Gig Review

Bowling For Soup
Manchester, Academy
15th April 2010
             
                            
Bowling For Soup       

               
Bowling For Soup are a band that need little introduction. They are a multi-million selling, Grammy Award nominated tour de force who have conquered the globe with their hook laden, summer tinged pop punk. With a career spanning fifteen years, a whopping ten albums under their belts and enough partying to last a lifetime, they are truly the champions of American pop punk.

Tonight sees them in a slightly different guise, they have ditched their regular full band show (and two of their members, guitarist Chris Burney and drummer Gary Wiseman) in favour of just two mics and two acoustic guitars. This is date nine of fourteen shows on the aptly named “An Acoustic Evening with Jaret & Erik of Bowling For Soup”. Tonight’s show has a very special feeling about it, and despite the absence of half of the band, it still feels like a party.

Frontman Jaret Reddick is accompanied on a lamp lit stage by Erik Chandler and they both prove that if their day job was to ever cease, they could easily dive into the world of stand-up. The not so subtle innuendos and penis jokes so evocative of a regular Bowling For Soup show are unveiled to the delight of the sold out audience. Though this proves to be anything but a regular Bowling For Soup show.

Reddick and Chandler rifle through a two and a half hour set comprising of the staple crowd pleasers (Almost, High School Never Ends and Girl All the Bad Guys Want), among new songs and several rarities that wouldn’t usually get played at your average Bowling For Soup gig. It is acoustically that their songs backtrack from the jaded and overplayed to the new and exciting, quintessential, Texan-harmonised classics.

Bowling For Soup are able to provide fun in abundance, they are one of the few bands that seem to have avoided the bravado or pretence many bands of their quota have acquired. From witnessing tonight’s performance it is easy to see why they are still around fifteen years since their inception, and it is quite easy to imagine them onstage in fifteen years to come. And I for one will be happy to be witness to that.

bowling For Soup 5/5

Review By Ben Connell

 Sorry And The Sinatras


Jaret Reddick
Erik Chandler

 Band Related Links
Bowling For Soup Myspace
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?