Last month saw a mighty co-headline tour from Mayday Parade and The Wonder Years with both bands playing some of their biggest UK headline shows to date. The Wonder Years came in hot off the back of a European tour that started late January in Iceland seeing them right across mainland Europe visiting cities like Amsterdam where they hadn’t played in nearly 7 years and then ending in Madrid before going on to join Mayday Parade 3 days later in Glasgow. The bands then began to trickle their way down the country hitting up cities like Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol before ending on a massive show at London’s Troxy. We were lucky enough to get our hands on some tickets to review the Nottingham show, here’s how that went.
First up on this tour was Pronoun, Pronoun is officially a solo artist by the name of Alyse Vellturo coming from Brooklyn, NY. But it seems we were lucky enough to get a full band performance on this tour. Pronoun make a sort of soft synth-pop sound and have two EP’’s to date, with their latest single Stay being released a few weeks ago and their upcoming EP ‘I’ll show you stronger’ due to be released on May 24th.
Next up on the evenings 4 band billing were Movements, a band who are mixing up Emo and Post Hardcore in all the best ways. They’ve come along way since their formation in 2015, releasing an album along the way and an EP. Having them up before The Wonder Years went down well considering both bands similar fan bases, a lot of the people who were jumping and singing along to Movements were also the first people opening up mosh pits when The Wonder Years came on.
The Wonder Years came on to a crowd of eager fans who had been waiting all night to scream along to the lyrics of songs such as Local man ruins everything, Don’t let me cave in and Came out swinging, and the crowd didn’t hold back one bit. With a bit of positive reinforcement from the band running and jumping around the stage and on the barriers, the fans began crowd surfing and moshing, something I don’t think the Mayday Parade fans were all that into. The Wonder Years are touring off the back of their latest release, Sister Cities and began the set with the title track off the album and went on to heavily cover the new album throughout the set. The Wonder Years are back on UK soil in June for Download Festival where it might be the last time to catch them for a long time due to the lead singer Dan having a baby due later this year.
Technically speaking, this tour was a co-headline, which would usually imply bands switching up who headlines every night surely? But after a chat with Matt from The Wonder Years in the cold after their Amsterdam headliner earlier in the month he informed me that Mayday were indeed taking the headline spot for the whole tour, which got me pretty excited to see if they were indeed worthy of the headline spot.
Coming all the way from Tallahassee in Florida, Mayday Parade were no strangers to UK stages. Having headlined the massive ‘O2 Forum’ in Kentish town just over a year ago, Mayday were cleary ready to step it up with this tour. Starting off the show with the track Never Sure from their latest album Sunnyland the started to grab the attention of the crowd. It was only when they launched into Jersey that they captured the full might of the packed Rock City dancefloor.
They touched on Sunnyland again throughout the set but for them and their fans the clear focus was hits, playing the majority of their set off the back of their 2007 release ‘A Lesson in Romantics’. This sparked multiple sing alongs to classics like Jamie All Over that none of the crowd held back on. I think a big difference here between The Wonder Years and them is that TWY fans are a lot more physical in their support where’s Mayday fans take the emotional lead with heartfelt singalongs. In an unexpected twist their performance was also met with some quirky covers in the form of Somebody that i used to know by Gotye and a pop punk/emo mash-up consisting of New Found Glory, My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday.
Overall I think all the bands put on brilliant performances met by brilliant and enthusiastic crowds and continued to prove that Pop Punk and Emo aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.