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The View at Room At The Top, Bathgate [Live]

Live review and photos from The View @ Room At The Top December 30th 2011

by cfaruolo, January 8th, 2012 and has been Read 1035 times.
Last Edited by: Jack Stovin January 10th, 2012.

It was a cold cold Friday night in the city of Bathgate, Scotland, behind me a mass of eager fans was generating a thick cloud of condensed alcohol sweat, and pushing closer and closer to the fence while singing bits of The View’s lyrics in a disorganized football match fashion. The band was not on yet, but my camera lens was already blurring every 5 seconds with vibrating steam.

Kyle showed off his remarkable skill of throwing up a bit during the song without losing a beat

After a lightening recording session in Nashville in preparation for their fourth album, this mighty bunch scheduled a sold out Christmas tour across Scotland which included two nights in their hometown Dundee, and ended with this date at the Room At The Top in Bathgate and a massive new year’s eve show in Aberdeen.

The band took their spot on stage and as the first flock of half full pints was ejected, "Underneath The Lights" cracked the expectancy net and the crowd transformed into a block of hands in the air jumping up and down. Two things came to my mind at this point: one, the intensity and rawness of the live sound of The View is still intact since the first time I saw them three years ago, there’s an unique palpable vibe and an inexplicable sense of contagious let’s-break-it-all energy, and two, no matter how many Guinness went down their throats before the gig, they always manage to sound tight as a drum.

Tonight’s setlist also contained some of the new tracks that they’ve been working on for the sequel of "Bread And Circuses", "Pint Pages & Pen" revived some fifties old school rock and roll loopy vocal melodies while "Afield Row" combined the bass riffs of Grease's "Summer Nights" with a Beach Boys’ ballad.

And already shirt-less Mo stormed in with the blustery drum intro of "How Long" another newbie that unravelled into a fast paced catchy melody with a classic vocals-and-claps-only build-up moment in the middle.

After The Tweeds cover "I Need That Record" (where Kyle showed off his remarkable skill of throwing up a bit during the song without losing a beat) was then the turn to bassist Kieren to take over the lead guitar and vocals to recite the tales of Mr "Skag Trendy" and treat us with the velvety Celtic rock nuances of "Realisation".

"Wasteland" had Falconer spitting words at illegal speed following ska-punk narrow guitar strums while the confused bouncers pointed helplessly at the crowd-surfers kicking the ceiling all the way from the front row to the back of the venue’s lounge. Most of these unconditional fans followed the band around and saw them at least three (or four) times during the last week, but that did not prevent dozens of them to climb on a friend’s shoulder and sing every lyric feeling closely identified with this "idealistic wastelad" and its characters (the "dedicated View fans" who like myself and probably the rest of the band were still wearing the same jeans for more than four days now).

"Sunday" closed the encore-less set, but no one wanted to leave. The crowd bade farewell to the band with the classic chant "The View, The View, The View are on fire" while harassing the stage crew for a guitar pick, an empty bottle of water, a setlist or ANY trophy that they could take home from this thrilling night.

If you wanna catch The View on their next date, they just announced their first gig of the year to be at Glenrothes on the 12th of February, but if you can’t make it up there, don’t worry, we anticipate an extremely busy year for these Scots!
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Setlist for the night:

Underneath The Lights
Same Jeans
How Long
Blondie
Wasted Little Djs
5 Rebeccas
Pint, Pages & Pen
Shock Horror
Tragic Magic
I Need That Record
Realization
Skag Trendy
Superstar Tradesman
Afield Row
Wastelands / Typical Time
Grace
Sunday