While we’re all buzzing around the big smoke with Music Week and MTV rolling into town, there’s still life outside the city limits, and the 1-2 combination of LaFaro and Fighting With Wire is just too tempting to pass up. So leaving behind rumours of celeb-spotting, it’s up the road we go, away from possible Biebers, Gagas and Hasslehoffs.

Now it has to be said that this is a slightly unusual situation, with Fighting With Wire opening for their good friends LaFaro. Unusual in that, bar an occasion as special guests for the launch of LaFaro’s debut album last year, it has generally been Fighting With Wire topping the bill. Unsurprisingly, FWW front-man (and current LaFaro bassist) Cahir doesn’t let this slip, self-deprecatingly saying they’re only there to warm up the crowd. This is only after a sharp, seamless, breathless 4 song run-through including ‘Into The Ground’ and ‘Long Distance’, belying their recent quiet period and lack of practice.

There’s no interaction with the crowd, but these aren’t perfunctory renditions as they let off steam and blow out cobwebs, extending and playing with the older material. It’s not all about the old though, as some of the new songs from the long-awaited second album sneak in, ‘Gonna Steal Your Crown’ and ‘I Won’t Let You Down’, the latter “a love song” and all about mistakes and sorrow, and this evening dedicated to “the headers at the front”, and ‘Didn’t Want To’ is pure Foo Fighters style stadium rock-pop. Finishing with ‘Strength In Numbers’ and ‘Cut The Transmission’, this relaxed and calmer than usual set is a reminder that they’re still about and not willing to go quietly into the night.

Having gathered ourselves together from that first battering, round two of the riffs is an even more brutal onslaught with crazed punters, mosh pits and (probably) ear damage for all.

‘Leningrad’ is a suitable opener, warning of the carnage to come, seemingly heavier than ever with Johnny’s sneer more contemptuous, and it’s only the introduction of ‘The Ballad of Burnt Dave’ a few songs in that provides a pause for breath. The set is split between the first and second albums, but even the older material is imbued with more aggression and spite than normal, as though it’s been infected by the second album’s faster, sleazier, dirtier ways. This culminates in ‘Sucking Diesel’ causing Johnny to snap his strings, while ‘Mr Heskey’ is just brutal as they play with it, indulging their creative urges with more jamming than the recorded version.

‘Tuppenny Nudger’ is a bringer of madness as always, while closing numbers ‘Easy Meat’ and ‘Chopper’ prompt mosh-pits to break out. As fun as this is, and indeed ‘Easy Meat’ is destined to take its place in the category of songs labelled ‘causes crowds to go mental’, the stand-outs of the set are ‘Off The Chart’, a seemingly simple but insistent riff and catchy chorus about “little Susie”, and the slower ‘Settle Petal’. The latter is described as a “stadium anthem…if we ever play them”, and is well worthy of stadiums, showing that are able to grow away from just riffs. But as long they remember those riffs.

William Johnston

Thanks to William and ATL. The origional post can be found on ATL’s website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/acrosstheline/2011/11/lafaro_fighting_with_wire_cell.html