time for the supporting act, Kids in Glass Houses: what a nice surprise! I had never heard about this Welsh outfit before but there’s nothing better than seeing a band you like (NFG) and to discover a brand new one on the same night. Kids In Glass Houses was born as a hobby circa 2004, but it only got kind of serious around 2005, with the bands first EP “E-pocalypse” coming out in 2006. According to the singer Aled, the Kids In Glass Houses goal was to write “Fun songs. Songs that we'd listen to and enjoy”, and it sounds to me as though they have totally hit the target. Their music is fresh, simple, energetic pop with a touch of indie and a touch of rock but are not quite one or the other. It’s that kind of feel-good music that may not be genius, but makes you smile and dance and to me that’s worth more than some virtuoso guitar solos. Their influences go from Lostprophets (which they supported in 2006) to Duran Duran and The Cure. In the past few years they’ve been touring with Hundred Reasons, Goo Goo Dolls, Manic Street Preachers and they even had a slot in Download. You can tell this by how much they are used to working the crowd. They’re all good musicians, and Aled’s voice serves very well with their energetic and solar brand of pop, easily flirting with harder tunes and indie moments. I particularly appreciated 'Saturday' and 'Give Me What I Want' live although on record I much prefer 'Easy Tiger'. Yes, I googled Kids in Glass Houses as soon as I got home on my laptop to find out more, which means I seriously enjoyed them.

It’s finally time for the headlining band, New Found Glory to hit the stage. I had a glance at the set list and was quite pleased to find out that I’m going to enjoy TWENTY-ONE New Found Glory songs one after the other tonight! They open with 'Don’t Let Her Pull You Down', a track from their new album “Not Without A Fight” that starts quietly enough to let out all its energy in the chorus, good choice. The audience who are quite young and are apparently having a hell of a good time, gives New Found Glory their warmest welcome; a crowd surfing epidemic starts straight away, and will accompany every song until the very end. New Found Glory follow with 'All Downhill From Here', one of their fastest hits to let us all know what kind of party this is going to be.

'Understatement' is classic effervescent New Found Glory, and if I didn’t have my camera I’d probably have a go at crowd surfing myself! 'Truck Stop Blues' and 'Such A Mess' are again from the new album and highlight how New Found Glory’s sound has gotten a bit harder and more mature yet hasn’t lost its trademark, feel-good element. I’m really starting to get into this. 'Failure Is Not Flattering (What’s Your Problem)' takes me back to the old days when music didn’t have to come off X Factor and kids still knew how to have fun, followed by a brilliant cover of Simple Minds’ 'Don’t You (Forget About Me)', then finally the classic 'Dressed to Kill'. There’s no holding the crowd down, smiling teenagers get lifted at the front only to make their way to the back and reappear minutes later, happily inebriated and totally oblivious to any warning from security. We should be exactly half way through the set list, but a few words from the staff and Jordan announces that they have to “wrap it up” because of a 22.30 curfew! The singer looks more disappointed than we do, and to make up for the cut he performs the band’s two biggest hits, 'Hit Or Miss' and 'My Friends Over You', entirely with the crowd. He’s standing on the barrier the whole time, passing the microphone to the public, going from one side to the other, surrounded by overjoyed fans. Being an old naive romantic idealist, who thinks music is something more than a well produced piece of plastic, I live for moments like this, and New Found Glory just rocketed from “band I like” to a “band I dig”.

Pop punk may not be taken seriously by everyone, but whatever rocks your world. New Found Glory is a band that deserves to be taken seriously, if anything else for the commitment towards their fans and the amazing energy and professionalism that characterize their live shows. Back to those few quality acts who survive the end of a trend, it was easy to spot tonight what made the difference between New Found Glory and all those other bands whose names I can’t even remember.