Just five years on from the release of his stratospherically successful debut album. Hypersonic Missiles, Sam Fender feels a million miles away from the North Shields busker who was plucked from near-obscurity. Since then, the singer-songwriter has blazed a near-unstoppable trail with his undeniable gift for storytelling; his songs are tales of everyday mundanity that pick at the loose threads and unravel something much larger. “I see my mother, the DWP see a number,” he sings on Seventeen Going Under – an epic-sounding coming-of-age anthem about Fender’s desperate bid to make it big and support his family. “She cries on the floor encumbered, I'm seventeen going under.”
Thanks to his knack for these sorts of close-focus stories – as well as his love of a honking great saxophone solo – Fender has earned a fitting nickname over the years: the Geordie Springsteen. And though he was down south and headlining one of London’s biggest venues, countless fans turned up sporting the black and white strip of his team Newcastle F.C.
Next February, Fender releases his third album People Watching, and despite The O2’s 20,000-strong capacity, this tour is structured like an intimate underplay: a chance for Fender to try out some of the newer material alongside his most searing hits. The title track and lead single, centering around the grief of losing a person Fender has described as a “surrogate mother” and gently touching upon the strained, crumbling state of the NHS, was incendiary.
Other new cuts such as Wild Long Lie, Arms Length, and Nostalgia’s Lie still felt like staple Fender anthems, but with gnarled and intricate melodies, they felt like a step in a new direction. The welcome addition of a new backing vocalist and band member in the shape of Brooke Bentham –Fender’s former busking buddy, and now a solo singer-songwriter in her own right – added plenty of extra depth and complexity.
Towards the final stretch, however, Fender returned to the big hitters, deploying highlights such as Seventeen Going Under, a confetti-strewn performance of The Dying Light, and a location-appropriate cover of The Clash’s London Calling. Fender closed with the politically-charged Hypersonic Missiles.
The only aspect of the gig that jarred was the price tag – £80 feels far too steep for a pre-album tour. Admittedly, he probably spent some of the ticket price on the theatrics.
Though the venue was decked out with enough pyro to give bonfire night a run for its money, fireworks exploding above the crowd as the final chorus belted out, Fender’s unshowy stage patter brought things back down to earth. “This is a song from my sophomore album,” he joked ahead of Get You Down, swapping his Geordie accent for a comedy impersonation of an American indie-rocker. “I was born in 1994, and my first Bond film was The World Is Not Enough,” he commented elsewhere. “And he was on top of this!” he yelled. ‘This’ being the Millennium Dome.
And this is perhaps the hidden key to Sam Fender’s astronomical rise – even when he’s headlining huge arenas, he has an uncanny ability to make the place feel like one big friendly local.
The O2, also on Thursday 14. Touring; more information on samfender.com
