Album Review: Bombay Bicycle Club – I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose, Live At Brixton

There’s a certain double edged resonance to Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman singing, ‘I want to go back to old times’, on The Hill, arguably the moment from their debut album I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose on which the quartet reached their introspective peak.

At one level it’s about the simple process of reconnecting with adolescent memories of experiences on Hampstead Heath, a public park adjacent to their school. But on another, it’s also a wistful calling back to something different.

Such a lot has happened since it was released in 2009. At this point, the various members were barely in the adult world, prompting sneers in certain quarters of the music press from those who saw them as little more than an indie novelty act.

Since then however, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that in the subsequent eleven years things – however you define them – have taken a turn for the worse, a slow-motion car crash which prompts a yearning to look back fondly at times of relative peace and sanity.

The quartet went on hiatus in 2016, but this live album (on which they stick to the now commonplace format of playing I Had The Blues… in full) cements their subsequent reformation, and also proves that with the advantage of hindsight they were a league above much of the landfill acts around them.

Produced by Jim Abbiss (Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not), the evidence soon mounts up; Always Like This, with its afro pop lightness of touch and call and response chorus (the whoa-oh-ohs belted out in this version by a massively up for it crowd), along with the jagged post-punk of Evening/Morning, were intricate without being twee, and bolstered with a certain undertow of determination.

Performing at a sold out Brixton Academy, the show also resurrects a bond which had been on slow flicker, and although it’s a stretch to talk about magnetism – between tunes patter is limited to expressing gratitude and reminding us the material was written whilst the quartet were still doing their GCSEs – wallflowers the crowd are not.

The band are sincere enough to show this reciprocity means something: the collective hollers which greet the riffing chop of Cancel On Me frame it powerfully, while the ebb of Ghost is equally worn on the shoulders of the recipients. Also, to everyone’s credit is the no frills presentation – there are no drum solos or stories about degenerate roadies – with the likes of Magnet and an especially urgent take on What If reeled off effortlessly, pause only found on the still understated Autumn.

The finale under these circumstances has no power to surprise, but The Giantess finds a tune prepared to break its own chains, building up to a crescendo from which I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose hid within itself, a mystic ending to an earthly good time.

It’s very true to say that not everything old needs to be revisited. And with gigs on pause around the world, the idea of a live album, especially one that offers such a narrow premise, could have had all the appeal of a kick in the teeth.

But in these days where the new normal just feels like one long disruptive wrestling match with bad luck, Bombay Bicycle Club earn both our empathy and affection, both from the then and the now.

Andy Peterson