The Boo Radleys / The Lunar Pull: Rough Trade, Liverpool

The Boo Radleys | The Lunar Pull 
Rough Trade, Liverpool
30th March 2025

Martin Gray catches the weekend’s homecoming show by The Boo Radleys performing their 1995 album Wake Up! in its entirety to mark its 30th anniversary. Support comes courtesy of emerging Wirral-based indie rock hopefuls The Lunar Pull.

This is the first time I have attended a live show at the (relatively) new Rough Trade venue in the city centre which opened last summer to great fanfare. For a small-sized venue (it holds 290), it’s pretty well laid out and efficiently run – with a decent-sized bar area or vestibule which opens into the main performance room itself. It’s also fully compliant with wheelchair/disabled access too: reached by a spacious lift as the venue sits on the first floor (with the eponymous record store situated below it). Wirral-based promoters Events 471, are fast beginning to make ever bigger splashes with some of the best bands and acts to grace both sides of the Mersey in recent years, with Birkenhead Future Yard enjoying a particularly impressive lineup of shows of late (the Boos did play there in 2023 as part of their Giant Steps 30th Anniversary Tour too). They organise events not only featuring music/bands but spoken word/poetry and open mic nights too, that are held every month.

Tonight’s event was in three parts, beginning with a short Q&A billed as An Audience With Sice – whereby The Boo Radleys’ singer was in conversation with The Lunar Pull’s singer (and erstwhile TV personality, writer/presenter, comedian, actor, radio broadcaster) Alex Riley. This was followed by a set from The Lunar Pull themselves, before the Boos rounded off the evening with their celebratory run through every one of the dozen songs on the Wake Up! album, plus a few extras.

An Audience With Sice – Alex Riley is a familiar face and voice on TV and the radio, having graced various programmes of note (The One Show, Top Gear, Classic Car Club, Britain in Bloom, Globe Trekker) and BBC7’s The Comedy Club, to name but a few. Tonight he commands the interrogator’s chair with Dr. Sice Rowbottom and gets him to spill the beans on some of the high points (and any low ones) of The Boo Radleys’ formative years in the Wirral and what it was like being in a band that started as three close school friends simply making a devilishly cacophonous racket purely for the fun of it. There’s lighthearted banter, amusing anecdotal/apocryphal tales and of course much engagement with the gathered audience. Subjects touched upon included their first tentative (not yet giant) steps into recording and gigging (Sice reminiscing with great amusement on how notoriously loud and chaotic they were back then!), the buzz gained from being signed to Rough Trade Records and the joy of getting a few EPs under their belts before the latter went bust back in the early 1990s.

Next, talk of Alan McGee’s Creation years and the start of The Boo Radleys’ rise from just another noisy shoegaze band (in thrall to label mates Ride, MBV, etc) to the one that masterminded their genre-defying Giant Steps album (intended to rival classic landmark records by Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream), of which Sice understandably feels a lot of pride about as it was their first self-produced record, stating that the band simply felt that they wanted to do things on their terms and credited the Creation bods – Dick Green especially – with being gracious enough to support them and let them get on with it.

When asked about the dramatic transformation between their first Creation album and their second, Sice said “Everything’s Alright Forever was still us in debt to the shoegaze influences, but Giant Steps was a deliberate conscious decision to create something bigger – throwing everything against the wall. Creation initially baulked at the idea that we wanted a double album but we had our way in the end”. Then of course the 1995 mainstream breakthrough that was Wake Up Boo! and whether the band ever had mixed feelings about that success and if the song became an albatross around their necks, Sice frankly admitted that it was wholly their intention to make a 12-track concise pop album, as a reaction to the glorious 17-track psychedelic sprawl of Giant Steps. But he then laughingly admits that not every song on Wake Up! followed the ‘pop’ blueprint anyway.

He delighted in pointing out that, despite its infectiously breezy, summery, up-tempo Motown-esque rhythms, the actual words to Wake Up Boo! were hardly fun in the sunshine feelgood vibes, more like existential angst. However, Sice admits that the success did take them by surprise and was far above their expectations, despite the initial excitement of being in the top 10 of the charts and inevitably on Top Of The Pops, daytime TV, and other shows like TFI Friday, which all soon faded when they realised the tedious rigmarole of the media circus that would inevitably entail. The best, and most gratifying, example of the latter was when they afforded themselves the gleeful satisfaction of telling a grubby-mitted southerner S*n reporter (who was lurking outside the studio waiting to interview the band[s]) to fuck right off. Said Boo Radleys rebuke to the inglorious scumbag hack counted among one of their proudest moments and was regaled amid much valedictory cheering and laughter from everybody in the room!

Wirral band The Lunar Pull have close historical ties and connections with The Boo Radleys. Their guitarist Mike ‘Corky’ Corcoran was in the same year and class as Sice back in their St Marys College schooldays of the 1980s. Indeed, later during the Boos headlining set, Sice jokingly had a few digs at Mike from the stage about the shenanigans they used to get up to during lessons. It kind of feels like another big extended family gathering tonight… and it is pretty much so in some ways. Described in the promoter’s blurb as ‘Louche Left-field Indie Rock’, the words are kind of apt to a degree, but it’s also undeniable that their sound is quite immediate and rooted in great pop tunes as well. Many of the songs played tonight are from their debut album The Workings Underneath and all of them are very accomplished, even catchy, little mini-domestics set to melodies that recall some of the classic ‘bohemia’ and ‘kitchen sink’ pop sounds from across the decades, from the likes of ’60s/’70s Kinks (to whom their lyrics are occasionally compared) to ’80s bands The Wedding Present and The Smiths, and also ’90s bands like Gene, The Bluetones and (the great, underrated and almost forgotten) Rialto.

But one band in particular (or should that be vocalist/singer) which struck me as a subliminal influence on The Lunar Pull’s singer’s current stage presence is none other than Pulp. It becomes apparent why, as Alex Riley saunters nonchalantly onto the stage during the intro to the first song Breaking The Waves, dressed very nattily in a dark holly green crushed velvet suit with slightly flared bottoms, and, with his large horn-rimmed specs, is almost a double of Jarvis Cocker. It’s uncanny in another way too: Alex hails from the same city – Sheffield – thus his accent possesses an identical understated and deadpan South Yorkshire brogue to that of the more famous erstwhile Britpop icon. They could almost be twins. The resemblance doesn’t end there either, as two of the fine songs played tonight (I Don’t Regret Us Splitting Up and Camden Lock) owe more than a nod to the great JC lyrical approach – with a few sprinklings of vintage Ray Davies for good measure. In fact, Camden Lock (the album’s first single) sounds rather like Pulp in a sideways collision with The Kinks, if that can be imagined. Whilst the wondrous  I Don’t Regret Us Splitting Up perversely delights in the relief felt when a relationship is over (think Mark Morriss’ The Bluetones on downers). It’s that impressive: and to be fair, I’m sold!

The slower and more downbeat Bowery is introduced as a kind of bedsit drama song about braving life in a squalid dive, and Alex specifically makes a referral to bandmate Mike Corky’s gaff, much to everybody’s amusement. The words: ‘This house is like a butcher’s fridge / we’re sat in sleeping bags / we’re smoking fags to keep warm’ conjures up the essence of every flat-sharing nightmare. Last Respects is a more sombre, reflective and melancholy number which nevertheless swells to a more rousing and lively refrain, whilst Back To The Sea (the set closer) has hints of The Boo Radleys circa both Kingsize and comeback album Keep On From Falling, which is quite fitting as the latter’s Tim Brown has lent more than a helping hand in production and arrangement to the album. There are even small hints of Jake Shillingford’s mid-90s band My Life Story in the strings which adorn the album version of Big Old World, but Alex’s assured crooning makes this number another of the standouts in a pretty damned strong live set. The wistfully pensive, almost world-weary lyric (‘If the stars could align for us and luck is on our side / we’d be together at the end of time / against this big old world’) could rival that of the more illustrious acts I’ve already touched upon.

On The Road mostly touches upon the usual lows and highs of being stuck in the transit van whilst clocking up the miles between gigs: ‘We all need a place to call home / but it’s hard, so we just stay stoned / on the road’. Eight songs played tonight, each one of them very impressive and worth getting hold of once the album – only currently available as a download – is released in a physical format (we hope!).

The Boo Radleys perform Wake Up! – Wake Up! is a strange beast. It’s the one which divides most Boos fans’ opinions right down the middle, some have embraced its more commercial leanings, whilst others have the polar opposite reaction, citing it as the one album which they play the least. For many newcomers of course, it’s this commercial watershed album (remember, The Boo Radleys are the only other Creation act aside from Oasis to score a number-one album!) and its attendant huge hit single that opened their ears to the band’s music. It’s likely some of them have discovered their back catalogue and fallen in love with them in retrospect. That can’t be a bad thing surely?

As the band have reiterated so many times, tonight will be the only time they are going to perform the whole 12-track album in its chronological entirety. It’s a task they are quietly confident of pulling off, but even so, there is always the potential for something going ever so slightly awry. After all, it’s probably more entertaining that way. Their previous four UK shows on this C’mon Up! tour in February have roughly divided the set list between songs from both albums (even though C’mon Kids marks its 30th anniversary next year in 2026), but here they will attempt to play for the first time a few tracks from Wake Up! that have never had live renditions, even when the band were touring the album exhaustively back in 1995. Two years ago, in June 2023, at a rammed Future Yard in Birkenhead, The Boo Radleys dazzled and delighted the crowd by revisiting Giant Steps in all of its kaleidoscopic glory (save for one track – the one with the hoovers and shuddering jet engines!). Can they pull off the same trick here for its successor?

The first song we all know well enough; suffice to say that to see them (Sice particularly) relishing the moment once again is enough to put the smiles on the faces of almost everybody present. Rob Cieka’s solid Motown backbeat and Tim Brown’s fluid bass are the impressive engine room that propels this unflappable evergreen hit with the rest of the Boos – Louis Smith on guitars and Nick Etwell on trumpet – locking together in note-perfect fashion. Let’s not forget that 30 years constitutes a relatively sizeable leap in our generational timespan. And yet, simultaneously, it feels like no time at all. Everybody was cockier in their youth, more possessed of attitude and even arrogance bordering on invincibility. Age changes us – some become mellower and more rational and philosophical, some become more pragmatic, some more jaded and cynical, and others – like me – get angrier still as the world becomes ever more messed up and out of control (and who can blame them?).

Often thought of as a reaction against the massive success of Wake Up!, the Boos decided to unleash C’mon Kids the following year (a delightfully frazzled head-fuck masterpiece that was in places even more out-there than Giant Steps) and it confused the hell out of a lot of people who got into the band via its predecessor. Sice would sometimes dismissively snipe about their big hit single when performing it live, as if it was an unwanted pet he’d already grown bored with and needed to get shut off. Of course, that was then. The passing of time has a remarkably healing effect on how we perceive and appreciate things that we never really paid much heed to before; possibly because we were just far too busy getting off our heads larging it for the moment to worry about what the future would bring.

You can witness this in spades just by watching Sice on stage now as he beams, chatters and laughs his way through almost every song from the Boo Radleys’ glorious back catalogue. It’s truly reassuring and heartwarming to see somebody who is finally perfectly happy and proud of what he had achieved with these milestones, and is now au fait with revisiting and celebrating them again (unsurprisingly, he also played Wake Up Boo! as part of his solo one-man psychology talks which he took on a brief jaunt around the UK in late summer 2023).

The first real test for The Boo Radleys, however, arrives with the second song: Fairfax Scene. As far as everybody now knows, it’s never been aired live by the original line-up either. With some good-humoured trepidation as Sice introduces it, the Boos strike up…..but what is he worrying about anyway? It sounds just fine! As does the next number, the other blatant commercial pop track that was issued as a single back then: It’s Lulu (or, as I always call/sing it, It’s Zulu!). Joel follows swiftly on its heels. (Sice to the audience: ‘so does anybody who has the album know what song is next?’) This is the first of the Wake Up! tracks that does a distinct about turn on the ‘3-minute pop songs’ premise, being a behemoth of four quite distinct movements that changes melody and structure within its 6 or so minutes (pre-empting tracks on their next album C’mon Kids, and even the likes of Mansun who would carry the same trick off to even more audacious and jaw-dropping extremes on their magnificent Six album in 1998).

It’s after you’ve delved deeper into the words (putting aside the fact that the song chops and changes every 90 seconds or so) when you discover they are relatively downbeat and characteristic of much of the album. Key lyric during section 2: ‘Don’t go with the flow / Try follow your own path’. Key lyric during closing section 4: ‘Once you get hit so often / you become numb to everything / You find out that you are on your own.’

Back to unabashed pop again with Find The Answer Within and its bright brass refrain that kicks off the song and concludes it. All of the backwards vocal ad-libs at the end (some truly hilarious) on the LP version were not performed, sadly, but hey! …. so far, so sound. The beautiful and plaintive Reaching Out From Here – a single that should have been – gets the crowd singing along again and that’s the end of the first half or first side. Except that Sice seems to have conveniently forgotten exactly where the album divides!

During both of the double whammy of killers that kick off side two Martin, Doom! It’s 7 o’Clock and Stuck On Amber, we get to see The Boo Radleys larking about in style. On the former, Sice is grinning more than usual and this eventually results in him cracking up in fits of laughter towards the last verse – struggling to sing the words from corpsing – as he senses various band colleagues have played either bum notes or whatever. Likewise, Stuck On Amber has an aborted intro and is started a second time, Nick Etwell’s rousing trumpet salvo intro (in place of Martin’s distorted blues harmonica that opens the recorded version) has to be repeated before they kick in proper.

Then onto two more tracks that have never previously had live airings: Charles Bukowski Is Dead and 4AM Conversation. The band need not have worried here either: both are considered passes by the approving crowd at least, in spite of the studio versions of both songs being far more intricately arranged production-wise. Sice and Tim regularly exchange between-song banter and japes, the former pointing out that whenever things go pear-shaped on stage it’s usually Tim – in his role as musical director of the band (he’s a full-time school teacher in his day job back in Ireland too, remember!) – who reins in the chaos to restore some kind of order. Twinside and Wilder round off the album, the former one of the more muscular rockers that the band take to with gusto and the latter the downbeat and reflective closer whose piano-dominated arrangement pre-empts the band’s lushest songs on their (criminally underrated) 1998 Kingsize album. The only very minor quibble – ha! pedantic superfan alert – is that they didn’t also play the droll tailpiece to the final song – with the lyric ‘All I do is sit at home and eat / I need something to get me off my feet’! But I think I sense the reason why!

The set was augmented with five bonuses: the gorgeous Almost Nearly There (B-side from  …Bench At Belvidere), the full rendition of Ride The Tiger (total goosebumps during the awesome incendiary guitar break from Louis Smith during the middle), followed by the welcome revisiting of the coruscating and ferocious What’s In The Box? which kicks complete amp-shredding ass. How fantastic it was to hear that one played again after so long. The penultimate and oldest number of the night, (what else?) The Finest Kiss follows, and if anything it’s not hard to see how this song without a doubt is the closest cousin to Stuck On Amber which figured a few songs earlier in the set. Tonight’s – ever-so-slightly – abbreviated version of the former (is it the curse of TFK? We need to be told!!!) still gets everybody goo-goo eyed before the final sign off which is the anticipated trumpet-laced euphoric romp through the greatest comeback since …. oh you know bloody damn well who I mean!

I…… I must be losing my faculties. 30 years ago I was leap-bouncing up and down like a fucking delirious loon to Lazarus (and many other Boo Radleys songs besides). Now I am content to save myself from withering joints and sprained ankles and just bob gleefully along and be swept up in its glorious vortex of beautiful noise. But you know something? We may have all become a lot older in the meantime, but that BOO-tiful noise remains and still sets our heads a-flutter and our hearts aflame! The fire and passion still burns bright.

~

The Boo Radleys
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The Lunar Pull
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All words by Martin Gray – more articles and reviews by the author can be found here