An American's first time in Cardiff..
Hello everyone!
First off, I want to take a second to thank the entire city of Cardiff. I had such a wonderful time in the city and especially at the show Saturday evening.
I was out on a walk last September(ish?) when I saw a notification about the 20th anniversary LoveKraft release and went to the SFA website to see more. As a side note, I rediscovered what an incredible record LoveKraft really is. I saw the Euro tour announcement and convinced myself immediately this was a good idea/excuse for a UK trip. I figured this may be my best chance to see SFA play live again.
The first time I saw SFA was in 2002 at the 40 Watt in Athens, GA. I loved it so much that I went to the show in Atlanta a few days later. Both of these shows had a capacity of 400-500 people and this is around the crowd size in the shows I saw for the next 6-7 years.
So seeing a crowd around 10x that size in Cardiff was something really incredible. We opted for the balcony seats because A) We were already spending money to travel, may as well go all the way and B) All the other tickets sold out quickly. Everything sounded great there! A bit muddy with some of the bass but that's expected at almost every arena show I've seen.
I'm not a writer so I won't give a full on review of the show but here are some of my favorite moments of the experience.
- There wasn't just an energy inside the arena but seemingly in the entire city the day of the show. Everyone in Cardiff seemed to have a SFA story to share. Lots of places playing SFA on the day of the show. The city really seems to love the band.
- Seeing so many people at the merch pop-up was so cool. I went later in the day on Friday and walked out with the print and the coffee, the two things I wanted.
- The crowd was amazing to me! In the US, I'm accustomed to crowds with very little knowledge of the songs so seeing everyone singing along, pumping fists, and becoming a part of the show was a different and magical experience.
- This show was the most I've appreciated Cian. I'd seen Mountain People before but the outro is pure bliss. I think I went into some sort of trance state at that point. I loved where he took MDGAF. I've seen the full-on rave scene unfold but what he did in Cardiff was ambient and beautiful and I could have listened to another hour of that.
- LoveKraft was the reason I went and was bummed at first that they didn't play anything from the record. Cloudberries live is one of my favorite things. But I ended being so happy seeing so many songs from Fuzzy Logic, Radiator, and Guerrilla.
Definitely still on a high from this experience and so glad I took the trip and decided to make this happen.