Elliot Minor

support Me Vs Hero + Franko
author BW date 05/11/09 venue Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth, UK

As per usual (namely due to train times) I get to the Wedgewood Rooms just before the doors are due to open, and find a queue stretching around the corner. Next door is the Edge of the Wedge bar where I can relax, edit some photos on my laptop with a nice smooth pint of Guinness and happily watch the queue die down before making my way to collect my photo pass.

Franko

As I go in with enough time to set up my camera before openers Franko make their way out and realise that perhaps the line wasn’t as big as I’d imagined. Credit to Franko they come out and play a set full of mature pop rock, lead singer Tommy flails his arms around in the same manner as Morrissey, minus the bunch of flowers. However what is becoming more and more frequent in gigs I appear to watch, no matter how good a band play, and Franko do pull off a decent set, there is a lack of real energy.

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Me Vs Hero

By now I was expecting the crowd to be a little denser but there still seems to be a large gulf between the expectant female population at the front and the rest of the crowd dotted around the sides and back of the venue made up mostly by parents. Me vs Hero’s combination of pop punk hyperactivity with a sporadic tendency for screamo seems slightly more appealing to the crowd, but that’s been generous. Me vs Hero are a band I’d been waiting to see for a long time and they don’t disappoint, especially with the heartfelt song for fallen comrade Alex McCulloch who passed away last year.

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Elliot Minor

Still with tonight's main attraction, York based Elliot Minor, about to take to the stage the venue is nowhere near half capacity and it suddenly hits how far their stock has fallen in a little over 18 months when they were hitting the Top 20 and packing out larger venues. The core of their fanbase though are still loyal with the constant screams of “Alex we love you” ringing out during the set. Its times like this I wonder am I wearing earplugs because of the loud music being played infront of me or because of the girls screaming in my ear behind me. In front of me though Elliot Minor do pull off a tight set of pop rock mixed with their classical background. Imagine an X Factor boy band singing over a Vanessa Mae track and you might get somewhere close to how it goes. They are a band on the decline as the turnout tonight shows, but the classical – rock hybrid sounds a lot better than the nu-metal that started the decade.

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