Photo Credit: Tom Hoad
Irish rock legends Therapy? are currently touring the UK in what is the 30th Anniversary Tour of the Troublegum album and this gig at Edinburgh’s Liquid Room was the only Scottish date on the tour. With the crowd response tonight can we arguably say that Therapy? are the best rock band to come out of Northern Ireland? The last time they played in Scotland was at King Tuts’ Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow last December, a gig that Bring The Noise were lucky enough to cover.
The support is London-based deux furieuses (translates as two furious women), their set was certainly ferocious as the duo played a mixture of punk and alternative rock during the forty minutes, we missed the first couple of songs but we saw enough to be suitably impressed with their musical talents. The duo are Scot Ros Cairney (vocals/guitar) and Greek-Londoner Vas Antoniadou who announced that they would be supporting Therapy? for the remainder of the UK and European tour. To be honest we hadn’t come across deux furieuses before and had a good listen on the train on the way over to Edinburgh discovering that they have released three albums already, Tracks Of Wire (2016), My War Is Your War (2019) and most recent release in 2022 Songs From Planet Earth. The best of the set were Bring Down The Government and Can We Talk About This, the crowd were excellent encouraging them at every opportunity. 8/10
The Troublegum album was the second release from Therapy? after 1992 debut Nurse, we would also get to hear a few from that LP across the night. They sold over a million copies of Troublegum after being released in February 1994, a year that also saw The National Lottery become a new nationwide obsession and the opening of the Channel Tunnel. The excitement from the seven hundred or so that crammed into The Liquid Room reached fever pitch as Andy Cairns (vocals/guitar), Michael McKeegan (bass) and Neil Cooper (drums) took to the stage to a string version of Lunacy Booth before Stop It You’re Killing Me saw an explosion of energy around the room with the fans singing every word back to them. It has to be said that the crowd were well behaved tonight, no mosh pits but plenty of passion all around. Joy Division track Isolation was delightful to hear live again, they would go on to play every track from Troublegum in no particular order alongside a few of the classic hits from the same time period. Die Laughing was the standout from the set for us and had the place bouncing and was quickly followed by Lunacy Booth and Nowhere, the latter track was introduced with a section of Manic Street Preachers song Motorcycle Emptiness to the delight of everyone around us.
The six-track encore was packed with some of the band’s biggest numbers kicking off with Nausea and Meat Abstract allowing the crowd to expend any energy that they had left. Drummer Neil Cooper was given an opportunity to entertain the fans with a drum solo, Andy Cairns had earlier spoke about the first time Therapy? played in Edinburgh in 1990 supporting English rock band The Beyond at The Venue, a band that Cooper was drumming for at the time before joining the Irish lads in 2002 after the departure of Graham Hopkins. The twenty-two track set ended with two final songs from Troublegum in Knives and Screamager with Teethgrinder played in between these two tracks sending the crowd wild. The Therapy? tour continues in the UK with the last date being the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 16th November before moving on to Europe for seventeen more dates. Will we see these guys back in 2025 for the 30th anniversary of the Infernal Love album? If they do decide to tour again they will surely play bigger venues. 10/10
Written by: Alan Brown
