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Pure Love Tickets

It’s Valentine’s Day and it’s a sold out gig for Pure Love, marking their one year anniversary of their first ever live show. It seems they’ve come a long way in a year to establish themselves as a reputable band and recently bringing out their debut album Anthems.

Tonight’s gig brings along a lot of romance, where the room is filled with love struck hipster couples in London’s trendy Hoxton venue. You’ll also find an assortment of multicolored balloons adorning the ceiling to make even the scroogeiest of singletons smile a little inside.

Support act Turbogeist definitely set off the party atmosphere with their dirty punk rock sound, and my God it’s good to hear something as unique as this. The band is uncompromising in punk attitude and style that isn’t too dissimilar to a modern day Sex Pistols, just with better guitar solos. It’s not surprising then when you see certain members of the audience look around in dismay almost thinking out loud ‘why haven’t we listened to these guys before?’

It’s clear before Pure Love even arrive onstage that over a year they’ve built up a frenzy of fans already clearly devoted to their music. With the majority of the younger crowd tonight already admirably wearing merchandise.

Pure Love arrive onstage to be greeted by a warm cheer by loved ones, who’ve clearly chosen a good gig over an overpriced Valentine’s meal. It seems to be a trending theme with Pure Love that they’re all about playing good quality music, so they’re here tonight to prove their money’s worth and give the crowd a good time.

They open with ‘She’ which sets the tone nicely. Frank Carter takes control and works seamlessly with his fellow band members to get the crowd warmed up and welcome. ‘Beach of Diamonds’ and ‘Anthem’ gives Frank and guitarist Jim Carroll a chance to crowd surf into the middle of the room. It’s all well and nice them partying in the center of the room but for the folk around the edges who spend two songs watching the rest of the band on stage, it makes for a bit of a boring performance. Having said that there’s not much you can fault with the music itself, with Frank pouring out his heart singing the songs he obviously loves to sing.

When Carter returns to the stage the band launch balloons into the crowd with hidden tickets for free merchandise. Everybody likes a freebie so the fans go wild when the balloons are released to ‘Bury My Bones’. This is the track that everyone’s going wild to, crowd surfing left right and center and just having a damn right party.

A cover of ‘Teenage Kicks’ doesn’t go unwelcomed, where the upbeat cover keeps the crowd jigging about a bit. However it’s when the band play their own material that everyone’s really appreciative. When you prefer a relatively new band's material to the iconic hits of another more established act, that’s when you realise you’re watching something special.