Sam Fender at First Direct Arena Review

Any artist quietly listening to and acting on fan suggestions is worth their weight in gold. Sam Fender does just that, adding The Dying Light to a set still fighting through the teething issues of returning to the stage. Fender has not toured properly since his previous album Seventeen Going Under and, after an exhaustive compilation of his very best efforts that took him from St. James’s Park to stadiums across the globe, he heads to Leeds armed with a few songs we will not hear until the new year. It is an exercise in teasing a crowd; finding a place for these new tracks and for many in the audience will mark a moment of accepting those hits of the past must make way for the future. Not an easy job, but Fender gets it done at First Direct Arena.  

Few changes are made to a setlist which feels a little light and flat. Fender still performs at the level expected of him – affable and flowing he may be on stage, laughing away and keeping us up to date on Newcastle’s three all draw with Liverpool, but there is a slight refusal to shift gear. Every song ends with a break, a retune and a few strums to keep us from checking the Celtic v Aberdeen score in a separate tab. Fender is running the gauntlet of new songs yet has not quite cleared the ones he wants to include, making his set a tad futile. His set has become predictable for those dedicated fans, and even for newcomers to his sound off the back of People Watching and Wild Long Lie, both included in a somewhat sloppy set, there is enough to enjoy. Much of it, however, feels rather staggered.  

Never judge a set on its amount of songs, but do take note of those false starts, the minutes spent retuning when all Fender can do is ask how everyone is doing for the fourth time. He remains a friendly and reliant fixture on the stage but performances of Getting Started feel a bit hollow now that he has moved on from his starting point. Unreleased song Arm’s Length sounds like an ace inclusion and preceding unreleased piece Nostalgia’s Lie sounds like a nice nod to where his sound is headed. But before you get too comfortable, in comes the inevitable moments. The Spice and Howdon Aldi Death Queue double bill, the Get You Down into Spit of You and what else for the encore than Hypersonic Missiles? The playbook has only a few pages and even when done as well as expected, it feels dry.  

This is not a disaster, much of the set is good fun and the visual identity Fender has for his music is growing. He has the big plan ahead, the capable scope of a stadium act with the lyrics occasionally flashing up behind him. A refresher course for those seeing him after People Watching releases. It is as much a restorative performance for Fender as it is for the audience, a pre-Christmas bit of momentum to give the band a proper instrumental outing. Those classics may sound the same but getting back to a point of confident performance is a long and ultimately endless road. High points are to come. This is not Fender at his very best but when he takes on board the want of his fans, The Dying Light and The Borders included, a performance with a few excellent stop-offs at a musical style which dominated last summer is no bad night.