Last night Mrs RM and I went to see a rare shared musical favourite at Cambridge Corn Exchange. Until this week Daughter have managed to avoid the mainstream, putting aside the 71 million* YouTube views of this early track;
Yesterday they started a sold-out tour and released a remarkably moving 2nd LP which only Bowie will posthumously keep from topping next week’s album charts. With its lead song documenting the impact of dementia, it’s an equally uncompromising listen.
The audience at Cambridge was somewhat older than on their first headlining tour, when I saw them at St Philip’s Church in Salford, where a great but soporific night wasn’t helped by an early evening session in the New Oxford. In later gigs in Larmer Tree Gardens and Wolverhampton the crowd was even younger, reflecting the use of their songs in numerous teen programmes.
Despite painful shyness, they are a wonderful live act, and the dynamic range of their music was well represented in the otherwise horrifically staid Corn Exchange.
On the 20 minute walk back to our car, we toyed with a quick half before the 11pm curfew, but the relentless debauchery exposed by the Daily Mail thwarted that ambition.
OK, actually nothing at all was happening in central Cambridge on a Friday night, apart from people having a quiet drink and a chat. I can’t believe Mill Road was any different.
Just as I’ve never seen football hooliganism in nearly 40 years of going to games, I’ve only rarely seen even the mildest of anti-social behaviour in and outside pubs, though the lack of public toilets in Doncaster did always seem to be a pressing problem.
*106 million as at end Jan 17
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