All We Are in The Workman’s Club on March 14th 2015

A nice generic introduction for any band is to give a bit of background on a band’s beginnings, but with All We Are, there’s actually an interesting story. The band was formed in Liverpool university where the three members, hailing from Ireland, Norway and Brazil, met up and began making music. A few years later, from these wide-ranging sources, we have a delightfully soft indie pop album full of excellent musicianship and enthralling vocals.

Support comes from the engaging Chelou, who manage to produce a wonderfully complex and full-bodied sound from just an acoustic guitar. A strong percussion section injects the act full 0f energy and excitement, and songs like The Quiet and Reverse are reassuringly soothing without straying too close to any singer/songwriter clichés.

The headliners themselves emerge as an incredibly tight and cohesive unit, with each instrument appearing to dictate the pace without the sound ever becoming cluttered. Stone captures the essence of the band with a strong vocal melody flitting between O’Flynn and Gikling while enchanting guitar riffs and fluid drums swirl around prettily. Utmost Good utilises this formula to an even greater success, delivering a beautiful chorus that resounds powerfully.

The band’s sound is certainly free and engrossing, but most importantly their set is consistent. A captivating cover of Caribou’s Can’t Do Without You offers a touch of variety while still retaining the band’s signature sound. Feel Safe and Keep Me Alive are two more wonderful performances bristling with energy and enthusiasm. While the band’s album is undoubtedly well produced, there is a sense that perhaps the band’s recorded material fails to capture the effortless chemistry between the members, and some of the vibrancy on show here tonight is absent on the LP.

All We Are provide a brilliant show, packed full of great tunes that might fool you into thinking the band had more than one album to their name. The gig isn’t quite perfect though – the band use up all their best tunes during the main part of the set and so the encore has the underwhelming feeling of being merely tagged on at the end. However, this didn’t take away from the overall quality of what was a very good gig.