Milburn Return For Four Huge Hometown Shows
Well Well Well, looks who's back...
So, the last time we were seeing Milburn* was in this same room 8 years ago when they played their final show, which was a triumphant send off for this band who had released two albums and gained thousands of fans along the way. This time round though there is eight years of anticipation and excitement in the air and the Milburn chants start as soon as we get in the venue for nights three and four of their four night run.
Despite never attracting huge commercial success, Milburn this weekend are showing how much love there still is for them, four sold out nights at Sheffield Academy, 9,600 tickets, as Joe Carnall rightly points out "not bad for four lads from Sheffield eh?"
They walk on to Groove Armada's 'Superstylin' and launch into the opening notes of 'Well Well Well', and from then on in this is definitely probably one of the most mental crowds we've ever been in at a gig. As they span through a 20 song setlist from both albums, the crowd never lets up, and as you look around every single person is singing the lyrics to every single song, this is a special gig!
It's hard to point out a highlight as every song is hit after hit after hit, but it's good to hear a nice mix of tracks form second album 'These Are The Facts', probably their less commercially successful but shows off what great songwriters they are with 'Count to Ten' and 'Genius and the Tramp'.
Whilst suppin his can of Stones Bitter Joe Carnall points out that on Saturday they broke the record for the most that's ever been taken on the bar at the venue so to try and smash it for the final night, sure that won't have been a problem!
As Joe comes back on his own for the encore to play old favourite 'Roll out the Barrel' the rest of the band then join him for 'What You Could've Won', and they're all beaming, you can tell they're really enjoying being back and they look like a proper gang, all with a bit more hair on their heads and faces eight years later, and this can't be a review of Milburn without mentioning the Carnall brothers barnets, especially Louis, see the photo gallery!
Being in Sheffield for the weekend you can feel the buzz for Milburn everywhere you go, this was their weekend, talks of them and singalongs in all the pubs we went in, on the train, in the bars after and even Milburn singalongs in the kebab shop at the end of the night! But, what is clear to see is it's not just a love of them from locals, we chat to fans from London, Newcastle, Scotland and Devon who have all traveled for this, who knows what they will do next, not sure if they know but it would be a shame if they didn't at least remind the rest of the country what they've been missing out on, because the love for them is certainly there, this is a band that means a lot to a lot of people. We'll hopefully see them again soon...
* In the bar before the gig, we got chatting to Phil Milburn, the man who coined the name when Joe Carnall asked him many years back what they should call the band, what a man!
