On the release day of their fifth, self-titled album, Neck Deep celebrated its launch at Nottingham’s Rough Trade…
“Happy release day!” vocalist Ben Barlow said as Neck Deep appeared on the Rough Trade Nottingham stage. Not only that; there was also a birthday within the band on the same day. Even though they are not native to Nottingham - they hail from Wrexham in Wales - they chose our fine city to celebrate in.
The band have an admittedly tumultuous relationship with Nottingham (anyone who was at their Rock City show in 2017 will recall) but it seems that seven years later, any former beef has been resolved - as has the “thirty grand legal bill.”
They hold none of this former bad blood against the city to this day - it would have been difficult for them to do so when such a dedicated crowd of fans showed up to hear them perform tracks from their latest album, the self-titled Neck Deep, on the day of its release.
“Have you given it a spin today?” Barlow asked. “It’s quite short so you might have had time to give it a few. Short, sharp and to the point!” This statement summarises the launch show, too. Seven tracks performed over the course of just over thirty minutes, beginning with five album tracks before playing two classics to close the night.
They began with first track on album, Dumbstruck Dumbf**k, before working their way through We Need More Bricks, Go Outside!, They May Not Mean To (But They Do) and It Won’t Be Like This Forever. Since the album is formed of ten high-octane pop-punk tunes which don’t let up, it was a unique experience to hear the band’s acoustic take on this selection of tracks, none of which are acoustic in their original form.
It was also interesting to hear what the songs from the album were called when they were mere demo versions of what they became today – Sort Yourself Out, for example, was called Flowers, until Miley Cyrus came about and ruined that. Meanwhile, they disclosed that They May Not Mean To (But They Do) was inspired by Neighbourhoods era Blink-182, the type of insight that is often only revealed in intimate venues like Rough Trade.
They closed the set with In Bloom, one of the band’s most popular tracks, taken from their 2017 album The Peace And The Panic. But the fans who were in attendance wanted the band to delve even further into their discography, successfully convincing (pressuring? bullying?) them to add December, taken from 2015’s Life’s Not Out To Get You, to the setlist.
As a long-time fan of the band, whose summer of 2015 was soundtracked by this album - yes, I was only fourteen years old then - I left very satisfied, having heard both the old and the new in the
same evening. Neck Deep has had a positive reception and it’s easy to see why. It does everything a self-titled album should do: it sees the band going back to basics and doing exactly what they do
best.
Neck Deep performed at Rough Trade on 19 January 2024
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