Seaway (w/ WSTR, Gospel Youth, Little Bribes) @ Rock City Basement (Nottingham, UK) on January 31, 2017 [Photos & Show Review]

Seaway headed the line-up of a four band feast in the depths of Rock City’s Basement. It was a good turn out for a small venue, with several band t-shirts adorned throughout the crowd. Nottingham-based Little Bribes opened up, followed by The Gospel Youth, who powered through their emotional set, trying to make a connection to the audience. This shouldn’t have been too difficult, as the fans were mere feet from the stage, but the room needed warming up. Much of The Gospel Youth’s set list was deeply personal material, with an overriding message of relief and gratitude at surviving hardship, singer Samuel Little eventually striking a chord with the crowd.

WSTR followed, full of energy and Sammy Clifford leading the band spinning and bouncing across the stage. The set list comprised of tracks from their debut record Red, Green or In Between, all of which follow a very similar pop-punk, ‘Blink-182’ style, and although the crowd was clambering for more, I would look forward to better variation in their writing in future.

Finally, highly anticipated Seaway were up. The Canadian five-piece created a surge forward in the small venue. They played a lot of tracks from their 2015 album Colour Blind, starting their set with “Slam,” “Best Mistake” and “Freak”. It’s been a year since they last toured in the UK and to the delight of the fans they played through their back-catalogue taking songs from Hoser and EP All in My Head. here’s a lot of buzz around Seaway, and a rapidly growing fan base, so I would hope on their next visit to Nottingham they will graduate to playing Rock City’s main hall, and pulling in a much larger audience.