LIVE REVIEW: Young The Giant, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Electric Brixton, London, 05/10/2023
Photo Credit: Jack Delve
This may only be one of a handful of times that Los Angeles based Young The Giant has come across the pond to showcase their music to the European audience but that didn’t stop the American Bollywood tour from being anything but highly anticipated. After releasing the sixteen-song album in four different ‘acts’ over as many months last year, fans of the band have been eagerly awaiting seeing the new era of the band in person. We went down to their London concert at the Electric Brixton to see how they have developed in their time away from touring Europe.
Just one man and his acoustic guitar, we could tell Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. was enjoying his time on the stage right from the start. He utilised the capacity of the venue to teach the chorus of one of his first songs to the crowd so they could sing along with him, something that they seemed very willing to do. He shared his appreciation of being invited onto the American Bollywood tour as he shares heritage with the headliner’s frontman. Although Young the Giant fans may have been expecting a more grandiose act with the name ‘Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly’, he offered a very calm and well-chosen warm up to the evening although one that wouldn’t be all too memorable unfortunately. 7/10
Appropriately starting their headline set off with the first two tracks from their 2022 release American Bollywood and Wake up, the LA indie rockers, Young The Giant graced the stage with some of the most enthusiastic and heartfelt playing we have seen. Perhaps being part of the venue’s acoustics or the way, the band plays their songs live, the whole night has a distorted and much more heavy tone compared to the studio recorded tracks. This was most obvious on the intro to Nothing’s Over, which already has its distorted aspects but felt as if it was dialled up a bit too much as we couldn’t hear individual parts too well.
Fans of any of their studio releases were catered to as the band didn’t neglect any of their five records, touching on each for at least a couple of songs. The band arguably made a smart decision spacing their biggest songs throughout the whole set and not lumping them all up at the end. Cough Syrup, the track that many would have discovered the band with, was placed fourth in the set, showing the band that the entire audience was ready to party from early on. Meanwhile, Dollar $tore and Dancing in the Rain, from the third act of their recent record seemed to be new fan favourites as we could tell the audience have been waiting a very long time to hear them live with the amount they were singing along.
Frontman Sameer Ghadia apologised for not coming back to the UK and Europe since 2018, which was in support of that year’s release Mirror Master. One of the bands’ biggest regrets is not coming to the UK more often as last time they came to London they played at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. It is a pleasure to see them in a bigger venue reflecting their growth in the UK, in part due to Mind Over Matter being a widely used song on TikTok for a time.
With a massive four song encore, the band proceeded to play Firelight, a song that was seemingly out of place if you had only looked at the setlist but felt right after Ghadia’s monologue after coming back out on stage. The main lights dimmed and the band was lit up purely by phone torches as requested by the frontman, the security guards even commented that it looked beautiful in the venue. The band’s memorable stop in London for this tour was proof that the whole world, not just North America, wants to hear their music in a live setting much more often. We can’t wait to see them when they next cross the pond, we just hope it isn’t another half decade away. 9/10
Review and photos: Jack Delve
