The Waifs - The Factory - 12 July 2007

We were alerted to this one via The Waifs' mailing list, and were looking forward to it (despite Sue having to get off the plane from Turkey at 7.30pm, get home, showered and changed, and back just in time for an early start by the band at 9pm).

Missed the support act, but Ben (who also came along, with Siobahn) said it was pretty good.

The Factory was set up with rows of seats across pretty well all of the floor, and some minimal standing room up the back near the bar. Unfortunately, this layout - perhaps combined with the fact that we were actually not the oldest people in the room for a change - meant that there was close to zero atmosphere in the joint...

In any case, we arrived just as the band had come on, and they had just begun one of the tracks from the new album (perhaps the title track?). It was a goodie, and it was great to see that - even with some new directions - the band was still putting out great content.

A good night, with lots of the new stuff - although the biggest cheers still went up for the oldies (Highway One, London Still, etc). Vikki claimed to have jet lag and was grumpy, but still went off; Josh was fantastic on the guitar as always; and Donna was both amusing and soulful in the slow ones...

I was particularly impressed with the fact that the guys managed to pull off an excellent gig (and a couple of encores), despite almost no real vibe from the audience.