Gig review: Shed Seven, T in the Park

By David Pollock
Published on 07/07/2012 19:43

THE line “I want to go out in the sun, but there isn’t any sun”, from Shed Seven’s Where Have You Been Tonight? was Saturday’s first crushingly ironic lyric, but it surely wouldn’t be the last with the Wailers on the way.

Shed Seven

Main Stage

***

Although Dundee’s The View had opened the day’s main stage line-up with a short set under the disguise moniker of the Dryburgh Soul Band, it was surviving first division Britpoppers Shed Seven who would incite the first pang of nostalgia in the many thousands who were counting down the rain-soaked hours until the return of the Stone Roses.

Dressed in an enviably pristine cream sports jacket, singer Rick Witter is one of many who stole his king of the jungle strut and jowly frown from the Roses’ Ian Brown, and the band’s 
music is a similarly diet reproduction of the band 
of their generation, tacit admission of the fact coming when one track opened with the riff from the latter’s Waterfall.

Yet taken on its own terms, they provided an ideal festival set – lots of hits, plenty of lyrics for the crowd to sing along with during Disco Down, Going For Gold and 
an agreeably noisy Dolphin, and one genuine anthem 
in their lyrically obtuse 
but insufferably catchy Getting Better.