James Brown was routinely welcomed to the stage as the hardest working man in showbusiness.
The Molotovs may have taken his crown.
More on The Cases
Hardest working band. Not man. But you get the idea.
When they burst onto the staid UK music scene in early 2025, seemingly from nowhere, they were greeted with equal measures of hysteria and accusations of being manufactured by cynical label marketing men. Except that particular narrative conveniently ignored how they reached those suddenly crowded stages.
Their ‘overnight success’ came after 300-plus gigs in the preceding couple of years, trudging around every pub back room that would have them and busking on city streets when they couldn’t find a willing venue.
Some overnight.
And little has changed. The venues are larger. The crowds are bigger. But the work ethic remains.
The Welcome To Urbia tour is an epic slog across the UK and beyond, the kind of schedule even the most dedicated artist might regard with quiet horror. Yet every night is still a show. There appears to be no concept of phoning it in. Watching the energy the Cartlidge siblings expend during a set leaves you wanting to have a sit down on their behalf.
But first, The Cases.
On paper they appear a slightly incongruous fit. The bulk of the proto-mod crowd assembled for the headliners seem largely unfamiliar with the Preston quartet and their effervescent indie-pop.
Singer Harry nervously enquires: “Has anyone seen us play before?”
A meagre scattering of hands rises.
Never mind.
The crowd is here. They’re here in numbers. And they’re waiting to be entertained.
The Cases deliver.
They fly through what amounts to a greatest-hits set, with the considerable advantage that almost everything is a new discovery for most of the room. There’s no need tonight to road-test half-formed songs or excavate obscure album tracks for the long-term faithful. Just hit them with the bangers you’ve played a hundred times and see what happens.
So they do.
There’s no cautious feeling of the way into the set. Each pop-tastic tune is greeted with increasing enthusiasm. Mr Penny and recent single Don’t Lose Your Nerve bound past with assurance and a joyous grin. Chiming guitars. Hands in the air. The audience starts moving and suddenly any nerves have evaporated.
Just Like You is the high point, its tale of teenage love prompting joyous bouncing from a crowd that half an hour earlier had never heard it.
The Cases breeze off stage like they own the place.
They probably do now.
Anticipation builds before The Molotovs arrive as the house DJ runs through mod and Britpop classics.
Yes, including The Jam.
Why hide from it?
Mat and Issey take the stage in coordinated powder-blue outfits – probably a diplomatically neutral choice in a city so fundamentally divided by red and blue loyalties – and power immediately into Johnny Don’t Be Scared and Rhythm Of Yourself.
There is barely time to breathe.
Mat thrashes at his guitar while spitting out the frantic lyrics. Issey plays bass like almost nobody you’ve ever seen. She struts, high-kicks and prowls across the stage, holding the instrument like a weapon above the audience, whipping her hair around and somehow never missing a beat.
Part sibling understanding. Part muscle memory. Hundreds of gigs distilled into instinct.
The tour is a precursor to the forthcoming album and there’s a substantial helping of new material. The DNA remains recognisably Molotovs, but there’s no sense of diminishing returns. The arrangements are broader, the songwriting more ambitious and the lyrics increasingly interested in snapshots of modern British life.
Recent single Urbia is greeted with joyous enthusiasm and paired with B-side Down At The Cafe, which somehow has the crowd singing along despite currently only being available on the physical single.
You know.
The one in the charts.
Inevitably, though, it’s the established singles that detonate the room.
Today’s Gonna Be Our Day brings its irresistible groove and obligatory chant-along call-and-response, but it’s More More More, The Molotovs’ incendiary debut, that tips the place over the edge.
Short. Sharp. Explosive.
It doesn’t wait for anyone to catch up.
The main set climaxes with an immense rendition of Bowie’s Suffragette City, a throwback to the days when The Molotovs tore through countless covers while figuring out what their own band might eventually sound like.
Now they attack it like they wrote it.
The stage becomes a blur of power chords and limbs. Mat leaps considerably higher than anyone with a guitar strapped around their neck really should. Issey contorts, struts and conducts the crowd below.
When Bowie imagined the rock ’n’ roll of Ziggy Stardust, there must have been some part of him that pictured it looking like this.
A four-song encore briefly sees Mat reach for the acoustic guitar before they bring proceedings to a close with another collision of old and new tunes.
Everyone is happy.
Lights up.
Home time.
Except the work doesn’t stop.
Issey is immediately down among the audience, talking, posing for photographs and signing whatever gets thrust in front of her. Mat soon appears at the merch table doing the same. After everything they’ve just expended on stage, they still have the time – and somehow the energy – to connect with the people who came to see them.
Across the hallway, The Cases are cheerfully doing likewise while their merch stand conducts a steady trade in T-shirts.
Perhaps this is the bit people miss when they talk about overnight success.
The hours after the gig. The hours before it. The pubs. The streets. The motorway. The merch table. The next city. The next night.
Talent gets you noticed.
Good habits make the difference.
The Molotovs know the difference.
Welcome to Urbia.
The Cases will be headlining their own mini-tour later in the year and have new material incoming. The Molotovs continue on their seemingly unending tour schedule. And are probably about to announce a new one. Their second album Welcome To Urbia is out in April 2027.
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