Who’d Have Thought That After All It’s Rock ‘n’ Roll?

Dear Mr Turner,

I apologise.

An existing preconception (‘mis’ also being an appropriate interchangeable prefix here) for me until tonight was that, as a cynic still trying hopelessly to perpetuate the anthems of the 1970’s-1980’s, all modern music spanning across the alternative-rock-pop-folk-indie mesh of genres represented some sort of beard-toting, acoustic-guitar playing metrosexuality just for the sake of metrosexuality.

And yes, in many respects, aesthetically Frank Turner does adopt some of these traits. And yes, indeed, his music may have that 21st century vibe about it – a rock that has maintained its masculine voice, but switched out oily denim, long hair and leather for crisp, white shirts and tidily fitting jeans. So it is, perhaps, no wonder that I arrived at the O2 Arena tonight with uncertain expectations.

Opening to the… atypical charm of Beans on Toast, the gig set about changing my prejudices with a jaunty, boozy sense of anarchy. The artist – then recorded by myself as the most charismatic in England – warned that this was not just another example of post-millenium cliché, but rather an event to be noticed.

After a confusing blur of music that I didn’t particularly understand, but was enthralled by nevertheless, the stage was reinvented by the rebel yell of Flogging Molly’s Drunken Lullabies. The anticipation grew. There was no way that Frank Turner could follow opening acts like this with some depressing song on an acoustic guitar that probably has a name, and a marginally controversial echo of 1960’s leftist hippy-views. What if – I thought to myself through the distorted perspective of overpriced lager – this Frank Turner guy isn’t the subculture-identifying, hemp-wearing victim of contemporary culture that I had decided he had to be?

The anti-corporatist, anti-establishment views that had been preached so far were exactly the sort of taboo opinions that tend to make gigs like these so much more… together. Clapping in synchronisation with audience participation more relevant now than I had ever experienced before, I felt myself as a part of a whole actually looking forward to the third and final section of the night as the uneducated conditioning somebody must have once drilled into me started to unravel itself.

By the time Turner himself reached the stage I was thoroughly excited. Both supporting acts did an amazing job of converting me from pessimistic critic to their biggest fan by about song two. As Frank, then, worked through both old and newer releases, whatever it was that had once made me sceptical of his genre(s) was overpowered by the sheer genius of the writing.

Semantically and thematically, in everything that I recognised from Four Simple Words to Recovery, and all of the ones that I didn’t know, but was keen to nod along to anyway, there’s a certain wit in the storytelling nature of the songs. A combination of the modernist aspects of catchy choruses and repeated lines that stick in your head, and the intellectual injection of relatable prose offers a fresh change from the trite, overdone scene that I naïvely thought this had the potential to be – based on word of mouth only, of course.

A dramatic finale, crowd-surfing and the odd moshing-related injury all took me back to a time where proper music was written for and played to loyal fans, and it occurred to me that although music may have evolved, that ‘gig feeling’ of unexplainable joy and being a bit deaf had lived on through all three of these brilliant acts, and it would be foolish to dismiss that for the sake of my own prejudices (which I do wholeheartedly revoke).

So yes, rock may now wear a crisp, white shirt. And yes, rock may have taken on tidily fitting jeans. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Not at all.

James Reynolds

@reynoldsauthor