Scouting For Girls - Academy 1 - 29/03/08 by Chris Horricks

Since coming together in 2005 Scouting For Girls have gone from strength to strength with their eponymous debut album topping the charts and having hit singles with She’s So Lovely and Elvis Ain’t Dead (which he is lads, sorry to disappoint). Having previously played at the Night and Day Café and Academy 3 tonight saw them play to their biggest Manchester venue to date

After bouncing on to the stage to a raucous welcome from a sold out audience packed like sardines into the newly refurbished Academy building and brimming with anticipation, Roy and co didn’t disappoint opening the set with I Need A Holiday which set the tone for the gig as it soon turned into a sing-a-long.

One thing is for sure, where a lot of gigs are packed with people who are only there to hear the singles, that certainly wasn’t the case as SFG fans seem to know every word and every chord on the album, almost as well as the band themselves.

On stage the trio are full of life and a sense of fun missing from mainstream music gigs in general, which makes for an immensely entertaining set which included a version of Carly Simons ‘Nobody Does It Better’ followed by an instrumental break of the James Bond theme and front man Roy reciting the famous ‘Do you expect me to talk?’ ‘No Mr Bond, I expect you to die!’ exchange which was cunningly followed by album track ‘James Bond’ (can you see what they did there, clever eh?) which continued the sing-a-long theme.

The aforementioned humour didn’t end there as the song entitled ‘Fitter In Your Myspace Picture’ highlighted the virtues of meeting old friends on websites and being rather under whelmed when meeting them in the flesh, it also has to be the song with most website mentions in it as it features not only Myspace but also the equally pointless but nonetheless addictive Facebook and Friends Reunited.

The third and final instalment of SFG’s comedy songs to rival Weird Al Yankovic came in the shape of the ingenious ‘Michaela Strachan’ which tells of Roy’s boyhood crush on the Really Wild Show presenter, who he informed all in attendance came back stage at a recent gig and kissed him.

It's easy to tell that the three band members are lifelong friends as they have an understanding which only comes from knowing each other inside out. In a moment to warm the cockles Roy professed to being gobsmacked by playing to such a big venue, which he’d better get used to as judging from the polished performance of the evenings exploits as the venues they play to can only get bigger, a joy to behold