The K’s at Liverpool’s O2 Academy 

With Support From

Dirty Blonde & Seb Lowe

 26/04/23

Earlestown’s indie pop darlings The K’s have been racking up Spotify listeners in the millions, their track “Sarajevo” has over 4 million plays alone.

Fresh from playing a massive Teenage Cancer Trust gig at the Royal Albert Hall in London the night before with Kasabian and The Snuts, they’ve spent the afternoon at Jimmy’s bar in Liverpool at their pop-up merch stall. A popular choice among artists for selling their t-shirts. Tonight’s Liverpool show was upgraded to the bigger main Liverpool O2 Academy venue and still sold out with audiences showing up early to watch the support which included a popular Tik Tok singer.

(Dirty Blonde_Credit: Lucy McLachlan)

First up were Dirty Blonde, a duo of Ailis Mackay and Hayley Tait (backed tonight by a full band) based in Manchester. We admit we didn’t see a set time for this and got there just in time to see the last song, but what an impressive last song it was, we’d love to catch them again. Thundering bluesy, sultry, swaggering rock with tons of energy and hair flicks all over. We got a look at their set list which included song title “Girls Just Wanna Have Guns“, which intrigued us to check out more of their work.

Seb Lowe was on second, a lockdown TikTok sensation from Oldham. He’s already played Glastonbury in his short career and has upcoming support slots with Paul Weller and Richard Ashcroft.  

We’ve now covered a number of artists who reached popularity on Tik Tok. Some haven’t (yet) transferred their success to touring their music live. We’ve seen low attendance for artists with apparent millions of views, likes or followers on the platform, and we’ve seen questionable performances that look like lip-synching. But Seb Lowe is so far one of the best TikTok artists to have crossed over to touring. He has bags of stage presence, (though barely talking between songs) and as soon as the set started the crowd were sitting on shoulders belting out song lyrics. Lowe is the agitated singer-songwriter, shouting about the flaws in our messed up post-Brexit country (see songs “Kill Him (he’s a socialist)“, and “Ingerland’”. Pausing between political rants to cover Adele’s Rolling In The Deep which gets the near-capacity crowd all singing along. All around Lowe was a delight to watch, a real modern-day troubadour for a downtrodden Ingerland.

(Seb Lowe_Credit: Lucy McLachlan)

The crowd gets really riled up for the last set of the night, ABBA’s ‘Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!’ which got the whole venue in party mode before The K’s come on. Singer Jamie Boyle, bassist Dexter Baxter and guitarist Ryan Breslin bounce on stage absolutely caught up in the moment of the whole sold-out room going crazy as they appeared whilst they played up to videographers following them around onstage. A bucket hat gets thrown to them and Baxter wears it for a while, cheeky chappies and grins all around, these guys are having a blast. The crowd are wild straight away as “Picture” is the first song up, beer flying everywhere, hands in the air. The band are roaming round onstage, getting up on the monitors to loom over the crowd.

(The Ks_Credit: Lucy McLachlan)

The latest single “Chancer” gets a huge reception with a whole row of people up on shoulders waving around and singing along.  The band mention how incredibly hot it is in the venue, it’s steamy like a sauna and it’s only March. Another single from this year, “Hoping Maybe” has a short introduction of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, which now feels like the running theme of the night. The set was played through at what felt like a blistering speed with the crowd and the band keeping up the energy despite the hot venue temperature.

Finishing with “Sarajevo” and “Dacton & Wanderella” the indie pop lads played a blinder of a set and appeared like they had an absolute ball doing so. We feel like you either left drenched in sweat or beer at that one. A good time was had by all.

Review and photography Lucy McLachlan

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