Live Review: Cute Is What We Aim For

In the room downstairs normally reserved for comedy shows, a smattering of early-to-mid-20s punters keen to relive 2006 gathered to hear pop-punk favourite The Same Old Blood Rush With A New Touch. 

From the get-go, Cute Is What We Aim For brainchild Shaant Hacikyan is very blink-and-you'll miss-him, the embodiment of a frontman that knows how to work his stage. The band are super appreciative of the "perfect size of these shows", the fact that we're here ten years on, the singing voices we brought tonight. And they're not the only ones - there aren't any egos here in the sold out crowd. Everyone's letting go and clinging onto Hacikyan's verbosities, witty asides and big, fat, Hollywood smile, which shines every time we're louder than him and he shakes his head in giddy disbelief. As the band cycle through the album from track one through 12, we remember the times we spent singing along to The Fourth Drink Instinct and Newport Living on the back of the school bus or the lyrics we scrawled on the back of our hands in class. It may be the album's ten-year anniversary, but it seems Hacikyan is more concerned with thanking each one of us for sticking around this long - throughout the course of the night, he has high fived probably everyone in the first three rows, ruffled the heads of dudes and clasped hands with about half the crowd, picking them out with a really steady look. 

Each song we sing is louder than the last (well, except for the euphoric The Curse Of Curves) and it's so fun yelling along we're sure most of us won't care that our voices will have adios'd by morning. It's clear The Same Old Blood Rush... has stood the test of time so well as Hacikyan's lyrics are so well-crafted, littered with so many metaphors, wordplay and intertextual references it'd make any English teacher proud. He dedicates Lyrical Lies to his grandfather who served in WWII, showing us the army dog tags of his he's wearing on stage - the stripped-back style of the song really serves to drive home the beauty of the lyrics.

A very humbled and genuine Hacikyan thanks the crowd tenfold for making it out tonight, admitting, "You make us realise we wanna do this for the rest of our lives." After a manic Moan and Teasing To Please to finish, the band return for an awesome rendition of their second album's Practice Makes Perfect, Hacikyan enveloping himself in the centre of the crowd for the duration of the song. It's such a badass, down-to-earth and intimate way to deliver an encore, a true treat for an incredibly happy crowd who aren't ready to bring themselves back to 2016.