Embrace

• This Event
• Line-up
• News
• Reviews
• Photos
• Forum
• Event Home

Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival 2006

Friday 11th to Saturday 12th August 2006
Belladrum Estate, by Beauly, Inverness-shire IV4 7BA, Scotland MAP
£60 in advance (under 12s free)

It’s better to get this straight out of the way to begin with – I normally loathe Embrace. Even the very mention of their name usually sends me into such an irrational rage, I usually get the urge to kick over some tables and go and chew on drawing pins for half an hour – they were the very first band I walked out of in the past. It’s fair to say that I’m not their biggest fan.

As they were arguably the biggest band of the weekend, I went along to see how they would cope with closing a festival, as it’s not an easy trick to pull off, trying to mix the big sing-a-long numbers as well as pleasing hardcore fans by dropping in lesser known album tracks.

However, this is probably the only time you will see these three words accredited to my name – Embrace were fantastic. The area in front of the Garden Stage was jam packed with fans, and as soon as the band took to the stage, the noise was incredible.

Throwing away "All You Good Good People" as the second song was a brave move, but the crowd were singing along to every word, dancing and clapping all the way through the song. All the more impressive was that the following song in the set was their biggest ever hit – number 2 single "Natures Law", Embrace are certainly not short on confidence at the moment.

Although the sound mix was slightly out (Danny McNamara’s vocals could have been turned up slightly as much as the bass guitar), the band sounded on top form, even the usually dodgy vocals fail to blight other numbers such as “Come Back To What You Know”.

Danny is much more of a charismatic front man than before, getting the crowd jumping as much as possible during the more rock orientated numbers off of the recent album "This New Day", and is possibly a good part of the reason to why they were so enjoyable.

The biggest disappointment was an atrocious run-through of the Chris Martin penned "Gravity" – the vocals were well out, the band just trudged through the song, and doesn’t even come close to actually doing the song itself justice.

By the end the set comes to a close with "Ashes" and an encore of "The Good Will Out", where the whole crowd are singing along to the simple "La La La La La" ending, the band look elated to have played to such a responsive crowd. It’s unbelievable that the band have gone from the skip of failed Britpop bands back to being bigger than they ever were before – even hardcore cynics of them couldn’t fail to be impressed by them tonight, and they certainly showed that they’re destined for even bigger things.

"Out Of Nothing" is still a very dodgy album, mind. Sorry, old habits die hard...