Every so often an indie artist comes along and captures the imaginations of teenagers, predominantly girls. In recent years, we’ve seen the likes of Rat Boy, Sundara Karma and Blossoms riding high off this section of their fanbase; the types who obsess over the music, buy the merch and follow them religiously on social media. It appears that it’s now the turn of 20-year-old, Will Joseph Cook. The Kent-born singer-songwriter had his young fans in rapture, bouncing off the walls to his sweet indie-pop at The Haunt.

London band Indigo Husk are the main support for the tour and, having supported Rat Boy previously, look like they’ll slot perfectly into the indie-pop scene, potentially picking up a few Will Joseph Cook fans along the way. Debut single ‘Misbehave’, released on Little Bean, already sounds like a potential classic, with a chanty chorus that evokes everyone from The Libertines to The View.

The Haunt was very busy for the arrival of Cook, who opened the proceedings with Sweet Dreamer opening track, ‘Biggest Fan’. All of his songs are steeped in nostalgic, melodic, optimistic 00s indie-pop, but none more so than this. His lyrics: “Lemme tell you who I am/I'm your biggest fan/Got your picture on my phone/I got tickets to your show” almost exactly invoking what his fans think about him – and being sung back to him word for word by the majority of The Haunt crowd.

Will Joseph Cook celebrated his “six-month anniversary” of debut album, Sweet Dreamer, here by pretty much playing it in full. The title track is arguably the biggest earworm of the night, and most definitely the bounciest, while ‘Beach – (I Wanna Make You Mine)’ is the song that most stimulated his contemporaries. This is sickly-sweet indie-pop in the vein of Flyte and The Night Cafe with an added Jamie T croon-ability.

He also showcased a couple of new ones. Most recent single ‘If You Want to Make Money’ is his biggest chance of a hit so far with the lyrics redolent of chart mega acts Carly Rae Jepsen and Selena Gomez, with an Owl City pop-punk nature. Unreleased song ‘Fish’ sees Joseph Cook having the most fun he’s had all night, swimming around the stage, bouncing from left to right and enjoying the crowd’s reaction. These songs show that Will Joseph Cook is way more than one album.

Ending on the one-two of ‘Plastic’ and biggest single ‘Girls Like Me’, Joseph Cook has the crowd in the palm of his hand with his luscious, mellow, coherent pop music. These two see crowd-surfing, mosh pits and the most amount of movement in the crowd of the night. “I just don’t feel like dancing on my own” Joseph Cook sings as he’s seemingly throwing a massive 400 capacity party. While during ‘Girls Like Me’ he uses the crowd’s buzzing atmosphere to join in on the “la la la la’s” of the chorus.

Will Joseph Cook is a decent artist very capable of a good pop song. In my opinion, there are better artists and his nostalgia for early 00s indie-pop, a la Vampire Weekend and Bloc Party can grow tiresome – but this is one of those occasions where my opinion doesn’t matter. Will Joseph Cook is adored amongst his fans and they will carry him through thick and thin. He seems to have captured lightning in a bottle here and it gives his gigs a reverberating, bombinating atmosphere that is rarely matched.

Liam McMillen

Website: willjosephcook.co.uk
Facebook: facebook.com/willjosephcookmusic
Twitter: twitter.com/WillJosephCook