Nick Barker and The Fading Lights play a career spanning set on a glorious sunny afternoon at the picturesque Archie’s Creek Hotel.
Sean McMahon and The Owls warmed up the crowd with a 40 minute set of cosmic country rock. Particular stand-out was slow burning set closer “Angel At Your Back” from Sean’s 2019 release You Will Know When You’re There.
Nick Barker has always led well drilled bands, but The Fading Lights could be his tightest line-up yet. Able to turn on a dime from Replacements-esque rock of “You Kill Me” to the sombre “Endoskeleton”. Special shout-out to guitarist Michael Hubbard who pulled double-duty playing with both The Fading Lights and The Owls.
The show opened with more low-key material “Follow Me In” and “The Mission”, with “Chinese Burn” from his most recent album Exoskeleton an early stand-out.
There was a touching mid-set thematic pairing of “family business” as Nick called it. One of the stand-out songs on Exoskeleton, “Unravelling World” written for his mum, followed by “The Other House” a great song written for his grandmother.
Whilst songs from the newest album Exoskeleton featured prominently, the nearly two hour show also included some great older material with “Clockstar” from 2014’s Heartache State record sounding brilliant. 1994’s Happy Man also got some focus, with the main set closing with “Timebomb” and the encore featuring both the title track and “Station” from that record.
Appropriately enough for the rural setting, the show closed with a laid back run-through Neil Young’s ode to country living “Everybody Know’s This Is Nowhere”.