Magic! Bring Their Undeniably Catchy Sound To Wembley Arena
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Supporting a band with as many hits under their belt as Maroon 5 and playing arena sized venues is no easy feat - especially for a relatively new band - and the North America/Europe portion of the Maroon 5 World Tour saw Magic! step up to the challenge.
Canadian four-piece Magic! released their debut album “Don’t Kill the Magic” just last summer, with the single “Rude” jumping up to number one both here in the UK and in the States. Riding on this success, the band even performed at Times Square in New York City to welcome in 2015. The band have been using this Maroon 5 tour to its full promotional potential, performing about half of their album each date.
Wembley Arena was filled with the most varied audience I’ve ever seen there, a crowd spanning generations, and it was a very refreshing sight to see fans of all ages at a show. The place was already pretty packed by the time Magic! took to the stage, truly giving them a proper arena experience. The band quickly set the pace with their own brand of reggae pop fusion, which is undeniably catchy and makes sitting still pretty tricky. Lead singer Nasri demands the crowd’s attention with his brilliant white attire and his interesting, rather sultry, choice of dance moves.
Nasri certainly isn’t short on energy when it comes to performing, dashing from end to end of the large stage to spur up the crowds in the raised seating as well as the standing audience in front, although it fell a little short for most of the show. The highlight was their cracking cover of The Police’s “Message In A Bottle”, a band which Magic! cite as one of their main influences in music. Pleasing an arena audience is certainly not a walk in the park, and Magic! tried their hardest, but it was only really when they closed the show with their hit “Rude” that the crowd got singing and dancing along, being the only single to have made an impact over here.
Personally I feel the atmosphere of the whole band was lost a little in the size of the venue, their style and presence would be much more suited to a smaller venue - having the crowd all broken up by the staging set up for Maroon 5 lost the intimacy of the show a little. I would certainly recommend going to a Magic! show next time they’re in town though, especially if you’re the kind of gig-goer who likes a little dance over sitting for a whole set.
To find out more about Magic! click here.
To visit the Magic! facebook click here.
Words by Liss Parkes
