One of the surest ways to recognise a boyband is by their protests that they’re not a boyband. The Vamps customarily stonewalled suggestions that they were one: they couldn’t be, they argued, because they play their own instruments. (Notwithstanding the fact that so did the indisputably boyband Busted and McFly.) But that was before One Direction’s hiatus left a boyband-shaped gap that the Vamps – an Anglo-Scottish quartet who have had six amiable hit singles – wouldn’t mind filling, to go by the look of their current show.
Every element of their Wake Up tour is scripted for tweenagers, from the half-term scheduling to the gig’s sugar-rush choppiness; rather than risk a moment of downtime, the breaks between songs are packed with video interviews, pyrotechnics and a filmed skit plugging bands signed to their newly launched label. An extended drum solo is geared to millennial tastes by subjecting drummer Tristan Evans, who is on a 20ft-high platform, to apocalyptic EDM squawks and circuit-board graphics. Meanwhile, bassist Connor Ball zips along the 200ft runway on an illuminated hoverboard. Even the most gadfly member of the short-attention-span generation would find it hard to be bored.
Disappointingly, the Vamps are teasing older brothers rather than hot-trousered Romeos. Singer/guitarist/pianist Brad Simpson – the Talented Spice of the bunch – may roar “Be my girlfriend, London!”, but it’s clear that their primary interest here is the music. They are capable musicians, deftly leading the crowd in high-volume singalongs on Last Night and Somebody to You; Simpson plays solo piano for the big lighter-waver Wild Heart. Who knows why, after just 15 minutes, they slot in a medley of other people’s hits? Covering Can’t Feel My Face and Bieber’s Sorry is folly, serving only to highlight that the Vamps lack comparable firepower. It’s a puzzling blip in an otherwise expertly judged show.
• At Capital FM Arena, Nottingham, on 5 April. Box office: 0843 373 3000. Then touring.
