Orchards are a band I’ve seen really grow into themselves, having first caught them at Night and Day at A Carefully Planned Festival way back in 2016.
They always had a really confident presence, like they knew their potential to command stages even when performing to a room of total strangers at the time. Ironically, a lot of their lyrics deal with low-self esteem and anxiety, even when they’re delivered in deceptively breezy pop packages.
As group therapy sessions go, you could do no better than this deliriously fun headline show. . Highlights include the intricate math-rock of ‘Peggy’, singer Lucy Evers ushering all of the female/non-binary identifying audience members to the front for righteous self-love anthem ‘Girlfriend’, and the frenzied bounce-along inspired by ‘Luv You 2’. On this evidence, they could be having much bigger rooms singing along in the not-too-distant future – their combination of cathartic choruses, understated intricacy and infectious energy could carry them far.
Support came from the equally brilliant San Lorenz, whose art-rock akin to Everything Everything proved a bit of a revelation. They had the audience in a trance throughout, but no more so than on closer ‘Slowly’, with both its moments of pretty interplay between guitars, keys and vocals and thrashing post-punk riffage. Their debut album A Death at Sea was released the Friday after the show and is well worth checking out.
SOUNDS TASTY 