Just before the start of this gig, a floppy-haired guy clambered off the Yellow Arch stage and sauntered through the middle of the crowd, as serenely as if he were walking through a field of wheat. He didn’t have to ask anyone to move out of the way. They just did, almost automatically. It didn’t come as a huge surprise, then, when he returned to the stage about 15 minutes later as the lead singer of tonight’s headline act: DEADLETTER.
Because Zac Lawrence just has the look of a frontman, you see. Before the set began he was beckoning the capacity crowd to come closer. Two songs in, he was strolling through the parting crowd again. Three songs in, he was topless. Throw in a 6”7 bassist and a saxophone player among their six-piece line-up, and DEADLETTER make for quite an imposing spectacle on stage.
Imposing visually, but musically too. The London-via-Yorkshire post-punkers are as tight, assured and confident as you would expect from a group who have been touring relentlessly over the last few years. They’re currently in the midst of their latest outing: a three-month jaunt through Europe which still has another six weeks to run after tonight’s Sheffield date.
Credit: @jamburrito1
They’ve only been releasing music since 2020, but DEADLETTER’s sound has already evolved in that short time. Their early releases were short, sharp, politically-charged nuggets of post-punk (‘Fit for Work’, ‘Madge’s Declaration’), but Lawrence’s crosshairs have since settled on other unsuspecting targets: excessive materialism (‘Binge’), 1984-esque neighbour snitching (‘The Snitching Hour’) and, uhm, dishonest twats (‘Degenerate Inanimate’).
Just as Lawrence’s lyrical focus has expanded, so too has the group’s musical ambition. DEADLETTER tunes currently top out at about three-and-a-half minutes, but their live set hints at exciting new directions for their sound to go: there are brooding bass lines, moody instrumental breaks and whispering saxophone licks to go alongside their fast and furious punk-infused bread and butter.
Credit: @jamburrito1
Still, as long as Lawrence is centre stage, it’s difficult to focus on anything else. He encourages the crowd to join in with him for the DWP-bashing ‘Fit for Work’, which they duly do. Meanwhile, with its romping chorus, ‘Binge’ is as close to an anthem as DEADLETTER have got. Its impact is magnified by the excellent support act Sun King joining them on stage, the two groups somehow cramming 11 people onto the tiny Yellow Arch stage for a mass singalong.
As all 11 eventually left the Yellow Arch stage empty once again, you sense Lawrence won’t be able to wander through crowds like this unnoticed for too much longer. For a band that often recall music from the past, it feels like the future is most definitely DEADLETTER.
