Conventional indie wisdom has it that Athlete are something of a one trick pony; a band for whom one slightly saccharine, but ultimately rather sweet, lighters-aloft ballad will always be the high watermark of their career, a brief moment of passable success which they will never repeat. Way back in the Winter of 04/05, when Coldplay were still melting hearts with their Rush of Blood and (almost) X&Y ballads, Wires, that moving tale about the desperation and euphoria of childbirth, proved to be a very timely slice of mawkishness, and the great British public swallowed it whole, choking back the tears at the same time. For a short while, it looked like Athlete could be pretenders to Chris Martin's throne, the album from whence said smash hit came proceeding to fly off the shelves, and the band's crowds continuing to grow and grow with every performance. Sadly, subsequent releases failed to recapture the winning formula and a series of rather trad, MOR singles consigned the band to the same indie scrapheap that Travis have been keeping warm for the last five years. Nowadays, if you ask your average alt aficionado, they'll tell you that Athlete's days are numbered, that they'll never repeat past glories and, quite probably, that those glories weren't exactly 'all that' in the first place.
There's a grain or two of truth in this; Athlete certainly aren't the most thrilling band in the world, and for all they may try their damndest, they'll probably never write another Wires. As demonstrated by tonight's set, they're a decidedly monochrome outfit, peddling more or less the same formula with each and every song and rarely venturing outside of their comfort zone. This is perhaps why they've invited My First Tooth along on their mini sojourn around the UK; while the Northampton-based four piece certainly aren't purveyors of all things death metal, they do have a slightly more varied pallet than their successors, largely thanks to their charming penchant for instrumentation. Vocalist Sophie Galpin bangs her drum, shakes her maracas, abuses her violin and occasionally plays the mandolin, adding a luscious extra layer to their joyous indie-folk (oh and Ross Witt, her partner in crime, gets a go at the mouth organ). They're a lively bunch, talkative and endearing, and their songs have an impressively sophisticated knack for making the sugar sweet seem palpable. They are also far too cute for their own good; so much so, in fact, that when they politely ask us to stomp along to a few of their tracks, we simply cannot help but oblige.
To be fair to Athlete, their status as the nicest boys in rock certainly helps their cause too; tonight, for all the set may occasionally lull, it isn't long before Joel grabs our attention again, his engaging patter scoring major points with this most jovial and polite of crowds. He jokes about the absence of their drummer - who could not make it to Newcastle for reasons unknown - and his unflattering laptop replacement which, in light of the fact that this is a 'stripped back' tour, actually seems rather fitting. He's forceful, yet restrained, about encouraging the crowd to sing along, particularly during the opening Half Light, and playfully boisterous about their choice of support act, cheekily chastisting the crowd when they don't respond with sufficient enthusiasm to his request for a round of applause in their honour, begging everyone to "just give them a tenner for God's sake, they are very poor."
However, for all it is Joel's charm that ultimately sees the band through, as well as the occasional realisation that actually, yes, you do know this one (Rockscene, anyone? El Salvador?), the success of tonight's show is largely the result of one stupendously drunken woman and her doting husband, whose very vocal presence has the effect of breaking the ice and transforming the performance into something more communal. Stumbling inelegantly around the front row, Julie, as we later discover she's called, is clearly having the time of her life (although whether she'll remember that fact in the morning is another matter), dancing to songs without a beat, making up the words to the tracks that she doesn't know and occasionally screaming lyrics at the top of her voice at the most inopportune moments (usually when, you know, there are no lyrics).
It is these barbed utterances that first elicit a response from the band, Joel choosing to cut short the Beautiful middle eight because he's in a fit of hysterics. Perhaps inevitably, she becomes the focal point of the whole show, prompting a round of applause in her honour, chants of her name and even a section of the set of her own when Joel actively encourages her to sing out of tune, at the top of her voice, as he strums the opening chords of The Getaway, which he plays unplugged in the middle of the crowd. For all she's rather worse for wear by the end, looking like she's about to vomit all over the monitors during a triumphant Wires, she essentially manages, single-handedly, to give the show the extra edge it needed to become something memorable. Kudos to Athlete for responding in kind, and kudos to her husband for keeping her on her own two feet.
Without Julie, there's a good chance that this evening's reimagining of Athlete's hits may have seemed like just another gig; passable, sure, endearing perhaps, and inoffensive certainly. With her, the barriers between band and audience are dismantled and the show feels more participatory, something that we're all in together. That it takes a sloshed fiftysomething to elicit such a feeling is perhaps a little telling but, at the end of the day, it's the overall experience that matters and this, ladies and gentlemen, is one that the good folk of Newcastle won't forget in a hurry. If Athlete can play more shows like this - charming, pleasant and occasionally unpredictable - then perhaps they can recapture the spirit of 2005. Quick, someone call Julie, we've got a job for her...
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