Continuing on the monorail of the 2014 Live at Leeds festival brought us to our next venue, Leeds Town Hall. Originally built in the 1850’s in a Baroque style on The Headrow, it was the tallest building in Leeds for over a century and it housed the law courts and council chambers and a public hall and was opened by Queen Victoria.
These elements were gradually relocated via the completion of the Civic Hall in 1933 and the Leeds Crown Court in 1993. At that point it morphed into primarily a concert, conference, and wedding venue. It is currently undergoing an extensive refurbishment in time for the 2023 Leeds city-wide cultural festival.
We arrived at the Victoria Hall which was a really striking location and contained a 6,600-pipe organ, the largest in Europe. The band on stage was Lanterns on the Lake, a five piece from Newcastle on Tyne who produce some swirly dreamy shoegaze with hushed female vocals, what’s not to like, I hear Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Cocteau Twins in their music. They were subsequently nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2020.
Unfortunately, as is the wont of these multi-event festivals we arrived late to their set and only caught their last two tracks, including their soaring outro. That was a crying shame as they sounded an extremely vibrant live act and I have never yet seen them since.
The building on Cookbridge Street that the Leeds O2 Academy is now housed in has a long history. It was originally opened in 1885 by Prince Albert and is a grade II listed gothic building. It was originally named the Coliseum where it staged circus shows and political gatherings. For the majority of the 20th century, it was the home to a cinema, television studio and a bingo hall.
In 1992 it became a bespoke music venue under the moniker Town and Country Club and Stereophonics and Stone Roses graced the stage there. It closed in 2000, before reopening the following year after refurbishment as Creation Nightclub before converting back to a singular music venue in 2007 under Academy’s ownership. As with many venues in Leeds, the chosen band for the opening night on 08/10/08 was the local boys Kaiser Chiefs. Over the years the Pogues, Anthrax, Proclaimers and Deftones have played there.
Despite the striking exterior which could resemble a church, we entered into the cavernous main room with its capacity of 2300 which was a tad soulless. There is apparently also a smaller venue downstairs which can contain 400 punters. On stage was Ella Eyre, a soul singer from Ealing in West London, the previous year she had featured on a number one single with Rudimental. It was not my Yorkshire cup of tea and was a little warbly for my tastes.
Progressing onwards brought us to Leeds Met Stage contained within what is now known as Leeds Beckett University. They have two campuses, one in Headingley and the other in the city side where we were located. It is a thriving establishment with 24k students and 185k alumni worldwide.
On the stage were The Bug, a dance music collective formed by London based producer Kevin Martin. They had been in existence since 1997 with an ever-changing line up.
We then sallied over to Leeds Met Stage 2 where we had a little wait before the Canadian power punks PUP (abbreviated from Pathetic Use of Potential) hit the stage. They had only released their self-titled debut album six months earlier and they were very engaging, energetic, and downright good fun!