Newcastle upon Tyne
Monday 23rd February
More information from The Script’s official website
Rocking a packed-out arena is never an easy feat but The Script took this in their stride. They clearly have experience with sold-out shows.
Cordoning off the left-hand side of the standing zone, Danny O’Donoghue, Mark Sheehan and Glen Power bounded through the crowd to reach the stage, meaning that I – and many others – were mere feet from the band. They began by playing ‘Paint The Town Green’ from their fourth album and if you weren’t certain of the group’s heritage before this track, you would be afterwards. As Danny told the crowd numerous times, they are the Script and they are from Dublin, Ireland. And ‘Paint The Town Green’ is about as Irish as you can get.
In a setlist comprising of old and new, it was the older tracks which roused the greatest reactions. The general consensus amongst fans and critics seems to be that the Script’s music all sounds the same, which, admittedly, is very much the case. There is no great shift in sound between their self-titled debut and their fourth album, No Sound Without Silence, which makes listening to 20 tracks quite hard-going. So whilst there were a handful of good tracks from their latest album, it was the older ones which everybody welcomed most.
The group played a stripped down version of ‘We Cry’ in which they, like usual, got the crowd to join in the chanting (they played a similar trick with tracks ‘Nothing’ and ‘Breakeven’). In parts, the crowd drowned out the group: such is the power of their fan base. Lead singer Danny worked the crowd into a frenzy, encouraging them to sing, jump and dance.
Midway through the setlist, the group vanished from the stage and reappeared in a central plinth amidst a gigantic circular projection screen. From here, they played one of their greatest tracks to date, ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’. This was a slowed-down version and one which the crowd took over the reins of midway through (half of the time Danny didn’t even need to sing). Such was the case when Danny ventured into the right-hand seating area with a selfie-stick and encouraged the crowd to sing along – projecting this onto a giant screen above the audience.
As Danny said, The Script want to keep making things fresh for those fans who have seen them numerous times. The setlist was overlong but the encore, finishing in ‘Hall of Fame’, reminded fans that the band have some brilliant tracks under their belt. Even if they do all sound the same.
(Originally posted on Cuckoo Review on March 3rd 2015. Original link: http://review.cuckoowriters.com/review-the-script-metro-radio-arena/(
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