Category: Leeds

Leeds Venues 8 to 11

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.

Leeds Town Hall. Image Flickr.

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.

Leeds O2 Academy. Image Credit able2uk.com

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!

Leeds Venues 6 to 7

Continuing the tale of the Live at Leeds multi event in 2014 takes us onwards to Leeds Wardrobe. The venue is situated on St Peter’s Square, Quarry Hill in the Cultural quarter alongside Leeds College of Music, Northern Ballet, Yorkshire Dance, and the BBC. It is accessed via crossing the very busy ring road.

The venue opened its doors for the first time in 1999 and has established itself as one of the city’s longest running independent venues and regularly hosts over 250 gigs per year. Its roster is primarily in the jazz, funk and soul domain and previous acts who have played there include Sly and Robbie, Beverley Knight, and Amy Winehouse.

The establishment models itself in a New York retro vibe and the ground floor consists of the main bar and restaurant. On our attendance I recall they had booted up some temporary pizza ovens and the Pepperoni’s were cooking up a storm. At our second Live at Leeds in 2021 they had some acoustic acts playing in the main bar, but not whilst we were in residence.

Leeds Wardrobe. Image Credit whatpub.com

Stairs then take you down to the main venue with the stage immediately to your right which sits in front of a sunken dance floor and bars to the left and the back of the room. I liked it instantly as it felt spacious and had a good vantage point from all areas. It was blessed with a terrific sound system. There is also a local story that a ghost is resident in the basement room and the site is built upon an old well.

We purloined a seat at the back and the band on stage were CYMBALS (not to be confused with Cymbals with Guitars) from London town. They were a four piece post punk act and had just released their second album Age of Fracture. They splintered after that album and became and remain a two-piece to this day. They had an 80’s sound to them and resembled to a degree Bloc Party.

On our return to the venue at the delayed 2021 festival we saw a full set from a solo artist called Louis Berry, who turned out to be the last act we saw that day and we grabbed seats to the side of the stage as we had walked many miles traversing to venues far and wide.

He was a young Liverpool lad who had a very challenging upbringing as he was born to a heroin addict father. He could fair belt it out in a busker style reminiscent of Jake Bugg. After the 2014 gig, we headed up out of the basement, temporarily blinking in the afternoon sun prior to then grabbing some tea.  

The next venue was Leeds Holy Trinity Church located on Boar Lane. It was originally built in the 1720’s and has Grade 1 listed status. In 2020 a major refurbishment took place and became the home to a mid-week ministry for city centre workers.  They periodically have events there with listed for later this year a couple of movie soundtrack nights and as appears to be inevitable the obligatory tribute to Queen performed by a string quartet.  

Leeds Holy Trinity Church. Image Credit en.wikipedia.org

At the 2014 event they had a full day’s roster of acoustic acts performing with Marika Hackman near the top of the bill. On the bill as we attended was a young Irish folk singer called Orla Gartland from Dublin. She had only released a couple of EPs at that stage, but she has built a huge following on You Tube since by posting cover songs and has had over 24m views. Her music was featured on the recent BBC hit series ‘Normal People’ and she was firmly in the Joni Mitchell mould.