Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

It may always come as a slight surprise that some people are quite willing to part with hard earned cash for a gig and then proceed to miss at least half of it. Of course there is work; that cannot be helped, it is part and parcel of being in the kind of society that we are. Then there may be child care issues to consider. However that surely still leaves a fair percentage, a sizeable chunk of a gig going audience who only ever turn up for the main act and perhaps don’t even want to take the chance on something new. For those that made their way to the o2 Academy in Liverpool in good time to see Western Sands and The Dead Daisies, there was a feeling of overwhelming nodding approval in what they saw.

For Western Sands the support slot they performed was a belter, a hark back to some of the great rock bands that many still make their way to venues up and down the country when they too were in their infancy. The main hall in the Academy may not yet be swamped as it would be an hour or so later but for those who took the time to come and take in the five tracks that the Hampshire band beat out with utmost determination and with all the grace that the genre demands, it was easy to see that they were witnessing the start of something that could become very big in time.

The four piece kicked off their part of the evening with the song Better Days and looking round at the assembled, there was the hint of nostalgia wearing into their faces, of days when N.W.O.B.H.M. stood for something other than a distant memory, when music in all the parts of the country was made to last. They may just be starting out but Western Sands have the appeal of a band that has the Liverpool ethos injected into them, that music should also be about enjoyment and not just the lure of the next contract. With tracks such as A Place I Call Home, the exceptionally good Broken Bones, the brutality of Welcome To The Bad Land and the rightly titled Nothing To Lose, Findlay Hotchkiss, Tyler Hains, Jimmy Bradshaw and Nathan Kay gave the right impression from the very first chord and dynamic guitar stance.

You can only ever wish a band well at the end of the day but given time there is nothing to stop Western Sands being a big, big hit.

Ian D. Hall