Those in attendance at The Deaf Institute bore witness to an impressive exercise in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
For 45 minutes, The View’s first show outside their native Scotland in six years had all the ingredients for a triumph; an ardent sell-out crowd that had travelled from far and wide, a setlist that leaned heavily on fan favourites and the kind of noisy, away-end atmosphere that the Dundonians have typically thrived off.
Then, inexplicably, the show was over after a huge bust-up on stage.
Publicly, at least, there was no indication of rancour in the ranks when The View quietly exited stage left back in 2017. There was talk of wanting to try other things, of Kyle Falconer pursuing a solo career, but never in a way that suggested intra-band relations had broken down. They reconvened last December with a new drummer Jay Sharrock - son of former Oasis, Beady Eye and current High Flying Birds sticksman Chris - but, otherwise, as the same line-up that’d founded the group as teenagers in 2005, with Falconer flanked by Pete Reilly on guitar and Kieran Webster on bass.
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A handful of comeback shows in Scotland just before Christmas went off without a hitch, and this Deaf Institute show - their most intimate in Manchester since they last played it in 2010 - was one of a pair of English dates ahead of a bigger, longer tour in November.
Their first album in eight years, Exorcism of Youth, is set for release in August. The title now carries with it some irony. When they went to the top of the album charts with their debut record, Hats Off to the Buskers, in 2007, their youth was a key part of their appeal; they were boisterous upstarts, and while their scruffy brand of anthemic indie rock was hardly a reinvention of the wheel, they were endearingly genuine.
That era of British alternative music is now often uncharitably dubbed ‘landfill indie’ on account of the ostensibly generic nature of many of the bands of the time, but The View always had a little bit more personality to them than that. They were charmingly themselves among a sea of posers, wide-eyed childhood friends from Dundee who looked as if they couldn’t quite believe they were living the dream.
The dozen or so songs that we did get last night evoked that, too. There is still a youthful effervescence to tales of teenage debauchery like ‘Wasted Little DJs’, to the freewheeling ‘Comin’ Down’, and to ‘Grace’, which has one of those guitar lines that sounds as if it was written specifically for festival crowds to chant it back.
For the band, still only in their 30s, to want to exorcise their youth seems to some extent counterintuitive, because it was always what drove their best songs. Falconer, though, ostensibly had.
More recently, he seemed to have mellowed, which is perhaps what the title of the new record was referring to. His Instagram account paints a picture of a doting father-of-two who runs marathon distances in his downtime.
Ten songs in, he swapped instruments and stage position with Webster, allowing the bassist to stand front and centre and play guitar as he sang on ‘Gran’s for Tea’ and ‘Realisation’. This has long been standard practice at The View’s shows, as has Webster taking lead vocals on the next song, ‘Skag Trendy’. At the end of that track, he appeared to playfully nudge Falconer’s mic stand - before the drama unfolded.
A handful of audience members left immediately. Falconer did return to the stage for a rendition of ‘Face for the Radio’, before being quickly swept out of the music hall’s public exit by a private security guard. The house lights went on soon after.
Tonight’s show in London is cancelled; the future of The View beyond it is uncertain. Webster, who turned 37 yesterday, has surely had better birthdays. It’s a shame for the rest of the band and for the fans - especially the ones who came from afar last night.
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