Air Traffic at SOMA Sidestage

 Rawk Shows   

Took in a great show at the SOMA Sidestage tonight - a band that I knew nothing about before last week. I didn’t do any homework before I went to the show, I had just heard a few tracks that were sent by their publicist. So I had no idea what to expect.

Background info first. Air Traffic is a quartet from England who have been touring with indie fave Elbow. Tonight’s show was only the second show of their first headlining tour here. They have one released one full length album Fractured Life, which has charted in the UK.

Cut to the scene at SOMA. Crowd of about 35. A few diehard young girls who were crushing on the bassist, Jim Maddock. (Easy to see why in the photos below). Some parents with their kids and then the random odd assortment of hipster San Diegans (possibly Republic of Letters fans, who opened.) My intention was to get a few photos and to get out once the songs were boring. I ended up staying for the entire set because they were really good. I’ll make a bold statement right now - their singer/pianist Chris Wall has got the makings of a younger Thom Yorke. The songs are piano driven, which I was first mentally comparing to Keane. But as the night wore on, I kept thinking that their sound was more like Muse. Chris has great stage presence - even though he wasn’t facing the crowd when he was playing, he won everyone over easily. His easy going banter between songs was also endearing - “When we’re U2 massive you can say you saw us way back when.”

(Chris on keys)

I was a little distracted trying to get a good photo of Jim rawking his bass, but I did get a couple of good ones in.

(Jim on bass)

(Jim again)

Chris introduced a bunch of the songs - they threw in some new songs in the set. I think my favorite was one of the older ones, “Never Even Told Me Her Name” - which he introduced as the first song they ever wrote. The set ending “No More Running Away” was great to watch as Jim and Tom Pritchard, their guitarist, dropped their instruments and did percussion, while their drummer, David Ryan Jordan manned a second set of keys for the epic song.

(The band during “No More Running Away” )

Chris came out solo for the first song of the encore - “Empty Space”, which he wrote after finding out a friend had died in a car crash. An emotional song for sure. The rest of the band came out and they finished off their set on a high note with “Shooting Star”. Definitely worth heading out to SOMA on a school night.

More info about the band here.
View all the photos here.
Listen to tracks here. (Make sure you grab the song in the listen section as well. )