The Rifles
Astoria, London
This was an assured, powerful and entertaining performance from London four-piece The Rifles. Lesser debutants may have melted under the lights, playing in front of a sold-out Astoria. These boys simply rose to the challenge.
When a band has only one album behind them there is room for few surprises during a live show, but surprises were not what the audience wanted. The english storytelling style of Joel Stokers lyrics made each track an anthem as if the audience had been listening for years. With thousands of voices ringing out to each chorus there was a sense of homecoming in the atmosphere.
Blasting off with single She’s Got Standards, One Night Stand and Repeated Offender the pace was set and it was clear we weren’t going to be hanging around all night. With a presence on stage mixing arrogance and accomplishment the band looked and sounded as if they had experience well beyond their years. Its difficult to imagine the bands by which The Rifles are clearly influenced being so assured at the same stage in their careers.
Slowing down for She’s The Only One and the rolling drums of Fat Cat we stepped through most of the album. Strong b-side NLL broke things up and a new track suggested there is likely to be some musical evolution when a second album comes along.
An encore including Narrow Minded Social Club and Local Boy sent the audience home wanting more but feeling they’d seen something special. Drummer Grant Marsh’s grandparents made it to the show; lets hope they enjoyed it as much as everyone else did.
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