By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Friday 13 December 2024, next date 14 March 2025

Setlist: Tits And Attitude; Motorcade; Broken; If You Can’t Live Without Me Then Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?; Running Out Of Heartbeats; Numb Numb Numb; Taking On The World; Walk/Don’t Walk; It’s A Girl Thing; Strumpet; Sparkle; #NoFilter; Penthouse In The Basement; Bubblewrap; You Can’t Uneat The Apple; Naked; 12 Reasons Why I Love Her

It’s 12 days to Christmas and 30 years since we 1st saw My Life Story support Cud at Exeter’s Lemon Grove, falling head over heels for their orchestral pop and suited and booted savoir-faire.

• Read on for the very many more than 12 reasons why we love them

We then saw Jake Shillingford and co at every venue we could in London, Exeter, Portsmouth and Brighton especially around the release of the joyous breakthrough hit 12 Reasons Why I Love Her even interviewing the frontman after a Fleece and Firkin gig in Bristol in 1995 when it appeared the world was about to be served on a silver platter to the band.

But things change and people change and tonight’s our 1st gig of theirs for a decade since they used to play similarly timed festive shows to this 1 regularly at 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire which begs the question should you ever try to recapture your youth in a rush of nostalgia?

And the answer is, always, that of course you should.

If there was ever any doubt we stand close to the barrier and 2nd song Motorcade brings back the ice cream head joy of chanting ‘ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba’ in unison with a similarly besotted crowd to a song that could have soundtracked a 60s heist movie.

This isn’t the incarnation of the band that we fell in love with because gone are the raggle taggle bunch of misfits and orchestra members that made live gigs such a chaotic flurry of plucked strings and the discarded numbers 1 to 12 of their beloved chant-along classic 12 Reasons hit but a different kind of magic still remains.

Much of the set is interspersed with more recent songs but the 1s we predominantly want to hear are from the Mornington Crescent and The Golden Mile albums which soundtracked our early to mid-20s.

We weren’t expecting Penthouse In The Basement from the former which was an absolute delight and the singles from 2000’s Joined Up Talking album also sit well here.

Later in the gig we move further back in the crowd as if to get perspective on the 30 years that have passed since we 1st saw the band (Neil pictured below in 90s My Life Story garb) and whether we thought we’d still be going to the gigs they were playing after such a gap?

Of course we were living so much more in the moment then that it’s a thought that would never have occured but what a great gift at any time of year this band continue to be to so many lifelong fans like us.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy My Life Story Tickets
• Have you seen a show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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