Kindness
-YES, MANCHESTER-
Adam Bainbridge is here for a good time. Entering the Yes stage in pearls, leather chaps and sparkling disco pants clutching a bunch of flowers, they saunter onto to a brilliant disco throb which melds into the stone cold classic ‘Young Hearts Fun Free’, and we all instantly know this is going to be a fun evening. It’s a Thursday night and it’s safe to say the crowd are Very Up For It, which makes for an electric atmosphere to match the heat coming from the stage. Bainbridge is joined by a vocalist whose name I don’t catch, who does the lifting on Kindness’ guest heavy tracks, covering for the likes of Robyn, Alexandria, Seinabo Sey and Jazmine Sullivan, and two other women playing bass and keys. Together they turn Yes’ Pink Room into a pulsating disco fit for 1970s New York.
It’s not all about Kindness tonight, more a celebration of the music Bainbridge has made for themselves and others, and music they just clearly love. They cover ‘Send to Robin Immediately’, a song they wrote for Robyn’s excellent 2018 album Honey, as well as covering ‘Purple Rain’, sneaking a snippet of Soul II Soul’s ‘Back to Life’, and segueing into Lumidee’s stone cold classic banger ‘Never Leave You (Uh Oh)’ at one point which ignites the crowd even further than they are already lit. Their album Something Like A War was one of last year’s slept on gems, and it is represented here by funky as fuck renditions of the Robyn featuring ‘Cry Everything’ and a sensational ‘Raise Up’, where Bainbridge wanders off the stage to dance amongst their adoring fans. They repeat the trick later on, walking the length of the venue whilst handing out some cans of beer to people from their rider, laughing as they give them to people who ‘look like they might not be able to get served at the bar’, the sound of tinnies opening providing some extra percussion to the next track.
There are tender moments too, like the other Robyn feature on the album ‘The Warning’, a beautiful heartbreaker with the tear inducing sign off of ‘please just tell me / that it hurts’, the vocalist doing a wonderful job in lieu of actual Robyn, which even though I’m fully aware won’t happen, I still hold my breath that she might, might just turn up. She doesn’t. Bainbridge is clearly having a ball, telling us how much they love Manchester and how impressed they are with the level of support they’re getting from the adoring masses in front of them. They don’t bother with an encore, just telling us that they’ll play the songs for us without leaving the stage, and they finish on early single ‘House’, a clear fan favourite if the reaction is anything to go by, Bainbridge once again joining us on the floor as they split the crowd and sashay through us, handing out more flowers as they go. Everyone is beaming as they leave the venue, warmed up in the midst of the awful storms by throwing shapes to Bainbridge’s sultry disco bangers. If you too slept on Something Like a War, remedy that as soon as you can; let Kindness into your life, you won’t regret it.
