Gig review: Yungblud at First Direct Bank Arena, Leeds
At this faux-hometown show of sorts, the South Yorkshire pop-rock provocateur delivers a valedictory lap that is riotously unflagging, with material that plays like gangbusters.
“Leeds!” Yungblud hollers, stripped to the waist and sporting the kind of flared white trousers that truly have no right to be involved in a sartorial comeback. Having been forced from the stage a quarter-hour prior for an audience emergency, the singer-songwriter is determined to pick up where his band left off.
“We’ve got some making up to do!” he bellows, as screams drown out the beefy squall of Lovesick Lullaby.
To distil this South Yorkshire pop-rock provocateur down to the core elements of his emo-breed appeal is a curiously epochal task. Born Dominic Harrison, then rechristened roughly a decade or so ago, the star has inspired just as much heartfelt adoration as hostile anger from punters and press; a concussive column-inch echo chamber that has served veneration and vitriol ever since his second record, 2020’s Weird!, shot to the top of the charts.
At this faux-hometown show of sorts – last year’s Idols was cut crosstown on Crown Point Road – he offers a definitive riposte to his critics on his genre-blurring bona-fides. Yungblud arrives at the First Direct Bank Arena on what is a valedictory lap following 12 months that saw him effectively anointed by several radio-staple old guard members as their worthy successor.
The mood is understandably celebratory; the subsequent performance is riotously unflagging.
In part, the magpie-like moodboard approach and ambition has helped pave the path to success here.
Opener Hello Heaven, Hello tackles its boisterous craftsmanship with the subtlety of Meat Loaf at a Toby Carvery, grandiose and operatic in its three-movement structure; The Funeral, all skipping scene pop, and My Only Angel, his whiskey-gravel duet with veterans Aerosmith, hew to a similar level of sonic maximalism. Needless to say, they play like gangbusters, material that packs almost as many fireworks as the literal pyro display that singes eyebrows at the barriers.
Yet the intimate touch lands best. Elfin and lithe, with the occasional flash of clefted buttocks to match, Yungblud conjures a giddy fan to strum guitar on Fleabag, while he himself is carried off by the crowd, arms outstretched. Changes, in memory of late friend Ozzy Osbourne, recasts the Black Sabbath original with an even rawer temperament.
By the time a curfew-breaking encore delivers the high bombast of Ghosts and Zombie, he looks delightfully spent. “I bloody love Yorkshire!” he cries. “Proper pints of Tetley’s, proper pints of Landlord!” This triumphant homecoming then is where the heart is.