Call Upon The Author

Irish four-piece The Cast Of Cheers played an amazing set supporting Blood Red Shoes at The Cockpit in Leeds. This was my first time seeing them live and I was very impressed. They came on stage in a quiet and unassuming manner, but once they started to play it was a confident and high energy set.
Their first number started off slowly but then erupted instantly grabbing the audience’s interest. During this track my attention was drawn to John the bass player dancing about in the background. When I met them pre-gig they were very modest, friendly lads. On-stage they seemed more confident and their passion for live performance was evident.
A few songs into the set they gave an excellent performance of ‘Family’ which got a great reception from the crowd. During this track guitarist Neil displayed talented guitar playing whilst regularly switching to playing keyboard.
When they played ‘Animals’ it clarified for me just how good they are as a live act. The performance was excellent and the crowd really enjoyed it. During the whole gig, but in ‘Animals’ in particular, Kevin’s drumming was of the highest quality and the beats in ‘Animals’ were piercing. Conor’s vocal performance was endearing and seemed to add a rhythm to the rest of the music. I was pleased to see that his voice held up really well despite him clearly being quite ill.
Their entire set was structured perfectly to build towards a thrilling conclusion. They played ‘Goose’ near to the end and it seemed heavier live with some good use of effects. The final couple of songs had excellent rock ’n’ roll endings and rounded off a good gig perfectly.
While The Cast Of Cheers were the support act, their set was of the kind of quality you would expect from a headline act at venues with the reputation The Cockpit has.