It had been six long years since the local contingent of Bombay Bicycle Club fans were able to see the band when they pulled up to Royale last Monday night. Since then, they’ve put out two new studio albums: the seemingly prophetically titled Everything Else Has Gone Wrong in January 2020 just before everything did go very wrong and last year’s My Big Day. The latest LP debuted at No. 3 in their native UK, their fifth consecutive Top 10 album on the country’s charts.
Due to a personal family emergency, the band’s permanent drummer Sure de Saram was absent from Monday’s show, filling in was their drum tech Joseph P. Gale. Also joining Bombay on stage were touring members Nathan Cox on keyboards and additional guitar and Olive Jones on backing vocals. Jones would join frontman Jack Steadman for an acoustic duet late in the show. But the show initially opened with a pair of tracks from My Big Day, “Just a Little More Time” and “I Want to Be Your Only Pet,” both of which were delivered with plenty of energy and big smiles from Steadman as he settled in for the set.
With a stage adorned with balloons spelling out the album title in front of streamers, Steadman couldn’t help but address the fact it looked like a set up for a birthday party and asked the crowd if anyone was there celebrating their birthday. He also noted how Royale was one of the very first venues the group had visited during their first US tour in support of Two Door Cinema Club back in the fall of 2011.
My Big Day was full of features, perhaps none bigger than Chaka Khan, something that Steadman joked he never though was possible when the idea came up. Olive Jones handled the duties of Khan’s contribution to the song, “Tekken 2,” named after a popular 90’s video game. Bombay did make sure to pull from every one of their six studio albums when building a setlist for the show. Steadman told the audience it was something they consciously planned since they hadn’t visited the US in so long.
Specifically when playing the title track of their second studio album Flaws, and the b-side “You Already Know,” the set was stripped back to just Steadman and Jones singing while Steadman played acoustic guitar. After the pair of songs, Steadman thanked the crowd for being respectful and quiet, while joking that in the UK they would have been “pelted with lager” for even attempting such a delicate moment during their show.
Before finishing the show they would play one more track from My Big Day, “Meditate,” before a pair of classic Bombay Bicycle Club songs, “Always Like This” and “Shuffle”- the latter of which came following an encore break. The members of the band seemed genuinely awestruck by the reception they received in Boston, something they noted they don’t see in all American cities.
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PHOTO GALLERY BY: John Hutchings
