Summer is over, Halloween and Bonfire Night gone. It'll soon be Christmas. In the meantime there are lots of gigs. Fitting into this build up to Christmas were Echobelly on the final date of their tour, celebrating 30 years of their album, On. Returning to Nottingham again, the band saw their venue moved up from Metronome to the larger space of The Level. Expectations were high...
I missed the first song due to a prior engagement and entered the room to a sea of fans who had come out to see the 30th anniversary tour of the Echobelly album On.
The album feels as relevant as ever, if not more so. Echobelly lead Sonya Madan (LeftLion spoke to her just last month, when she shared memories of recording On) has such a great voice and, watching from the side, it was mesmerising to see how she moved to and from the microphone pulling away but then being drawn back.
Running through their catalogue and quickly getting Great Things covered, the band seemed to really be enjoying themselves. There was a bit of banter of "We love you Sonya" from the crowd and quite a bit of dancing.
Then, "We're going to play some B-sides from the time of the first album. Do you remember B-sides? Do your kids know what a B-side is?" Sonya joked. I don't usually agree with writing out a list of songs played at a gig, but these deserve a wider audience so it's worth mentioning some of them: Close...But, On Turn On, Car Fiction (the sadly-missed opening song), Natural Animal, Atom, Aloha Lolita and Dark Therapy were all included tonight.
Tonight's show was primarily On and those B-sides, bringing smiles all round from the band and audience. The show was taking people back to their student days and The Level was the perfect venue to do it in. There is nothing wrong with looking back, but Echobelly are moving forward. A great tour, great songs and great crowd. What more can you want?
It was nice to be able to wander around and view Echobelly from the floor and balcony tonight; the venue was busy, but not so crammed as to make it uncomfortable. There was brisk business being done on the merchandise stall and no more medium T-shirts. I got the last one.
The band finally ended the show with an early B-side, I Can't Imagine the World Without Me. We can't imagine the world without you either.
Echobelly performed at The Level on 8th November 2025.
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