More about: Sam Fender

Packing out Wembley Arena for a second night, Sam Fender is a success story. It makes me want to unleash my north east accent full force, and finally buy a hometown football jersey. I’ve spent all week telling anyone and everyone about my excitement to see the local lad on the big stage, with the last time I saw him being in a field in my childhood park. It feels like a triumph for everyone back home, a big dose of hope that someone can come from there and end up here. But on the Metropolitan line, pouring out into Wembley station, it just feels like a football match.

It's hard to resist starting the review there, with groups of lads chanting its coming home about 2 years too late and heckling women dressed in their best regency get up heading to the Bridgerton Ball next door. In the queue outside, groups are turned away before they get in, stumbling like 15-year-olds outside their first ever show. And inside its just as bad, with Sam stopping the crowd to call out crushes, talking overpowering sad album cuts, and whole groups stood with their back to the back for almost the entire show. As an artist, Sam and his band perform their best, rehearsed to perfection and clearly in awe of their growth. And sure, the crowd dotes on them, with screams piercing through moments of silence to tell Sam how sexy he is, but do they respect him?

Talking to photographer Bethan, we reminisce on Sam’s position up north. The way he used to hush a crowd with Dead Boys as everyone thought of the friends, brothers, Dads lost. The way the slang in his lyrics rolled off the crowd’s tongue, sang along with easy and not a touch of mockery, knowing its embedded in something serious. How the stories in the songs are ours, and therefore serious and real and to be listened to as he sings about cyclical poverty, male suicide, drug deaths and desolate towns. Sure, we dance, losing all composure during ‘The Borders’ and ‘Will We Talk’, but our conclusion is that I guess we wish people would listen a little deeper.

A room that feels like a carbon copy of the crowd you’d find at Blossoms or Courteeners, there’s bucket hats flying everywhere. But as Sam croons through tracks like ‘Spit Of You’ and ‘The Dying Light’ – Sam isn’t offering what they’re there to get. He doesn’t give what Oasis does. Even in his biggest tracks, this is more Dylan than Gallagher, these are protest songs through and through as he says something big and important.

During the chorus of ‘Spit Of You’ as the big screen flip between close-ups of the bands faces and old family photos, I write a note on my phone; ‘sad northern songs for sad northern people with sad northern Dads’, thinking of my own. The catchiest sombre song of the last however long, I could dive into a big analysis of why it is that working class men with guitar seem able to say anything but always end up with this brand of laddy crowd. When you listen closely, it’s not easy music. ‘Play God’ with its rumbling, teasing verses sounds more like a The Cure sound like traditional indie, and even his biggest hits are more Americana-Springsteen inspired rock than festival tunes. And would you throw a pint during ‘The Lovecats’? or ‘Dancing In The Dark’?

Smiling at each other and playing as good on this huge stage as they have on any and all stages for years now – Sam and the band feel separated from their questionable crowd, united only in joy. Sam pulls back to hysterically laugh as TikTok national treasure Francis Bourgeois scoots across the stage, and they all look close to happy-tears as the band introductions come along with the kind of one-liner anecdotes only the best of friends could share. Beside me, Bethan seems close to tears too as we clap our hands raw for boys that grew up down the road, boys that she sees in the pub every Christmas, boys that have seen as the shit the government serves the north east and are trying to say something big about it. No clapping and screaming can be loud enough.

Ours getting lost in the thunder of 12500 pairs of hands, it’s no doubt that Sam is incredible. His voice is pure and soft while still reaching mad levels of power. The instrumentation is unexpected as it weaves genres and influences, and the addition of saxophones and trumpets makes it vibrant. He deserves this and more, he deserves everything that is no doubt coming for him still. But he also deserves more than this, to be listened to deeply and understood, to be respected as a lyricist without being talked over, to be respected as the protest singer he consistently is, to be respected as a spokesman for something bigger than bucket hats and having a piss up.

See photos of the night by Bethan McConnell below:

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More about: Sam Fender