The Night Flight Orchestra - London Review

Following an excellent night in Islington with H.E.A.T the previous night - this past Saturday I continued my weekend of live melodic rock with a sold out show by The Night Flight Orchestra at The Garage - also in Islington. It was a rare treat to spend two nights in the same Travelodge. It meant that I had a bit of a lie in after the late night of H.E.A.T - and then spent a rather lazy late morning/early afternoon doing a trawl of the Islington record and charity shops for LPs and CDs. There are better parts of London for such, but as I was close by and it had been a while since I had done the rounds there it seemed like a good idea - and I came away with a couple of LPs and a handful of CDs (including a nice looking copy of the 1983 debut album from Fastway for £4.00 - likely the weekend's bargain). Following lunch at Franco Manca, I headed back to the hotel to finish off my H.E.A.T write-up and watch the football results roll in - so it was not long before I was ready to go back to Islington for the second show of the long weekend. I first got into The Night Flight Orchestra in 2019 - but they become a real favourite during the course of the pandemic. It helped that they released albums in both 2020 and 2021, so they naturally became part of the soundtrack of those years - but I also went back and picked up the back catalogue. I am not sure why it took me so long to give the band a listen, though. I have been a Soilwork fan for many years at this point, and I have also been an AOR fan for a similar period of time. As such, a band which combines the two should really have been on my radar earlier - but I got there in the end. I am not sure what it was that finally made me give the band a listen - but whatever it was I have not looked back. I have not had a chance to listen to their newly-released latest album Give Us the Moon yet, besides the singles, so I am looking forward to digging into it and reviewing it soon - but otherwise I am fully versed in the band's catalogue. Fittingly, too, given their heavy presence as part of my pandemic listening, I saw the band live for the first time at the 2022 iteration of Bloodstock Open Air. As the headliners of the Second Stage on the festival's final night, they were actually the last band of the weekend I saw. Their upbeat and fun music was certainly an antidote to what had generally been a heavy weekend in terms of music, and a very hot one in terms of weather, so their set was one of the festival's best overall in my opinion. Since seeing the band at Bloodstock, then, I had been waiting for them to announce their next headline tour - and the news of such dropped last year alongside the news that their seventh album, Give Us the Moon, would come out around the same time. Only one UK show was included, which was not a surprise, and it was at The Garage in Islington - a venue I had only been to once before when I saw Cats in Space there back in 2021. Given that the venue operates as a night club as well as a venue, those who bought tickets were told that the doors would open at 6pm - but it turned out to be 6:30pm which was frustrating as standing in the cold for an extra half an hour was not much fun. The doors eventually opened at around 6:45pm, too, following a delay - and it was good to get in out of the cold.

Given the 10pm curfew, there was only time for one support act - but, in truth, I wish that there had not been one. I have grown to be fairly open-minded over the years, and can generally find redeeming qualities in most bands - even if to make lacklustre support acts feel a bit more interesting. I have to say, though, that, for me anyway, there was absolutely nothing redeeming about Tragedy's set. I had heard of Tragedy before, a band who play metal covers of disco and pop songs, but I had not heard any of their interpretations. A couple of minutes into their set on Saturday, though, I just wanted it to end. I have seen some bad support acts in my time, and I doubt that Tragedy are actually the very worst - but they are certainly up there. One thing I have realised that I do not really like in my music is comedy - especially childish comedy. I went off Steel Panther pretty quickly after the novelty wore off and I get more tired of bands like Alestorm by the day - but Tragedy was a new level of childish humour. Steel Panther are all top-class musicians, too, but I could not say the same about Tragedy. They were competent musically, but I felt that vocally they left a lot to be desired. If a band is going to cover Bee Gees songs, then they need to be able to harmonise well - but most of Tragedy' harmonies sounded messy and screechy. The overall arrangements were pretty pedestrian, too. There was nothing interesting done to the songs to make them sound more metallic - they were essentially just sped up somewhat with more guitar than would be typical. Throw in a Bez-like figure, who only seemed to be there to jump around and play with silly props - and the whole thing really stuck in the throat. I spent the whole set just wanting it to be over - with each song sounding as bad as the last. I cannot remember all of the songs which were butchered, but we got Tragedy (naturally), It's Raining Men, and the real nadir of How Deep Is Your Love (if any song needs tight harmonies then it is How Deep Is Your Love) and, sadly, many more. What annoys me about this band opening for a good chunk of The Night Flight Orchestra's tour, too, is that they are depriving a 'real' band of a good opportunity. There are lots of newer, younger AOR/melodic rock bands out there who would have likely loved to jump on this tour - but instead a glorified meme was chosen, which says a lot about certain elements of the modern music industry.

By the time that The Night Flight Orchestra hit the stage at around 8:30pm, The Garage was packed. In truth, the band should have played a larger venue - and the overly cramped feeling of the venue did have something of an impact on my enjoyment of the show. The band were still great, and put on a masterful set despite being cramped on the stage - but it is clear that they have outgrown somewhere like The Garage. Why people continually try to push back and forth into non-existent space I will never know - but I tried to put the conditions to the back of my mind and just enjoy the show. For the most part, this was easy. Despite not having heard the new album, and five songs from it were played, the 17-song setlist was a great cross-section of the band's catalogue - and it was a new track, Stratus, which opened things up. It was one of the more majestic of the newer cuts played, and it worked well to kick things off - with frontman Björn Strid making a big entrance in his cloak and beret as the song got underway. This latest album is the band's first without the late David Andersson - and their first with Strid's Soilwork bandmate Rasmus Ehrnborn (guitar/vocals) stepping into his shoes. Andersson rarely toured with the band, so not much has changed on that front - but it was no doubt an emotional time for the band as their new era kicked off. Plenty of Andersson's songs were featured during the night, though, with the oldie California Morning being an early, riffy, highlight - before a couple of Strid's pop anthems in the form of Shooting Velvet and Divinyls saw plenty of singing from the capacity crowd. The former, another new cut, came across particularly well - whilst the sparkling playing of John Lönnmyr (keyboards) carried the latter. It was great to actually see Sharlee D'Angelo (bass guitar) touring with the band, too. Often he is too busy with Arch Enemy commitments to play live with The Night Flight Orchestra - but this tour has the band's full compliment present, and D'Angelo showed a different side to his playing with lots of funky grooves. Strid spoke to the crowd quite a bit, and teased the possibility of a proper UK tour in the future, but generally the band let the music do the talking. The Toto-esque Domino was another highlight - whilst another new cut in the form of Cosmic Tide took the band down a more psychedelic and even progressive path, with plenty of guitar interplay between Ehrnborn and Sebastian Forslund (guitar/percussion/vocals). Things later slowed down via another new track, the ballad Paloma, but this was only a brief moment of respite before the harder rocking older single Satellite and the big AOR grooves of Can't Be That Bad. A surprise late inclusion in the set was the lengthy Transatlantic Blues - a more progressive piece from the band's first album which differed from the soaring melodies found elsewhere. It allowed the band room to stretch out, with Ehrnborn, Forslund, and Lönnmyr all getting spotlight moments - before the main set came to an end with the soaring Burn for Me. A brief step off the stage saw the crowd baying for more - and a three-song encore followed which took the band past the curfew. No-one seemed to mind, though, with the shout-along anthem White Jeans seeing the two backing singers giving it their all - whilst one last new track in the form of Way to Spend the Night was another great representation of the band's easy-going sound. It was left to their anthem West Ruth Ave to bring what was a great set to a close - with many in the crowd partaking in a large conga line around the venue, which was impressive given how packed the place was. The setlist was:

Final Call (Intro)

Stratus

California Morning

Shooting Velvet

Divinyls

Domino

Gemini

Cosmic Tide

This Boy's Last Summer

Paloma

Satellite

Transmissions

Can't Be That Bad

Transatlantic Blues

Burn for Me

-

White Jeans

Way to Spend the Night

West Ruth Ave

Despite feeling that the venue was too full, which meant for an uncomfortable experience at times (especially as one person near me had an enormous bag which kept bashing into me), The Night Flight Orchestra were excellent. Their set was packed with melodic rock anthems, many of which are as good as the classics from the 1980s, and I hope that Strid's talk of a proper UK tour does happen at some point - as it would be great to see the band play elsewhere other than London. The less said about the support the better, but the evening was another great night out - and the middle of what turned out to be a fantastic long weekend of live music.