Lights shone on the disco ball as Candi Staton’s classic ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ blasted from the speakers. With this Miles Kane made his grand entrance, glitter under his eyes and ready to take Leeds by storm.

Miles Kane opened the set with his Jamie T collaboration ‘Too Little Too Late’, all before launching into the blistering riff of his 2011 classic, ‘Inhaler’. The setlist featured many songs from Kane’s 2018 album Coup de Grace to which the neon sign of the same illuminated the stage in response. This included his latest single ‘Killing the Joke’, a slow and synthy ballad that refreshingly cuts through Kane’s usual swagger seen on tracks such as ‘Silverscreen’. Unfortunately, the line ‘hotel lobby I won’t go upstairs without you’ recalls Kane’s despicable and sexist behaviour towards a female journalist where he concluded the interview by asking if she ‘want[ed] to go upstairs?’

Part way through the set Miles Kane also performed a guitar heavy rendition of Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’. This reworking of a disco classic appropriately matched the 70’s vibe of the evening, especially with the silver streamers that draped the back of the stage. Miles Kane also performed a more techno version of ‘Colour of the Trap’, the title track of his 2011 debut album and treated the crowd to the album’s notable single ‘Rearrange’.

Throughout the gig, Kane thanked the raucous Leeds crowd who responded by chanting ‘Miles, Miles, Miles fucking Kane’. He then finished his set on ‘Shavambacu’ before charging into ‘Come Closer’, the unmistakable riff sending the crowd wild, particularly as he prolonged the ‘ooooh’s and ‘aaaah’s until he walked off stage.  This proved a fitting end to a high energy gig that brimmed with sass and swagger.

Phoebe Berman

Header image via Jessica McCarrick