2009 is a massive year for ATHLETE. Following a disappointing third album ‘Beyond The Neighbourhood’, commercially if not musically, the band separated from their mainstream label Parlaphone at the end of 2008 and signed for Fiction Records to release their fourth album ‘Black Swan’.

To publicize their new material the band have gone back to their roots with a two month tour of small venues across the UK, culminating with a final gig at the intimate The M Club in bass player Carey Willetts’ home town of Crewe. The tour didn’t start well, the Crewe gig should have been the opener but Willetts needed an operation to fix a serious knee injury which meant that this gig had to be postponed for seven weeks. But with a deputy quickly found, the shows and tour went on, but credit to him for playing through the pain barrier on the night.

The evening opened with ‘Superhuman Touch’ the first single from ‘Black Swan’, a good anthemic opening to warm up the crowd and the song that will be the next single. The band then swung into a medley of their most popular songs from their first three albums, ‘You Got The Style’ and ‘Half Light’, two evergreen crowd pleasers quickly got things moving along early in the set. The band sprinkled plenty of new material throughout the night, a brave move considering the release of ‘Black Swan’ isn’t due until 24th August so their fans had only previously heard tantalising tasters via the web. To the contrary, with just two numbers the band basically overlooked their previous album. The new songs were very well received and it’s safe to say that most left the venue clearly looking forward to getting their hands on the new album. ‘Black Swan Song’ is an acoustic based ballad with parallels drawn to ‘Wires’ with Joel Pott reminiscing about the triumphant life of his Grandad. The old favourites kept coming along and the audience continued to lap them up. The main set was closed by the lively new song of ‘The Getaway’, little chance of ATHLETE getting away without at least a couple of encores. Proceedings were quickly resumed with another new song ‘Light The Way’ then followed on by ‘El Salvador’, rather an irony being the first song off their debut album.

The evergreen anthem ‘Wires’ closed the show with both the audience and Joel Pott not seeming to want to end the collective sing-a-long. I’m sure the show could have continued on that vein well into the early hours, with many shouting out suggestions for more. Although disappointingly they didn’t oblige, I’d be surprised if the fans will be kept waiting long. ATHLETE are playing V next month and it’s a short odds bet that further dates will be announced to coincide with the album release.

The kings of the power ballad and sing-a-long anthem are well and truly back. It was a brave decision to ditch a major record label and it will be interesting to see how this works. But certainly the band has some excellent new material and ‘Superhuman Touch’ has been immediately added to the Radio 2 A playlist. On first impressions the switch doesn’t seem to have affected ATHLETE in terms of confidence and musicality. So it will certainly be interesting to see if they can rekindle the commercial successes of their first two albums by barnstorming back with ‘Black Swan’. Best of luck to them.

Set List
Superhuman Touch/You Got The Style/Half Light/Shake Those Windows/Hurricane/Black Swan Song/Tourist/One Million/Magical Mistakes/Westside/The Outsiders/24 Hours/The Getaway/Light The Way/El Salvador/Wires

Rating
5.0/5.0
Review by Tim Statham