By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? ****

WHEN? Saturday 4 October 2025, tour runs through 26 March 2026

Setlist: London, Can You Wait?; Be My Light, Be My Guide; We Could Be Kings; Your Love, It Lies; Where Are They Now?; Truth, Rest Your Head; Long Sleeves For The Summer; Stop; Sleep Well Tonight; Rising For Sunset; Save Me, I’m Yours; O Lover; Speak To Me Someone; A Car That Sped; Walking In The Shallows; The British Disease; Haunted By You; Olympian; For The Dead; You’ll Never Walk Again; Sick, Sober and Sorry; Fighting Fit; I Can’t Help Myself; Somewhere In The World; Who Said This Was The End?

Does absence make the heart grow fonder?

• Read on for reasons including how to see Gene on tour around the UK next year

It’s been quite the week for Gene who last played a gig in 2004 and this week performed warm-up shows in Leeds and Sheffield before a sold-out concert at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith.

It’s unclear whether the resurgence in Britpop popularity behind this summer’s successful Oasis reunion sparked the release of fine new albums by Pulp, The Divine Comedy and Saint Etienne and this reunion 1st London gig in 21 years by Gene but if it is we are truly thankful.

The Eventim Apollo’s standing capacity is 5,300 and it’s amazing to think that a band who had been away for so long, had released 4 studio albums in the decade between 1994 and 2004, and whose biggest hit was the reissue of debut single For The Dead which made number 14 and Top Of The Pops in 1996, could sell it out after being away for so long.

We saw Martin Rossiter and co live a lot in the mid to late 90s and early 00s in Exeter, Portsmouth, Brighton, Reading and London before they split.

They arrived being hailed as the new Smiths and it’s not hard to see why with cracking guitar-based tunes and a crooning and dashing lead singer brimming with confidence and boasting an enviable way with words.

Tonight’s setlist is beautifully thought through and opens with 2 songs, appropriately, about waiting – London, Can You Wait? (see picture above for a London which has waited long enough) – and Be My Light, Be My Guide which boasts the line: ‘I’ve been waiting a long time.’

It’s 2 hours long, encompasses the best of all of their albums, and apart from the exclusion of 1 of our favourites – the non-conformist Left Handed – it was a fair representation of how strong the band’s back catalogue is.

Lead singer Martin Rossiter (picture above from earlier in the week) is in flirty form and thanks keyboardist Mick Talbot from the Style Council for joining their line-up and describes the rapturous reception the band receives as ‘very much deserved’ which makes us smile.

Climaxing with Who Said This Was The End? from their final album seems apt and they’ve announced new gigs for next year already.

The atmosphere was euphoric and so much so that an apparently straight man surprises us by kissing us on the ear during the brilliant Sleep Well Tonight as we both sing it at the top of our lungs.

The mass singalongs at this gig helped us remember how much we’ve underrated songs from their past including Where Are They Now? but it’s new material worthy of elbowing out the old classics from the setlist here that we now want from them.

It’s what Suede are doing rather than Oasis and it’s the future we’ve always dreamed of for Gene.

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