Frank Turner – The Junction, Cambridge 19/01/2009

-Photographs by Simon Pamment

He’s made it at last. The Autumnal tour that took in as many towns and cities as Frank Turner could possibly squeeze in (via a quick pause as Turner recovered from illness) has finally arrived at its closing night. A very busy Junction bore witness to a gig which saw both the crowd and the acts ignore the cold weather outside, and the fact it was a Monday, to create a carnival atmosphere, and partied like it was the end of term.

To get things started, albeit in a more laid back manner, was Emily Barker. As the opening songs drifted around the venue, one of them felt rather familiar. It turned out that this Aussie songstress provided the theme song for the recent Kenneth Branangh TV series Wallander. Her sparse arrangements, provided by just a guitar and accordion, seem to float around, loosely tethered to Barker’s articulate and literary vocals. Songs that were influenced by books, films and her home country warmed the crowd and dimmed the usual chitter-chatter for an early act.

Things got a bit more angry when Chris TT turned up. Shorn of his band, his Bragg-esque political ranting seemed to wake the crowd up and get the juices flowing. Whilst some of the lyrics were cringe-worthy and a bit “sixth-form politics” for my liking (I prefer my political songwriters to be a touch cleverer in their execution), there was plenty to admire. Chris’ tongue was placed firmly in his cheek for some of the set as well. His song about being born with seven hearts that would explode and kill him if he fell in love, was touching, carefree and a rare glimpse of a dangerous wit. But the obvious danger of his more political leanings became apparent during his discussion of the recent military action in Gaza. Heckling from the crowd by one person who mentioned it wasn’t a war, turned the atmosphere quickly dark as Chris tried to regain a moments lost composure.

So everyone was ready for Frank Turner. It was going to be an interesting one for me, as this was the first time I’d seen him with a band since I saw Million Dead a number of years ago. It’s odd seeing him pull off some of the same moves with his more folk-rock orientated sound, but this guy certainly knows how to work a live crowd. The set-list was perfectly judged – a couple of old songs to start off, a sprinkling of new songs in the middle before ramping it up to the anthemic and singalong crowd pleasers at the end.

As I mentioned previously, there was a definite end of term feel to the night. It was the new keyboardists birthday, so we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him whilst he got some cake, and the encore featured Emily Barker and Chris TT for a knees up / hoe-down with an encouragement to do some line dancing…

This party atmosphere nicely drowned out the slightly turgid opening of the set, where it felt like Turner was still working out how to use a band to back his songs. There were elements of Springsteen at his most sluggish and recent hopefuls Gaslight Anthem in Turner’s punch-the-air wall of music that suffered from being too dense in the mix. But as the sound slowly became easier on the ears and less awkward to her, Turner’s songs shone through to a rapturous crowd that belied the fact that it was a cold, dark, Monday night in Cambridge.

More photographs here.