LIVE REVIEW: Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Amigo The Devil, Dan Pryde, O2 Guildhall Southampton, 18/04/2025
2025 has been a pretty big year for punk-folk singer-songwriter Frank Turner. First off, the start of the year saw the announcement of the return of Million Dead, the post-hardcore band that Frank fronted until its disbandment in 2005. Well, technically it was first announced last October, but it was this February that saw the date split, so it counts!
Then, a few days later, Alexandra Palace hosted ‘Show 3000’, a ridiculous achievement that reflects two decades of non-stop solo touring, preceded by Show 2999 the night before at the location of Show 1, with a setlist mirroring what he played that night two decades earlier. Finally, this month has seen yet another country-wide, pretty-much-entirely sold-out tour across fourteen dates, supported by the fantastic Amigo The Devil and a bevy of local talent — including a ninth time headlining the O2 Guildhall in Southampton, and the twenty-fourth time headlining Southampton in general! Show 3025, here we come.
But, speaking of local talent, our Good Friday spent down in Southampton was first met with opener Dan Pryde. Coming onstage with a shock of blue hair and a Union Jack-emblazoned guitar graphic on his shirt, the excitement and nerves seemed to clash across his face in equal measure. Yet, the earnest and endearing figure seemed to grow in confidence over his short twenty minute set, as he immersed himself in his blend of folk rock — even while the vein in his neck got closer and closer to exploding. And, although the inter-crowd skills may have perhaps been a little lacklustre, song wise you couldn’t have asked for more. You saw the young troubadour passionately croon, the raw vocals split by enraptured, almost possessed shouts, while the blues-esque Whiney Dancer quickly evolved into toe-tapping acoustic punk-rock. And, although the aptly named At The End felt a little rushed, seeming to hurtle frantically past in an attempt keep to stage times, you could feel that it was borne from nothing beyond a sheer love for what he was playing. A great start! 8/10
There’s something electrifying about Amigo The Devil. For anyone who has yet to have the pleasure, Amigo The Devil is the project of Nashville-based Danny Kiranos who, often accompanied by bandmates Carson Kehrer, Daniel Mason, guitarist David Talley and his sister Katerina Kiranos, celebrates the menacing and the macabre with both a sense of mischievous mayhem and of unhinged mania. His lyrically dense ‘murder folk’ flits between riotously funny and terrifyingly, unsettlingly sincere — often in the space of the same song — and, as far as stage presence goes, you don’t really get better than his banjo-touting, stage-prowling, wild-eyed, psychotic self or the menagerie of chaos-wielding musicians arrayed behind him.
All this to say, he’s pretty damn good.
From the second the group walked on stage, jokes and self-deprecating comments flowing like wine through the Southampton air, you could tell you were in for… something. Quite what that something was was anyone’s guess, although the heart-palpitating intro music the group dived into certainly offered some clues. Frantic opener Murder At The Bingo Hall (‘Murder, Innit’, as per the setlist) and the dark, decisive strokes of It’s All Gone helped ease the crowd into the possessed insanity that is his live show, his intermittent gravelly growls and the distinctive twang of banjo clashing comfortably with Katerina’s cowbell and the band’s companionable joy — and then it was time for the newly minted Once Upon A Time At Tesco Pt. 1. With the name change being emphatically yelled into the mic, the theatricality and almost vaudevillian performance of the sardonically murderous track was nothing short of perfection as the band tore through one of the stand-outs from last year’s Yours Until The War Is Over, Katerina and Kehrer particularly giving it some welly as they smashed their respective tambourine and drums. The powerful Cocaine And Abel came next, a departure from the planned ‘Ell And Yous’, with the lyrical beauty blazing forth from the raw vulnerability of the track, while the somewhat pantomimic I Hope Your Husband Dies once again caught the crowd out — particularly once Danny regaled the room with the is-it-true story of the track’s background.
One quick, jaunty All Star Smash Mouth cover later, along with “a really slow, sad” circle pit, and it was time for the final duo of tracks: one, the unreleased, melodica-featuring My Body Is A Dive Bar, flits between romantic and depravity (‘my face is a barstool’, he croons, ‘waiting for you’), while the rowdy and raucous Hungover In Jonestown irreverently compares romance to being in a cult — pretty successfully, as it turns out. Ending on that iconic singalong (‘Life is a joke/ and death is the punchline’), the set felt somehow immeasurably long and painfully short all at once. And, although it’s not clear as to whether it’d be God or the devil’s domain, you best believe one or both of them will be getting a slew of prayers for Amigo’s return. An easy 10/10.
And then it was time for Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls. Right off the bat, the Turner-ordered mosh pit reflected a man who meant business — £7 pints be damned as drinks were thrown asunder during No Thank You For The Music and Girl From the Record Shop. Phew, let’s take a breather.
Nope! 1933 came up next, feeling more and more poignant every day, while the sing-alongs of Recovery and the punk-infused newcomer of Never Mind The Back Problems followed, along with Photosynthesis, before the more contemplative Letters finally gave the crowd a slight reprieve, Tarrant Anderson instead becoming the frontman’s target as he ‘leapt athletically’ into the unfortunately named Glory Box for the track’s bass solo.
After tearing through a handful more anthemic classics — Plain Sailing Weather, If Ever I Stray, The Next Storm, and the Southampton-obligatory Wessex Boy — it was time for the acoustic section.
That’s not to say it was quiet, far from it; rather, it meant the onus was more on the crowd to try and drown out the stage. Deep cut (and the slightly less favourable hometown-track) This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the One of Me was up first, at a fan’s behest, before the painfully poignant Be More Kind and fan favourite The Ballad of Me and My Friends led the room in emotional singalongs, the latter made particularly emotional with the mention of the iconic London venue Nambucca. And, although it may have itself recently reopened, that’s not the case for a lot of grassroots music venues, as Frank himself mentioned. ‘Grassroots independent music venues fucking matter – and they’re under threat’, he warned, even if it may have felt a little like preaching to the choir!
One of those independent music venues is of course The Joiners, which later that night saw Frank Turner, Amigo The Devil and a good proportion of the Guildhall audience cram themselves in for a DJ set until long into the morning — but first, there was still a good handful of songs to come!
I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous, the earworm of Do One and Try This At Home all followed, and then it was time for the ‘money maker’, I Still Believe. We doubt we’d be the only ones for whom that song got them into Frank’s music, all the way back in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and it’s never not a stupidly fun song to shout along to.
And then there were four. Somewhere Inbetween and Polaroid Picture might not quite count as iconic Turner-tunes, but it doesn’t get better than the closing duo of Get Better and Four Simple Words, the latter even seeing Amigo The Devil and friends returning once more to the stage, Danny pirouetting with his band mates along to the simultaneous slow dance and crowd surfing anthem. The stage looked almost as busy as the crowd, although at least it seemed a little less sweat-logged!
You can’t ever really want anything more from Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls, besides for it to never end. As both the heaviest folk artist and lightest punk singer around, his music manages to bring everyone together into one heaving, rejuvenated mass that can’t help but scream along to every word, whether known or not — and, for a penultimate show of a tour, it still managed to squeeze out every last iota of energy left for Turner and his team to give. Fantastic as always. 10/10
