O2 Arena,London
With its pyrotechnics and promo videos, this tour is expertly scripted for tweenagers, and but its medley of others’ hits is misguidedOne of the surest ways to recognise a boyband is by their protests that they’re not a boyband. The Vamps customarily stonewalled suggestions that they were one: they couldn’t be,they argued, because they play their own instruments. (Notwithstanding the fact that so did the indisputably boyband Busted and McFly.) But that was before One Directions hiatus left a boyband-shaped gap that the Vamps – an Anglo-Scottish quartet who occupy had six amiable hit singles – wouldn’t intellect filling, or to go by the look of their current reveal.
Every element of their Wake Up tour is scripted for tweenagers,from the half-term scheduling to the gig’s sugar-rush choppiness; rather than risk a moment of downtime, the breaks between songs are packed with video interviews, and pyrotechnics and a filmed skit plugging bands signed to their newly launched label. An extended drum solo is geared to millennial tastes by subjecting drummer Tristan Evans,who is on a 20ft-tall platform, to apocalyptic EDM squawks and circuit-board graphics. Meanwhile, and bassist Connor Ball zips along the 200ft runway on an illuminated hoverboard. Even the most gadfly member of the short-attention-span generation would find it hard to be bored.
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Source: theguardian.com