As It Is waste no time in hyping up the crowd tonight. They take to the stage to the sounds of ‘Lets Get Ready To Rumble’, jumping and skipping around already. From here they launch straight into ‘Speak Soft’.
Right from the beginning the connection between the frontman and the crowd is obvious. Patty Walter’s is always eager to lean closer to the audience, often crouching down to be on their eye level. As they sing the same songs to each other its clear it means as much to the crowd as it does the band who wrote the song.
The unpredictability of Walters’ movements on stage and his sudden energetic outbursts means that there is never a dull moment on stage. This is combined with the onstage chat between the two vocalists. As It Is are fast becoming the champions of onstage banter in the British scene. Things start with the vocalist admitting, “We did okay I suppose,” when talking about their debut album, but things pick up. We get a glimpse into what goes on back stage after Patty is scolded for using the phrase ‘super duper’ (which we think sounds great in his accent!). Ben Biss told him, “Don’t say that on stage ever again! That’s like me when I tweeted ‘let’s get jiggy with it’, but that wasn’t in front of 400 people.”
After a chat about the possibility of Patty not getting Kerrang! Award due to the fact they are nominated for best British newcomer and, in his words, “I know I’m not that British,” everything culminates in him announcing, “Benjamin Biss is an asshole”. They’ve really got the art of on stage chat down to a t, without falling into the blink-182 trap and being crude about it.
It’s so obvious that the band are enjoying themselves onstage and their smiles are so infectious it’s pretty impossible for the audience not to be loving it too. The high energy set, with a slight break in the middle for ‘My Oceans Are Lakes’, leaves everyone on a high, as most of the audience crowds the merch stand, eager for a selfie with the band of the hour.
