The Newcastle native has said he will take a break from performing to rest his voice – when he returns, he’ll have hordes of fans ready to shout his songs back at him
If you wanted to get a sense of just how many people Sam Fender’s very specific brand of Geordie heartland rock has reached, you’d consider the fact that tonight’s show, in front of 25,000 people in south Manchester, represents one of his more intimate.
By wearing his heart so avowedly on his sleeve, Fender has scaled heights that would at one time have been unimaginable to him. Earlier this summer, he boxed off sold-out stadium shows both in London and at his beloved St. James’ Park. His passion for Newcastle United is clearly infectious; there are more black-and-white replica jerseys on display tonight than when his team venture south to play City or United.
He’s surprisingly light on the football chat between songs, though, perhaps because his side are currently experiencing the kind of nightmarish transfer window that makes you wake up in a cold sweat.
It hasn’t been an ideal summer for Fender, either; the vocal issues that have dogged him for years forced him to pull a slew of shows last month. He’s in fine voice tonight, though, and his songs speak for themselves anyway; on playful form, he deploys “Angel in Lothian” as a set opener for the first time ever, one of a slew of songs about small-town frustration that fired “Seventeen Going Under”, the album that led him to venues of this size.
He’s playing in front of audiences this big for two reasons. The first is that his music is rousing, and anthemic, reminiscent of his idol, Bruce Springsteen, in the way that his choruses soar, and practically force the crowd to roar along. Secondly and arguably more importantly, though, Fender writes songs for disenchanted youth.
The album artwork for his latest record, People Watching, is a shot by the late, great Newcastle photographer Tish Murtha, who’s vital work in documenting working class life in Thatcher’s Britain had been largely forgotten before a documentary by Paul Sng brought it back into the public eye last year.
It’s a fitting collaboration, in the sense that Fender’s greatest works are also vivid snapshots of everyday Newcastle, whether it be the manner in which the magnificent “The Borders” unspools local trauma (tonight, with some help from a fan on guitar), or in the ever-affecting “Dead Boys”, a paean to young men lost to suicide that is as discomfiting as it is crucial.
Before he departs, there’s an acknowledgement that not all is perfect in Fender’s world; he’s going to go away, he says, to “get [his] voice right” before he starts work on another album.
The gig is cut short, too, his usual three-song encore cut to one track, the ferocious “Hypersonic Missiles”. Before that, he closes the main set with his masterpiece, “Seventeen Going Under”, an evocative and politically-charged portrait of his teen years that clearly resonates with the capacity crowd that screams it back at him. On tracks like that, Fender channels his hero, Springsteen, as he was at his very best: young, angry, hungry, searching.
