If we asked you to name one of The Great British Rock Bands, we could probably pre-empt who you would say.
The Beatles, perhaps? Or The Rolling Stones? Or maybe Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, or The Who?
All of these, of course, are perfectly acceptable answers. However, there is one band whose name isn’t always mentioned in conversations about ‘the greatest bands this country has ever produced’ – but we see no reason why they shouldn’t be. And that band, dear reader, is the Stereophonics.
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We know, we know – but hear us out for a second.
If you’re looking for a band who’ve penned more stadium-ready anthems than they’ve had hot dinners, then the Stereophonics are your guys. Between the likes of Just Looking, Maybe Tomorrow, Handbags & Gladrags, I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio, and the omnipresent-at-indie-discos Dakota, you’d be hard-pressed to find a British band who’ve popped out more bangers than these four Welshmen over the last twenty-and-a-bit-years.
And as for their live shows? Well, on a sunny evening at Cornwall’s iconic Eden Project these gentlemen showed us exactly why they’re still one of the most in-demand festival headline acts in the country, two decades after their inception.
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Reader, when we say that they were good, we mean that they were really good.
It helped that they’ve got a back catalogue full of bonafide classics to fall back on, too. When we stop and think about it, we’re always pleasantly surprised by just how many gold-standard classics Kelly Jones and co. have managed to conjure up over the course of their career – and, by the look of the crowd, those classics are also a set of songs that still have the same effect on an audience as they did when they were first written, all those moons ago.
Still, it’s not like they had to work hard to win the crowd over. After all, it’s quite hard not to be impressed by the Eden Project. We don’t know about you, but we think that the sight of one of the greatest rock bands of their generation pounding away in front of a series of fifty-metre-high biomes is guaranteed to bring a smile to even the coldest of hearts.
So, if you ever get the chance, make sure you check out a Stereophonics show. And, if you can make sure that it’s at the Eden Project, then even better. We can promise that you won’t leave disappointed.