On the final day of Tramlines Festival 2025, at Hillsborough Park, the crowd has gathered in front of the main stage, eagerly awaiting the Sunday headliner, Kasabian. The excitement in the crowd has, however, suddenly turned to tension. The screens adjacent to the stage that usually show the musical acts are now displaying the Women’s Euro 2025 Final penalty shootout, England vs Spain. Full focus has turned towards the football. Kelly steps up, a skip, short run up and then smashes the football home. Elation. Kasabian could not have asked for a better opener.
Gala’s ‘Freed from Desire’ and the Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ have the 50,000 people gathered in Hillsborough Park celebrating the win singing in unison. Kasabian then appear, summoned from a telephone ringing out. They carry the wave of energy straight into ‘Call’, their single released last year. It has the appropriate beat drops and easy to grasp lyrics to get the crowd involved, buzzing and jumping around. Flares are already being let off. Relentless in their energy, Kasabian turn to one of their biggest hits, ‘Club Foot’, for only their second song. The frontman, Sergio Pizzorno, orchestrates the crowd brilliantly; he has a great stage presence, with the crowd throwing back the same energy as he paces the stage, leaping about, shouting out to the crowd between verses.
Kasabian then march on to ‘Ill Ray (The King)’ and ‘Underdog’, more hits, this early in their set. ‘Days are Forgotten’, a popular but comparatively less known track, gives the crowd some opportunity to catch their breath. It then ramps up again with ‘Shoot the Runner’ and ‘You’re in Love with a Psycho’, which has the Tramlines crowd singing every word back to the Sarah Nulty Main Stage. People on shoulders, flares in hands. Kasabian’s catalogue allows them to perform anthems throughout their set, and it is one of the many reasons that make them such a great live band.
Kasabian play many of their most popular songs in the first half of the setlist. As a result, about two thirds into the set, where relatively less popular songs are played, such as ‘stevie’, ‘treat’ and ‘Vlad the Impaler’, the crowd gets a chance to recover their energy and prepare before the closing songs. Many of Kasabian’s songs contain vocables, noises such as “oh” or “ayy” that are not actually words. This allows the audience – even those that have not heard the songs before – to get behind the music, coming together like a chant. Kasabian at times extend these sections to rile up a crowd, further conjuring a greater atmosphere.
With the final songs of the setlist approaching, excitement is brewing, ‘Empire’ plays next, ramping up the tension, ‘L.S.F’ then plays to the crowd, dozens now back on top of shoulders. An encore sees ‘Bless This Acid House’ before the creeping, padding notes and the soft, drawn-out vocals of ‘Fire’ play out, a crescendo that ignites excitement. The song begins like a small flame, flickering and building over time, at the same time red smoke from flares billows into the air, before the crowd erupts with the music. A couple of minutes later, we are invited to do it one last time, Pizzorno now encouraging the crowd to crouch down to the floor, the music brought back to that tense, slow-burning state, before, for the final time, exploding back up with sheer exhilaration.
Kasabian may not have the local ties to Tramlines that other headliners Pulp and The Reytons do, but they are a fantastic live act. They perform with an infectious energy, their experience and skill resulting in a polished performance without any of it feeling sterile, an authentic act that delivers on all fronts.
