Burdekin Bandroom 24/7/26

I have loved Front End Loader for a long, long time. For almost as long as they have been a band. I have seen them live more times than you’ve had hot dinners, potentially. I am one of those people who study Setlist FM or scour the internet for setlists so I can make playlists and listen to them for several weeks before a gig, but with Loader I don’t need to, I will know every song and will sing, loudly. It had been about a year since their last gig, and that broke a several-year drought. I had not coped well. At one point, they used to do a few gigs a year and always one near Christmas. I miss those days….

Several years ago they started doing this thing where they play prerecorded blurbs between songs so they don’t actually have to engage with the audience. It is hilarious: Davis, nowhere near a mic, but him very clearly giving the audience a message. So this is how they started this gig, then dove straight into a banger from their last album. Now Loader have been “working” on an album for about a decade…. Well, not quite, but close. So this was followed by a new song from the unrealised album. Then another new song… this was the pattern. 2 new songs one old banger, recorded message.

Many years ago my hubby went to see Bob Dylan. He said it was the worst concert ever cause he just played a whole heap of his newer, (newer for then) songs and none of the banger back catalogue. Occasionally I see a band who mid-set will say they are going to play an unreleased song, and all the audience groans, and then busies themselves for 3 and a half minutes while the band gets it out of their system.

So I was prepared, once I caught on, that this gig was going to be not my fave Loader gig. However, the new songs were amazing. Actually found myself open mouthed gasping at how good some of these tunes were, and each one they played seemed even better then the previous one. Of course I was singing along to every old song they dug up, but I was actually engaged and excited and listening as they smashed through some hard new tracks. They ended with an old favorite Fraid Knot and I just found myself exceptionally excited at the thought of a new Loader album coming out so I can listen again to the amazing songs I had just witnessed.