Martin McAloon (Prefab Sprout) - Login Lounge, Camberley- 19th November 2025

For many years Prefab Sprout have been on my 'want to see sometime' list, but they never tour and I found out fairly recently that front-man and song writer, Paddy McAloon suffers from Ménière's disease, a condition affecting the inner ear that causes vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss, which means he can't play with other musicians, so it seems it will never happen, but then Martin McAloon's "Two Wheels Good" tour appeared on my Facebook feed.

Martin is Paddy's younger brother and bass player with the band, so this seemed as close as I was likely to get and, better still, he was playing a small venue I'd never visited before less than 10 miles away. I bought a ticket.

One Facebooker bemoaned the fact that it was 'just him with a guitar', so I knew I wasn't getting a full band experience, but I was still interested to hear how the songs would sound live, especially in such a stripped back form.

It was below freezing as I made my way into the Login Lounge, but I was greeted by a friendly woman and wandered upstairs to the performance area.

By day, the Login Lounge is a remote workspace with meeting rooms people can rent by the hour to work from and it looks a pretty pleasant environment to do that in.

Upstairs there was a large bar area at one end and a lot of tables leading to a fair sized (for the size of the venue) stage. Lighting was good, not too bright, but equally not coal hole dark. Apparently, they hold lots of music and comedy events here in the evenings and at weekends.

I sat with a friendly couple from Wokingham and we chatted about musical tastes before a figure with straggly white hair and beard appeared and greeted us with a cheery "Hello!" - Martin looks very much like his brother does in recent photographs.

The McAloons and their friend, Mick, the drummer hail from 'a village between villages' in Durham and always ploughed their own furrow, musically, but are a band I hold in fond memory, partly, at least, for the time I played their greatest hits album over and over on a drive home from a glorious day's skiing in St Anton. "Cars and Girls", especially takes me back to that day.

The tour was to celebrate 40 years of their most famous album, "Steve McQueen" (released as "Two Wheels Good" in the USA, hence the tour name) and the first set consisted of the tracks from the album in order.

Martin was alone on the stage with an array of guitars which he explained were all tuned to different keys for different songs.

He started with "Faron Young" and, if I'm honest, it didn't work that well to my ears - I started to wonder if the Facebook naysayer had a point...

Next was "Bonny", a song I didn't know, but sounded far better than "Faron Young".

This was followed by a song I know well, "Appetite", which did sound good - It's not a 'big production' song and sounded pretty good, Martin's voice not sounding dissimaler (allowing for the passing of time) to his brother's and he can certainly play a guitar well, although a few times during the set, the lack of other instruments did make a key change seem a bit abrupt.

The next two familiar songs, "When Love Breaks Down" and "Johnny, Johnny" (titled "Goodbye Lucille #1" on the album) were equally good and I was starting to enjoy the set, Martin chatting amiably between the songs, recounting anecdotes from the bands time, notably around the writing or recording of the songs.

The rest of the album tracks were less familiar to me, but enjoyable, it seemed Martin had hit his stride.

The first set rounded out with a song that I didn't catch the title of, but he said they'd wanted on the album, but producer Thomas Dolby didn't like!. It would have been fine as an album track, but apparently, failed to make the next two albums as well, so became a bit of a 'lost' track - He actually asked us not to record it, to keep it that way!

Around a 15 minute break then ensued as Martin took a break and the audience nipped to the loo and/or bought a drink for the second set.

Martin's promotion for the tour promised 'all the hits' and he certainly seemed to cover the ones I recalled.

He started with a song Jimmy Nail covered, "Cowboy Dreams" and then "Hey Manhattan", a song that has a 'big' sound, but he managed to pull it off pretty well with just a guitar! As a contrast, the very stripped down, even in original form, "Cruel" followed and then a few songs I knew less well "Nancy Let Down Your Hair" (seemingly about a crush on a female boss!), "Spinning Belinda" (this was requested from the crowd and he'd forgotten the words, so played a bit of the tune), "Horsin' Around", "Cue Fanfare", "Machine Gun Ibiza" and "Atlantis".

In between, he played "We Let The Stars Go" as a request and it was warmly received.

The last few songs were a mix of hits and requests from the audience, "Dublin" and "Golden Calf" being slotted in between "Carnival 2000", "Life Of Surprises", "Cars and Girls" and, unsurprisingly, "King Of Rock n Roll" as the finale.

There was no pretence of an encore, just a "Thanks for coming along and I'll be at the merch stand over there any moment now!"

Would I have liked to have heard these songs played with a full band to give the bigger production sound some of them deserve? I can't deny I would, but that's very unlikely to ever happen, so it was great to hear these songs played by someone who played them originally and with a bit of a twist due to the limited instrumentation avaiable.

I did wonder if he may have backing tracks to fill out the sound (My first time seeing Echobelly did this, to good effect), but that didn't seem to be the case, everything came from whichever guitar he used and an effects box for it.

On reflection, I'd have liked to have heard "If You Don't Love Me" and "The Sound of Crying" rather than some of the less familiar songs, but I've only come to that opinion the next day, so it wasn't a big problem.

Overall, though, I did enjoy the gig. Martin's a personable fellow, his voice close to his brother's and his music the way (on the whole) the band would have wanted it, within the constraints.

I suspect his performance would seem a little empty in a bigger venue, but in the excellent Login Lounge it worked very well and I came away very happy to have enjoyed an evening of Prefab Sprout music at last!

Setlist:
Steve McQueen album - first set
Faron Young
Bonny
Appetite
When Love Breaks Down
Johnny Johnny/Goodbye Lucille #1 (Name of track on Album)
Hallelujah
Moving the River
Horsin' Around
Desire As
Blueberry Pies
When the Angels
Bonus track

Other Songs - second set
Cowboy Dreams
Hey Manhattan
Cruel
Nancy let down you hair
Spinning belinda (a bit of the tune, he'd forgotten the lyrics)
We let the stars go
Cue fanfare
Machine gun ibiza
Atlantis
Carnival 2000
Dublin
Life of surprises
Golden Calf
Cars and Girls
King of Rock n Roll

The Devout - The Boiler Room, Guildford - 14/11/2025

Some tribute bands are really good and The Devout have a reputation as one of the best Depeche Mode tribute bands (from how many, though , I don't know) and the Boiler Room was packed when I arrived at around 7:30

I was a fan of DM in their early, Vince Clark and a little later days, but lost interest as they veered into the leather and studs period.

Sadly, the first hour of The Devout's set was mostly dirgey leather period songs that, especially with the singer's habit of shouting "Guildford!" and letting the crowd do far more than their fair share of the singing, merged into a mostly dull wall of morose music.

There were 3 people on the stage, two at the back behind synthesizers and a singer in a vest.

Musically, they sounded OK, although mostly the sound was coming from synthesizers, so one wonders how much they were actually doing live, but the 'singer' really wasn't that great. Even to my untrained ear, I could hear him clearly missing notes plenty of times, which might explain why he was so keen to shout at the audience and hold his mike out to them.

When I got home, I put on "A Broken Frame" and the difference in vocal quality between The Devout's front man and DM's was night and day. A stark contrast, for example, to the Cure tribute I'd seen a couple of months earlier.

For a couple of songs, one of the synthesizer players took the vocal lead and he had a far more tuneful voice to my ear.

I'll be honest, an hour in and I was seriously considering cutting my losses and heading home for an early night and a Horlicks.

The performance wasn't great, the venue packed and oppressively hot for a November evening (There was a brief pause at one point as a young man had to be helped out after passing out, although it still didn't compare to the Summer night I'd seen Dave Wakeling's version of The Beat).

However, the last ten songs almost redeemed the evening for me.

Starting with DM's first single, "New Life", they rattled through a number of the livelier early songs, along with later hits such as "Everything Counts" and "Personal Jesus", which clearly enlivened the audience, rounding out with the iconic, but not universally loved by DM fans, "Just Can't Get Enough" (which went down a storm) and then the downbeat "Never Let Me Down Again" to finish off at which point I made my way to the welcome coolness of the evening.

It was apparent from walking in that The Devout have a strong following, but I didn't feel they lived up to the hype.

The main thing that I took from the evening, though, was that I have a narrow window of favourite DM songs and the later material, on the whole, is just not for me. If it is, you may well enjoy The Devout more than I did, plenty of people seemed to.

No photos or videos, it was far too crowded to get a decent line of sight - The one at the top is taken from The Devout's website

Setlist:
Black Celebration
Policy of Truth
World in My Eyes
A Question of Time
Sacred
Stripped
Blasphemous Rumours
Leave in Silence
Photographic
Something to Do
Somebody
A Question of Lust
In Your Room
Told You So
Walking in My Shoes
New Life
See You
People Are People
Shake the Disease
Home
Personal Jesus
But Not Tonight
Everything Counts
Enjoy the Silence
Just Can't Get Enough
Never Let Me Down Again

ABBA Voyage - ABBA Arena, London - 9th November 2025

I had heard so many people say how good the ABBA Voyage show was that I was intrigued. As my wife, unusually, expressed an interest as well, I bought us two tickets for an afternoon session

We made the trek to the Olympic Park from Waterloo station relatively easily and grabbed a burger and a beer before going in to the Arena.

Inside there were further food and drink and merchandise outlets, as well as toilets and complimentary cloakrooms.

Our particular event had been hijacked by Radio 2 and turned into a Children In Need benefit and Scott Mills was holding a DJ session in the pre-Arena area, which made it pretty crowded, but passed a few minutes before we dropped off our coats and headed into the Dance Floor area.

The venue has a fairly small floor level area and 3 seated areas behind. It's not a massive venue, but it's a good sized one.

As we went in an animation of a snowy forest was playing on mesh screens dropped down in front of us and this continued for around 45 minutes until an announcement that the event was about to begin.

Flashing vertical white lights heralded things and then the 4 virtual members of ABBA appeared (seemingly) from the floor of the stage.

The first two song, "The Visitors" and "Hole In Your Sole" were relatively obscure ones, I guess they work you in gently as you're still trying to work out what is happening on the 'stage' and how they are doing it.

Things definitely hit their stride with "SOS" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" ("Ah ha!" as Alan Partridge would say), followed by the gentler, more melodic, but still familiar "Chiquitita" and "Fernando".

The performance makes clever use of lighting, huge, almost wrap around, screens, a live band and, of course, the "ABBAtars".

They are mostly the size you would expect to see people on a stage and, as such the detail isn't too clear. Once or twice I recall thinking the movements looked a little stiff (like computer game characters), but more often I marvelled at the natural little actions that I would have felt extremely difficult to replicate, a flick of the hair, a half turn, it was remarkable at times and a credit to the people who put this all together.

Photography and Videoing is forbidden on pain of expulsion, so here's an approved video about ABBA Voyage to give a taste of it

Throughout, too, the ABBAtars were projected in large scale onto screens either side of the stage and, now and then looked a little CGI'd, but at times the detail was so good that I feel convinced that some of the content must have been based upon high quality film footage from the 70s and 80s.

However it was done, it was very impressive and it was hard at times not to feel you were watching people perform live in front of you.

The band were good, getting a turn to perform when they performed most of Does Your Mother Know without the ABBAtars.

They were absent too, for a couple of songs, when an animation of an Aztec-looking person took on a fantasy journey to a castle where the images of the band members were hewn in rock. It was different and a reminder that you weren't at a live concert, but an audio-visual show.

The lighting played a big part in this.

At one point lines of dotted lights showed on the 'stage' over and behind the ABBAtars, while rods of lights descended over the audience, echoing the lights on stage and giving the impression of an extension of one place. One another song, beams of red lights over the dance floor area did likewise.

The song that started it all, "Waterloo" was shown in the form of archive film footage, projected on the mesh screens ahead of the stage again.

That said, it was genuinely quite hard not to react, in the most part, as if you were seeing and hearing live performers on the stage.

All 4 ABBAtars had a little chat with the audience and they even appeared as they do now briefly at the end to thank us for coming.

The main 'set' ended with "Dancing Queen" and then they were quickly 'back' for an encore featuring "The Winner Takes It All" (probably my favourite ABBA song, they do melancholy very well I think).

We left, both very happy we'd come along.

However, on the way home we agreed there seemed little point going again. It's not a live gig, the next time will be the same.

It is, though, a great technical feat and an enjoyable experience - Go and see it, even if you're not an ABBA fan, there is plenty to enjoy!

PS: Some have decried this as a threat to live music. Obviously, for ABBA it's not, they will never tour again, but I can see it proving popular as a concept for many performers past their best (I imagine a similar Beatles concert, for example, would be hugely popular) or as a way for people to see performers in huge demand; someone like Taylor Swift springs immediately to mind, even if not for me, to be reachable by even bigger audiences.

Setlist:
The Visitors
Hole in Your Soul
SOS
Knowing Me, Knowing You
Chiquitita
Fernando
Mamma Mia
Does Your Mother Know
Take a Chance on Me
Eagle
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)
Voulez-vous
Don’t Shut Me Down
I Still Have Faith in You
Waterloo
Thank You for the Music
Money, Money, Money
Dancing Queen
Encore:
The Winner Takes It All