LIVE REVIEW: Public Service Broadcasting, Rock City, Nottingham, 22/10/2024
Photo Credit: Alex Lake
Public Service Broadcasting are one of the great innovative bands of the 21st century. Hailing from South London, the group broke onto the scene with their unique debut, Inform – Educate – Entertain, an album that spanned historical events from Spitfires to climbing Mount Everest while combining elements of Kraftwerk to riffs straight out of the rock’n’roll hall of fame.
What makes this band so unique is their use of radio and TV audio samples instead of traditional singers. Although as the band has grown and adapted, they have stuck to their roots of audio vocal samples but combined this with guest vocalists such as the talent ERRA, who now performs with the band live alongside a brass section who occasionally make an appearance throughout the set.
Their recent record, The Last Flight, tells the story of Amy Earhart, an American aviation pioneer who disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Similar to their previous work such as the iconic The Race for Space, a tale of the space race between America and the Soviet Union and Every Valley, which chronicles the rise and destruction of the Welsh coalmining industry, their music is moving, educational and most of all, enjoyable.
In the live setting, these themes continue with a stage set-up similar to the interior of the style of cockpit Amelia Earhart would have grown all too used to the view of. The band’s stage places visuals in the areas of the cockpit instead of a view of the earth below, while the band spread across the stage in a way that made the visuals easy to see.
Opening with an announcement to not be on your phone all night and enjoy the show to a crowd of cheers from the large amount of Gen X in the crowd, the band strolled onto the stage and began playing tracks from the new LP. The songs, although new to the audience as the album only recently came out, came across well live with visuals of Amelia Earhart providing again, an educational experience about one of the world’s great aviators.
The setlist spanned every chapter of the band’s glowing career, with the traditional Theme From PSB being played to the crowd’s admiration while the band treated the crowd to Elfstedentocht part 2, a track not played since 2018 which “is about ice-skating”, according to frontman J Willgoose, Esq.
One thing that was clear throughout the concert was the crowd’s love for any material played from The Race for Space album, and with the 10-year anniversary of that album on the horizon in 2025, who knows what the band will have in store for fans but live, tracks from that album are immense.
Visually, the band put on a show. The way they match the audio samples with a variety of video production and lighting works extremely well with one highlight being the pitch-black section during The Other Side during the dramatic piece of the song where the spaceship loses signal with mission control on earth.
The band certainly saved the best until last with the stunning They Gave Me a Lamp providing a gentle ballad to warm into the ‘livelier’ finale of the set. The heavily Kraftwerk influenced People, Let’s Dance, had the crowd grooving while fan favourite Gagarin provided the party with the brass section of the band coming out to bring additional energy to the performance.
The traditional dancing astronauts come out to bust some moves during this track, which is the perfect jazzy dance track as the radio clips sing the praises of Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space. The finale, Everest, is a lovely and gentle way to finish the set with the soothing and catchy synth that floats throughout the song staying in your head well on the bus home.
9/10
Written by: Joe Loughran
