Thousands of music fans flocked to the final day of This is Tomorrow, a three day music festival held at exhibition park, back for its second year after it’s successful 2018 debut. After performances from the likes of Foals, The Vaccines and Noel Gallagher’s high flying birds, the festival was wrapped up with a trio of excellent performances from Lewis Capaldi, Johnny Marr and Stereophonics.
Lewis Capaldi’s late afternoon set started things off well, playing a selection of songs from his newly released album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent. Capaldi interacted brilliantly with the crowd and had everyone laughing as well as signing along. His personality you know from his social media was very much part of his stage persona, cracking jokes between songs. The crowd sang along to every word of his one hour set which covered most of his current material, with 'Someone You Loved' and 'Grace' getting the most applause.
Johnny Marr gave a well-balanced set, playing some of his own songs as well as Smiths favourites such as T'his Charming Man' and 'Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before'. His set pleased fans of both his solo work and The Smiths and for someone who wasn’t around during The Smiths heyday, it pretty much made up for the fact that I won’t ever see them live. Sunday finished with a two hour set from Welsh Rockers Stereophonics whose performance was a definite crowd pleaser. As someone who hadn’t listened to the band in years and even then, it was a greatest hits album when I was around 14, their set made me want to start listening again. They played a set including hits 'Dakota', 'Maybe Tomorrow' and 'Have A Nice Day' as well as a varied mix of their early material and newer songs. Their acoustic performance of 'Handbags and Gladrags' was the highlight of their set and showed off their skills as a live band and brought the final day of the festival to a close on a high.
