Having ‘done America’ over the past year, the most sparkling feel-good foursome to emerge from the UK since The Darkness return to entertain a delighted home audience. It might be a Monday night, but there’s a set-list of solid-gold winners on offer – and an audience that knows the words to all of them.
Frontman Luke Spiller is a glittering (literally) tornado of jazz hands, note-perfect performance and evident reverence for Queen that goes way deeper than Bohemian Rhapsody. The echoes of Mercury, May and co. aren’t just in Spiller, either, but also in guitarist Adam Slack’s singing, electrified chops.
Not that it’s all glam and 70s/80s homaging – there’s a huge sense of prime-cut Britpop in what The Struts do (no surprises that they’re fans of Oasis and Supergrass). We even get a rather good cover of Oasis’s Supersonic.
Two new songs suggests they’ve got plenty more goods in the can: Who Am I? is dancey yet soulful, while Primadonna is the irresistible love child of Start! by The Jam and the Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar. They’ll support the latter in Europe just days after this show, before joining the Foo Fighters on tour in the US.
It’s all going very well for The Struts, basically, and as the night careers to a close with a gleeful singalong of Where Did She Go, we can’t help thinking how much they deserve it all.
