What baffles me is that Real Friends doesn’t even have a full length album out, but has the fan base they do. Â They have diehards, people who are so confident and in love with them, and it blows my mind how they’ve achieved immense success without releasing anymore than an EP. Â It’s seriously impressive, and I had never seen them live before, so I had high expectations and did not want to be let down. Â I certainly wasn’t.
Dan Lambton, bushy-haired vocalist with enough energy to posi-jump through the whole set, had a much better voice than I thought. Â When you’re lashing out disses to your ex in a pop-punk song, you don’t pay as much attention to vocals as lyrics. Â However, both were fantastic and hearing them live made me realize that these guys weren’t just coasting on their success. Â They really gave it their all, and the band’s sound was perfect, all the instruments simple but crisp. Â I loved the band’s confidence, and their gratitude. Â They weren’t cocky or arrogant at all, even though they truly have every reason to be.
The crowd was ruthless. Â So many people were crowd surfing and moshing, jumping up and down and causing trouble. Â It was the craziest crowd I’d seen in a really long time. Â The passion of the fans mixed with the energy and the thumping background music they had, it was intense and I was glad I wasn’t in the crowd because I would’ve been terrified. Â The security guards had a lot to deal with, but handled it adequately. Â The desperate throwing of oneself onto a crowd is a pretty funny thing to see, and I got to watch it happen over and over again during this set.
Real Friends deserves every bit of success they have, and more. Â They are fantastic performers and certainly know how to work a crowd.
