Goldhawks – Tuesday 9th February – HMV’s Next Best Thing, The Borderline

Tuesday night was a busy night at The Borderline. HMV’s Next Best Thing was on and great bands such as Little Comets and Mirrors were about. Also performing were one of our favourite London based bands Goldhawks, who were tipped on the night by John Kennedy as one of the bands to watch out for in 2010. After seeing Goldhawks perform late last year at Barfly EF couldn’t help but make sure to be there.

London based Goldhawks are as ambitious as any other city band except they actually have the talent that most of them lack. This young bunch of musicians are mainly the work of frontman and music-junky Bobby Cook, who after releasing his own material as a singer/song writer realised he wanted more sound and so got his brother and friends on board.

Goldhawks warmed up the crowd with their track 1996 and boy did it get warm in there! Bobby Cook a man with enormous amounts of charisma seemed to be right in his element up on stage and so did the rest of the band. The sound was all over the place unfortunately during the first couple of songs but Goldhawks were so captivating and full of energy that it didn’t really affect the crowd much. Next song was the bands current single Where In The World a cracking tune with epic guitars and some great keyboards. This is the kind of track you’d expect from big American bands such as The Killers or even Kings Of Leon with its big anthemic chorus. The sound system got in the way here and the song didn’t sound as big as it should.

Another song and yet another guitar change for Bobby Cook and we soon realised how meticulous Cook is about his songs. To be fair the man is pitch perfect and seems relentless while on stage so that did make up for all the instrument changes.

Highlights of the night included a great performance of Running Away. The bands debut single sounded extremely infectious and we could tell from the crowd that this was the song most people recognized. Up On the Altar was another epic guitar affair and got everyone sweaty from dancing.

Goldhawks ended their set with an explosive performance of Keep The Fire and anyone who didn’t know them then were pretty much won over.

EF has seen these boys perform a couple of times now and luckily for us they never disappoint. It is true that the band is fairly fresh on the market and will probably still change and evolve but we think Goldhawks can do no harm. Overall the gig was a success except for the sound issues in the beginning. We cannot stress how much we like these guys!