They seemed to have dropped out of sight for a long while, so when I saw they were playing at Portsmouth Guildhall, I bought a ticket.
The journey down the A3 was easy enough and I parked in the nearby station car park, making my way into the venue in plenty of time to see the support act.
This was a 4 piece group, led by a blonde woman, called Extra Joy.
Sometimes support acts are horribly misjudged for an audience, but they were an excellent choice for Hard Fi, delivering an energetic indy-rock set that attracted more people as they played.
As is often the case for support acts, the sound balance wasn't great with the instruments drowning out the vocals, but generally they were pretty good and got everyone in a positive mood on a freezing cold Tuesday night.
One of the best support acts I've seen in recent times.
There was a relatively short break until Hard Fi themselves came on stage at 9PM.
By then, the hall was pretty much full, although as I was right at the front, I can't be 100% sure it was completely so and there were seats taking up a reasonable part of the rear of the hall.
Around me, there were plenty of the 'faithful'. I didn't intend to stay at the front (right against the barrier) for the whole set, but in the end I did, so I can't comment on how the sound balance was around the venue.
Most of the set was crowd pleasing old stuff that the mostly 40 somethings (and the few older and younger people) lapped up.
They started with 'Middle Eastern Holiday' and 'Gotta Reason' before moving through a few lesser known, but still familiar tracks from their first 3 albums.
The tour supported the recent release of a 4 track EP and they, probably wisely, played those one after the other, in the middle of the set.
On the positive side, they held up well amongst the favourites, having the familiar hard driving guitar sound of the liveliest of Hard Fi favourites and 'Don't Go Making Plans' didn't sound a million miles away from the sound of tracks on Duran Duran's 2023 Danse Macabre album (which I say in a complimentary way).
After that, the main set rounded out with old favourites, 'Cash Machine', 'Suburban Knights' and 'Hard To Beat', which had the crowd singing along.
The inevitable encore started with front man, Richard Archer, alone on a guitar delivering 'Move on Now', one of their slower hits, but still a great track.
The rest of the band rejoined him for a lively final trio of old favourites, 'Unneccesary Trouble', 'Stars of CC TV' and 'Living for the Weekend'.
It was refreshing to see a band with the original lineup all present and the distinctive sound of Hard Fi is made up of all the group, which probably explains why they sounded so good all these years on.
The set was surprisingly short, only about 1h 20min, which I'm sure left a few people wondering where favourites like 'Feltham is singing out' were, but overall it was a highly enjoyable performance.
Of course, it was a cold Tuesday night, but Hard Fi had everyone feeling as if it was the weekend and I'm sure most people, like me, left feeling Hard Fi are great live.
One of my favourite gigs of 2024!
Setlist:
Middle Eastern Holiday
Gotta Reason
Stay Alive
Tied Up Too Tight
Good for Nothing
Better Do Better
Always and Forever
Don't Need You
Don’t Go Making Plans
Cash Machine
Suburban Knights
Hard to Beat
Encore:
Move on Now
Unnecessary Trouble
Stars of CCTV
Living for the Weekend
