Tonight in Camden there is a huge amount of excitement from the audience. The Cribs are playing to celebrate ten years of their Men’s Needs album. Everyone is tense with anticipation and just waiting for their heroes to come on stage. Heroes really isn’t an exaggeration either, the crowd has clearly grown up with the band and they would’ve been the sound of people’s nights out, their summers and their transition into adulthood. The Cribs are a band that have always had a huge effect on their fan base, affecting how they dress, how they talk and act. They’ve always been about authenticity and rejecting false ideas and it’s this keeping to being genuine that makes them so appealing. They don’t need any outside approval and they’ve got nothing to prove, they don’t need to. They’ve done this on their own and more importantly on their terms.

In May 2007 The Cribs released their 3rd LP Men’s Needs, Woman’s Needs, Whatever, this was an album which changed the band and bringing them into the limelight. Around the mid 2000’s indie bands would have to have a polished, single heavy album as a debut in order to garner any attention from an audience and the music industry. The Cribs however were something more and we watched them grow and progress with each album. Their 2004 self-titled debut would lay a foundation for the band and showed their potential. Following this their 2005 album The New Fellas saw the band with sharper hooks and bringing forward an instantly recognisable sound. Then in 2007 they would release the album which developed the sound they had been working on, turning them into indie heroes.

For me what makes The Cribs so special is what followed Men’s Needs. The band could’ve easily recreated that formula and gone on to be indie superstars. They chose however, to move on from this and worked at refining and exploring new sounds. With each release their music gets deeper and denser whilst still keeping all the elements which made them a special band in the first place. Their more recent releases such as 2015’s For All My Sisters saw a much more developed sound. My personal favourite of the band and probably one of my favourite albums ever is their 2012 release In The Belly of The Brazen Bull which, for me was the best work of my guitar hero Ryan Jarman. However, the catalyst for the bands success is undoubtedly the Men’s Needs album which is accessible, unashamedly pop and completely on the bands terms keeping that DIY ethic that made their fan base so loyal and cherishing them so dearly.

Tonight they come on and start the album. Everyone knows the set-list and the songs by heart. Kicking things off with ‘our Bovine Public’ the room goes into chaos with everyone jumping and shouting the words. The Cribs have always been a live band and they are every bit as exciting to watch as they’ve always been. Among the highlights of tonight are ‘I’m a Realist’, ‘Be Safe’ and ‘Girl’s Like Mystery’. These are all great live tracks and have always featured in the bands set at one point or another. It’s the rarer tracks which haven’t had much of an outing since about 2009 which really get the crowd going. These songs always stood out on the album but were never really prominent on live sets after the initial album tour. It’s tracks like ‘Women’s Needs’, ‘Majors Tilting Victory’ and ‘My Life Flashed Before My Eyes’ which cause the most ruckus. They’re all brilliant songs which were always highlights of the album but possibly haven’t received as much love as they deserve.

There aren’t many exchanges between the band and audience, tonight’s about the music and more than anything they let the songs speak for themselves. They end on ‘Shoot The Poets’ which, again hasn’t been aired live since their Christmas (Cribsmas) show back in 2015. It’s a really magic moment as the album closes, I like to think it gives the audience a chance to reflect on what they’ve just seen. It ties off the album and this part of the set perfectly.

The Cribs have always been a band to give B-Sides an outing, they nearly always feature in their live shows. We get an impromptu version of ‘Tonight’ (the original B-side to the Men’s Needs single) as well as ‘Fairer Sex’ but my personal favourite which I arrived at the show hoping they’d play is ‘Don’t You Want to Be Relevant’. It’s a single which on recording manages to truly capture the excitement of seeing them live, in the flesh its everything you could want. ‘Kind Words from The Broken Hearted’, another B-side goes down with great effect, every track manages to elicit a huge response from the crowd.

They end things by playing a slew of tracks from their back catalogue. They of course play ‘Another Number’ which is a staple of their live shows. I’ve never been at a Cribs show where the crowd haven’t ended up chanting the riff whilst waiting for the band to come on. They play live favourites ‘Different Angle’, ‘Come on Be a No one’ and ‘Mirror Kissers’ ending on ‘Pink Snow’, which has been the bands closing track since releasing For All My Sisters in 2015.

Tonight was a huge show for Cribs fans looking back on the album which was pivotal for the band. There are friends celebrating together as the album was clearly something a lot of people had bonded over. I’m sure everyone tonight had taken something special away from it, for myself it was a chance to see the band play the album where it all happened which I didn’t get to see at the time and I’m sure we won’t be hearing a lot of these songs live again for a very long time, making it all the more special.
Chris Middleton

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