Music Is To Blame: Tomorrow’s Here Today for The Lightning Seeds

Wind the clock back 35 years and you’ll be surrounded by bucket hats and yellow smiley faces. The Britpop wars are in full swing and amidst some of the seriousness of bands such as Oasis, Blur and Pulp, it’s difficult to turn on a radio and not hear the more cheerful, upbeat, light hearted yet punchy sound of The Lightning Seeds who are out on the road celebrating their 35^th anniversary with the obligatory tour, showcasing all of the fan favourites, chart hits and new releases under the title of Tomorrow’s Here Today, a lyric from one of their songs.

The Lightning Seeds were formed way back in 1989 by Ian Broudie, with the majority of their chart success coming through the mid to late 90s. ‘They’ is of course really just Broudie, with a variety of other comings and goings, the most notable being the late and very great Terry Hall.

The Nottingham stop of the tour featured the usual minimalist audience interaction from Broudie, leaving room for the maximum music which is of course what everyone was there for.

Opening for The Lightning Seeds were Casino, a five piece guitar laden, retro, smooth, funky soul band. A bit retro, a bit of everything, something for everyone and a perfect match for the Seeds’ uplifting set.

Opening with ‘Life’s Too Short’, Broudie and his tight knit band whizzed through a broad selection from the past 35 years of creative process. The energetic, urgent, early Terry Hall songs such as ‘Sense’ and ‘Life of Riley’ blended with the more rounded mid to late 90s hits of ‘Ready or Not’, ‘What If’, ‘Lucky You’ and of course the best known ‘Pure’, ‘Marvellous’ and more, leading into new songs from the most recent album including ‘Losing You’ and ‘Emily Smiles’. All in all, a fairly seamless mix of songs, many of which had been tweaked, rearranged, smoothed out and otherwise tinkered with for the live performance, showing the Broudie isn’t sitting back and pressing play on the old backing tracks, he’s still actively creating and recreating.

Nottingham’s Rock City was packed with fans jammed into every crevice. The whole UK tour, which runs until mid December, is pretty much sold out - a feat which many bands have really struggled to achieve over the past few years. The crowd in Nottingham showed that live music really is back and their patience and tenacity was richly rewarded with Broudie’s almost non-stop show.

An encore was fiercely demanded and of course granted, peaking with a song which may have started as something of a novelty but which has taken on new layers of meaning in the time since it was released in 1996. ‘Three Lions’ has become more than a football song, especially given the wonderful success of the England women’s team in 2022. According to Broudie, the song is about, “being a football fan, which, for 90% of the time, is losing”. It’s a song about hope and rising to a challenge regardless of the result and for the fans in Nottingham, it was a joyful, uplifting conclusion to an evening which was clearly very emotional and meaningful for many of them, as much as it was for the wonderfully understated Ian Broudie.