Bombay Bicycle Club

Bombay Bicycle Club were never going to have a bad day at the office on the last night of their Australian tour. The sold-out Metro crowd of fresh-faced and keen punters were here to cheer on the well-loved Londoners, and that’s exactly what they did. Even if you’d never heard of these guys, the sheer love-wave sweeping through the crowd would have carried you along. And, it turns out, rightfully son. 

Kicking off the night were Sydney locals Megastick Fanfare, and they put on a thickly textured, powerful performance. The band really wears its influences on its sleeves; if you can’t tell these guys love Animal Collective, time for a visit to the audiometrist.

The ‘BBC’ followed, entering the stage to raucous applause and busting straight into the standard opening-song-from-most-recent-album-opener, ‘How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep?’ With a hearty sing-along and rhythmic clapping ahoy, this was the first display of BBC’s apparent Midas touch on the crowd as everything that followed received the reception of an old classic.

On the subject of clapping – this was one clappy crowd. They clapped along for literally every song played. Fantastic that everyone was enjoying themselves, but it quickly became very apparent that no one at this gig (bar the band) had any rhythm whatsoever. Sydney, get your act together!

The band though, in fine form, rocketed through a set spanning all three albums, including a section from their acoustic record Flaws, in which, banjo intact, ‘Ivy & Gold’ got a spin including a drum that sent the already revved crowd to new levels of glee.

‘Evening/Morning’, their first big hit was decidedly epic, and an enthusiastic rendition of ‘Always Like This’ appeared to be the crowd favourite, almost everyone in the theatre singing along boisterously, causing singer Jack Steadman – who had a huge smile plastered across his face the entire show – to proclaim, “I’m glad we came here last.”

The group closed out by alternating a few slow melodics with loud, distorted rock star bombast that even saw a bit of a mosh pit form before sending themselves off with recent hit, ‘Shuffle’, from 2011’s A Different Kind of Fix.

It would be fair to say Bombay Bicycle Club had the won the crowd over before they even hit the stage. But those kind of expectations can be hard to meet. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case last night.