Waterparks opened their set with Blonde, the title track of their second album, instantly flooding the space with energy
From the second the band took to the stage, no feet were left on the ground. Waterparks was finally back in Leeds and the fans’ reaction was a clear message – next time, don’t leave it so long!
We welcomed some of the most famous songs, including “Stupid For You” and “Funeral Grey” – and that’s where an interesting part of the show was introduced to us: The set was divided into different parts, themed after human emotions. So we were led through Happiness, Sadness, Anticipation and Anger, with songs that fit perfectly into each of those themes.
Just a bit later, we were introduced to another concept of the show. Vocalist Awsten Knight, let the people choose between 2 songs. For the first choice in the part of Happiness, it was between the songs “Peach (Lobotomy)” and “Telephone”.
This happened several times throughout the set and is a great idea to switch up the setlist when playing a whole tour, so no show is the same.
In the next segment, Sadness, the whole room suddenly became more intimate and emotional. The band left the stage with only Awsten staying on stage with an acoustic guitar. He played a mashup of different known and lesser-known waterparks songs, partly even considering the wishes of the fans.
Followed by that was Awsten connecting with us, telling us about how Waterparks haven’t released
an album in a long time, but that they’ve now finished their newest album, with a release date available soon.
Unsurprisingly, the next emotion to be played was: Anticipation, including the newest singles of the band as well as an unreleased song, “Prowler”, which the whole UK Tour was named after.
As we approached the end of the show there was time for some more high level energy and time for the phase Anger. Their most energetic, most powerful songs were put into this phase, when we saw a lot of crowdsurfers and even a circle pit. The crowd used their last available energy to give it all in this phase.
Then our time with Waterparks came to a close with the familiar “Turbulent”, followed by an encore of the song “LIKE IT”. It was emotionally a highly charged evening with a great crowd who gave everything for this show to be good and hopefully good enough for Waterparks not to leave it so long to come back again to Leeds.
https://www.waterparksband.com
Photography by Grace Butterfield.