Bombay Bicycle Club

I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose (Live at Brixton)

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Genre: Indie Rock.
Released: 11/12/2020
Via Mmm...Records

Album Review: Bombay Bicycle Club – I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose (Live at Brixton)

Bombay Bicycle Club’s new live album ‘I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose (Live at Brixton)’ is a celebration of the bands pre-pandemic live shows, more specifically giving us a listen into the bands sold out November 2019 show at Brixton Academy. The show saw the band playing the entirety of their 2009 debut album ‘I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose’. I fortunately was able to see this show, unfortunately like everyone else in the crowd I couldn’t imagine that in just over a year’s time live music would be a distant memory.

The recording is clear, and whilst crowd cheers and singalongs occasionally poke through, a majority of the album provides us with the clean live vocals and instruments. Some tracks present us with more of the audience than others, with ‘Evening / Morning’ letting us hear the crowd chant the melody of the guitar riffs, and ‘Always Like This’ having a great singalong from the crowd.

The band quickly bounce from song to song with very little chatter between tracks, meaning the live album flows well like the original. We get a little bit of context before ‘The Hill’ with Jack Steadman introducing the song by saying “So we wrote a lot of these songs when we were 15 or 16 years old, and still at school, and doing our GCSEs and a lot of mundane things” Adding “Looking back some of these songs were about very small parts of our life. This song is literally about sitting on a hill behind the school we used to go to.” Despite that, this song still feels meaningful to the band, even if it lacks any true meaning behind it.

The album ends with ‘The Giantess’ which slows the album down towards the end and is a great contrast compared to the rest of the album, however unlike the original studio version the live album blends the Giantess into ‘Emergency Contraception Blues’ bringing the album full circle.

I really love the album artwork that references the man falling from the debut albums artwork, whilst replacing the rest of the original with a photo of the legendary venue where the live album was recorded. This makes a change from most live albums which just have a picture of their names on the front of the venue.

Whilst it might have been better to have a bit more of the audience coming through on the tracks, the albums clean style almost makes it a great “reworked” version of the original, providing punchier bass, the crowd energies and songs that have just adapted slightly over their ten years of existence. Worth a listen, even if you weren’t able to get to the show.