Sea Girls - Live in Nottingham Review

Sea Girls – Live in Nottingham 15/05/2022

Sea Girls are a four-piece indie band from London that are well renowned in the independent music scene. With two great albums to their name, they’ve become popular amongst fans with lead vocalist, Henry Camamile’s raspy sound and the familiar indie sound of the band.

They played Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms as part of their album tour supporting their somewhat questionable sophomore record, “Homesick”. With this being my second time seeing the band in this venue, and the first time being in late 2019, I want to see some improvement in their live performance.

Sea Girls’ 40-minute set was filled with ten songs, with nine of those coming from their new album, “Homesick”, and as someone who isn’t the best of fans of the record, a lot of their set was pretty respectable. Songs like “Sick”, “Lonely” and “Hometown” were particular highlights as they sounded better than the recording we got on the album, but we also saw songs such as album single, “Sleeping With You” actually sounding weaker live as a result, and the track “Friends” being just as mediocre as the original, if not even more so.

The main stand out of the night for me was Sea Girls’ chemistry as a band. All the way through, their hearts were in it, they were loving exactly what they were doing, they fell in love with the atmosphere and everything else, and that made them play excellently. As a result of that, their chemistry was second to none and a lot of what they sounded precisely like tonight they do on their mastered recordings, which sometimes can be a negative thing as they can sound too much like their original counterparts but this didn’t seem to matter, because of the sheer passion all four of them had for their material. The live instrumentation was flawless, with guitar Rory Young being a particular standout throughout the show, with bassist Andrew Dawson being great also, even more so during songs such as “Cute Guys” and “DNA”. Vocalist Henry Camamile was also fantastic, with his voice sounding near enough identical and his stage presence being pretty good too, but this came with some flaws with tonight’s performance. He forgot the lyrics during “Paracetamol Blues” but styled it out and recovered exceptionally well, in a way where the crowd didn’t notice. Despite his stage presence being rather good, during “Sleeping With You”, he had his foot on the barrier for quite a while, as if he was going to jump into the crowd but didn’t quite have the courage to do it, and this same quirk on stage grew tiresome after a while, but his performance was still excellent and didn’t take away from his brilliant live vocals.

At ten songs, tonight’s setlist was incredibly short, and with the show clocking in at around 40 minutes, and nine out of ten of the songs were from the band’s sophomore record “Homesick”, in which the album, as previously stated, isn’t at all strong, alongside “All I Want To Hear You Say” from the bands’ debut album, “Open Up Your Head”. I feel as though there was more of an over reliance on the new record, which I know is the point of the tour, but I wanted to see some more of the band’s amazing older material being showcased, but having said that, the songs that were chosen were (mostly) performed well and transitioned well into each other. Besides the addition of “Friends”, this was a pretty good setlist.

Overall, Sea Girls did majorly improve their live performance since the last time I saw them. Their performance was slick, their live chemistry was sublime and their passion was undeniable. They had the whole crowd at their fingertips which was great to watch, and they gave the strong 450 capacity Nottingham crowd a fantastic performance. However, missing vocals, a lacklustre setlist and Camamile’s stage presence growing tiresome after a while meant that it wasn’t the best show of the year. They have work to do before they go on their biggest ever tour in November, playing venues such as Rock City and Alexandra Palace, but with some ironing out, they could make these shows the five-star standard they’re supposed to be.

Ranking: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Setlist: