New Found Glory: Camden Roundhouse
Posted by jamie on Feb 20, 2012
New Found Glory
Roundhouse, Camden
17th February, 2012
Jamie
Camden’s Roundhouse is a stunning venue. On this crystal clear North London evening, you can stand on the second floor, where the walls are full-length windows, and see all the way down Chalk Farm Road in to central London without spotting one cloud.
It’s a bit like one part of the blurred intro sequence to BBC1’s glossy detective drama Sherlock, at least until you look straight down on to the usual Friday carnage, tonight swelled by hordes of hyped-up pop-punkers squashed in to lines in between mesh fences. Larry from NASIN, of course, is doing the rounds.
Five guys have come dressed as hair-sprayed, LA metallers: you know, big, crimped blonde wigs, spray-on trousers, the whole Nick Horne look.
Inside, we’re up in an equally lofty little perch: it’s like Boris Pigeon for the night up here. In a round room, it’s sort of like everyone’s dead in front of Jordan Pundik, but we actually are right ahead of him, as New Found Glory enter, to a rapturous reception, and crunch straight in to the enormous opening riffs of All Down Hill From Here.
Of course it’s totally deserved, but every time I watch New Found Glory I’m amazed at the sheer adulation that they inspire: despite the fact that their melodic pop-punk has become spikier, more aggressive, a truer reflection of their hardcore roots: they’re just as sincere as they ever were, and, on top of those giant riffs, still bigger waves of almost reverent adulation roll back on to them.
It’s totally apt, then, when Chad announces:
“We are all losers, nerds, rejects in this crowd. We are one big family”
From here, the night seems to find another level: the atmosphere was already beyond incredible, but climbs another notch after that: Head on Collision, predictably is a fan favourite, and moves seamlessly, if somewhat surprisingly, in to the Ramones’ Blitzkreig Bop: their cover somehow manages to be both surprisingly faithful to the original, and at the same time quintessentially NFG: Jordan’s vocal, as ever, so typically his own, as nasal as Joey Ramone’s but in a completely different way, and the guitar parts played just fuzzily enough to make the song New Found Glory-sweet and still pack a killer punch.
Another speech, professing the band’s love for anyone who has (note: not bought*) their album Radiosurgery, introduces Anthem for the Unwanted.
It’s breathless stuff in here now: the band eagerly racing through a hit-packed set, and a word-perfect room greedily gobbling up every minute of it: Hold My Hand, Kiss Me and then Dressed 2 Kill, “for all the old-school New Found Glory fans”, become one in a giddy, ecstatic blur before Forget My Name, It’s Not Your Fault and Hit or Miss bring the set to a close. Up in the rafters, we’ve ridden through this on waves of warm emotion: I’m feeling fuzzy even before the band return for an all-too-brief encore: just Green Day’s Basket Case and My Friend’s Over You. Somehow, by now, the stage is full: Chad plays the last song with a blue-haired man on his shoulders. It’s somehow fitting: right now, just for a moment, we are, indeed, all one family. We leave exhausted, uplifted, back in to the freezing cold, cloudless night, still taking that unity with us, the inner warmth we’ve gained an extra protection against the late winter chill.
*They did seem to encourage illegal downloading. That’s not something we endorse, though.
