Live Review: Beans On Toast (Leeds Brudenell Social Club, 25/2/22)

 

I think it's safe to say that those of us who were here at the Brudenell tonight needed something like this. In a week where the pressure cooker situation between the US and Russia has finally boiled over in the Ukraine, the news seems to get worse every day in terms of what the UK can expect in terms of soaring bills and poverty this year and not to even mention the utter shitshow going on at the top level of politics in both of our main parties, these are dark and worrying times indeed.

Even Jay McAllister aka Beans on Toast, normally a man whose generally easygoing nature and cheerful tunes shine out for all to see, seems to be feeling it a bit as he explains during a between-song diatribe about how first we had Brexit and all the conflict that caused, then we had Covid and the lockdown and all the damage to our mental health that caused and now we've got the threat of nuclear war hanging over us and you wonder when this is all going to end. However, as he mentions at the start of his set tonight, the next 90 minutes will be largely about trying to put that out of our heads and try and see the light at the end of the tunnel, distant though it may be.

And he does a good job of it too. BoT's recent album, Survival of the Friendliest (Nite Songs review here) was all about trying to see the good in desperate times and the majority of tonight's set is drawn from it - as the man himself admits, he's now got such a large body of work (fourteen albums no less) that a lot of his older songs tend to get forgotten once they've been out of his set for a year or two - with the likes of Not Everybody Thinks We're Doomed, A Beautiful Place, Blow Volcano Blow and the anti-land grabbing The Commons being exactly the sort of positive thoughts we need in times like these.

Add to this a liberal sprinkling of established set favourites from his older albums like MDMAmazing, Afternoons In The Sunshine, Album Of The Day and I'm Home When You Hold Me and this is an evening to at least partially restore your faith in humanity a bit. Hopefully the next time I see Beans on Toast live, the world won't be in quite such a desperate state (if it's even still here) but on this occasion, those words of reassurance were much needed, thanks feller. If you're feeling a bit despondent about the state of the world then I can't guarantee that going to see one of Beans on Toast's gigs on the remainder of this tour or listening to Survival of the Friendliest will cure all your ills but I'd say there's a good probability it'll make you feel a little bit better about things even if only temporarily until the next wave of doom bursts in. And sometimes you really can't place too much importance on that.

Live picture by Andy James Close. All rights reserved.