The Courteeners returned home to play what is becoming an annual Christmas gig in Manchester on Friday 7th December, with this gig the opener to a full UK tour in February/March 2013 in support of new album ‘Anna’.
With support coming from local band Findlay and indie rockers The View, the place was already bouncing before the Courteeners hit the stage. The View played a quick fire 9 song set full of their classics such as ‘Same Jeans’, ‘Shock Horror’ and ‘Superstar Tradesman’ and certainly warmed the crowd up for the incredible scenes that would follow.
Liam Fray and his band entered the stage to a hero’s reception and opened with ‘The Opener’ before going straight into ‘St Jude’ classics ‘Cavorting’ and ‘Kings of the New Road’ which took the roof off the Manchester Arena and had all 19,000 fans bouncing around.
The Courteeners took this gig as a chance to play some new songs off their forthcoming third studio album ‘Anna’ by playing 4 new songs including new single ‘Lose Control’. The new songs have a real ‘St Jude’ feel about them and it certainly seems like the band are back to their best after an average second album compared to how good their first album was.
The double gold album that is ‘St Jude’ was almost played to its entirety with the classics ‘Bide your Time’, ‘Acrylic’ and ‘If it wasn’t for Me’ sending the adoring crowd wild in mosh pits and massive sing alongs. The Courteeners finished the main part of the set with ‘Sycophant’ before Liam Fray set off on a walk through the crowd and onto a small stage in the middle of the standing crowd to play a mini solo set.
Upon getting to the mini stage, Liam took a minute to look around the arena and take the feeling in as the crowd responded by chanting his name back at him. Liam opened his mini set with with ‘Yesterday, Today and probably Tomorrow’ before playing ‘How Come’ and ‘The rest of the world has gone Home’.
Back to the main stage, they closed the show with a 5 song encore which finished with their biggest songs ‘Not Nineteen Forever’ which brought out flares in the crowd before ending with ‘What Took You so Long?’