Lawson return with promise of another big year

MUSIC: “YOU’LL never get this close to Lawson again,” I said to my teenage daughter as we squeezed into Manchester’s popular haunt the Gorilla.

It was packed with around 300 feverishly excited girls, and I had been invited by the band’s record label, Polydor, to check out the start of Lawson’s “second coming”.

Well not really a second coming, as Manchester giants the Stone Roses once promised, but Lawson are soon to return to the limelight with a second album and they had chosen three slightly more intimate venues to test new material.

The talented four-piece — front-man Andy Brown, drummer Adam Pitts, lead guitarist Joel Peat and bassist Ryan Fletcher — rattled through a set lasting barely an hour, but they’re already used to the big audiences and the big shows and they knew what to play.

They kicked things off with three favoured tracks from their only other album — 2012’s “Chapman Square”, which featured a handful of top 10 singles — and the girls were screaming their approval.

By the end of the rather short set Lawson had belted out “When she was mine”, “Standing in the dark”, “Brokenhearted” and “Juliet”, and others, therefore keeping everyone deliriously happy.

The second album hasn’t even been christened yet, but they gave “Used to be Us” an airing, and to be honest, I wasn’t overly-fussed at a rather slow-going tune, quite far removed from some of their earlier fist-pumping, anthemic numbers from “Chapman Square”.

They played another two or three new tracks and they got considerably better. Lawson aren’t necessarily my cup of tea and I don’t think I’d pay top whack to go and see them again, but these lads can bang out a great, harmonic tune.

They’re going to be big again later this year.

Lawson’s new single “Roads” is out on May 10, but can be pre-ordered now. The band’s eagerly-anticipated second album follows soon after. See www.lawsonofficial.com.




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