Sam Fender at Omeara - 13/11/18

Sam Fender: young, good-looking with a Northern charm that’s enough to make anyone swoon and is almost destined to go far. He’s ticking a lot of boxes that we want to tick, and that’s before he’s even played the crowd in Omeara a song. As soon as he walks on to the stage, the 22-year old lad from Newcastle is immediately vibrant and subtly eager to get playing. His opening song, ‘Millennial’, lends itself to getting the crowd energised.

The venue is the perfect setting for this up-and-coming musician; it’s small, compact and almost damp with the bodies that stuff the room. As his set goes on, he throws some cheeky jokes towards the audience every so often. There’s an atmosphere of excitement for Sam that is about knowing he’s just starting on what looks like will be an undoubtedly promising career.

More importantly throughout the night, Sam plays a mix of songs that have not yet been heard and the hits we know, from ‘That Sound’ to ‘Leave Fast,’ all of them exposing his wise talent for songwriting. At 22, he appears to be ahead of his time. His poignant lyrics express the disturbing questions of life that many of us millennials have but don’t know how to phrase. With lines such as ‘we idolize idiots/masturbate to their sex tapes/we love them, we hate them’ , Sam describes an aspect of the celebrity culture we are surrounded by, in an effortless matter.

He wraps up the show after about fifty minutes finishing with the ballad ‘Leave Fast.’ It’s an emotional end to the all-too-short gig but ultimately one that is in-keeping with who we’ve figured out Sam Fender to be so far in his musical career. I think we can all wait in comfortable anticipation to hear where he takes alt-rock music to in the future.

Sam Fender played Omeara on 13/11/18, and will be returning to London in February 2019.

Photo credit: Omeara