The Deaf Institute off of Oxford Road holds refuge from the cold weather, tonight’s entertainment is brought to us at the hands of Delilah Bon (Lauren Tate) who brings her excellent brand of in your face rock mixed with rap to Manchester for the packed room to forget all the world’s problems and dance the night away to.
Kicking off proceedings for tonight is tiLLie. Her fun and bouncy brand of rock/pop is an excellent way to start the night off. As always, the support slot is tricky to do. Her music makes the whole room vibrate and has the crowd politely nodding their heads along. In between songs they bring a sense of humour (revealing she’s from Atlanta, Georgia where cousin fucking and Coca Cola was invented)to what she’s saying to the crowd but also a defiant punk attitude taking aim at the state of the world, particularly in her home country where Tango Unchained has just been elected president. Any jibe at the Fanta Fascist is met with welcome applause amongst the crowd.
Playing as a two piece with her and a drummer, they pack plenty of punch and bring more than enough noise to tide the audience over enough before Delilah Bon. By the end, she’s easily won the audience over and announces she’s playing a UK tour which draws a huge applause. Bless Your Heart is a defiant song with a message to all those toxic types who set out to make life worse for others, based on real events that tiLLie has gone through, it easily draws the biggest cheer for during her short set.
With the venue packed, it was time for Delilah Bon to take to the stage. The crowd were ready for Barnsley’s finest to kick off the night. As soon as the first chords were played the audience was ready to party. Taking to the stage with her fierce combination of rap and rock effortlessly changing between fast rap verses and harsh vocals. you knew it was going to be a good night ahead as soon as she launched into Brat. Every note played, you felt reverberated throughout your body.
The attitude and showmanship was excellent. Somehow, she ups the ante from her ferocious opener and launches onto Grown Ass Men, taking aim at online trolls which pleases the audience greatly. It’s very clear that acts like Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera are key inspirations to Delilah Bon, but she’s able to bring her own twist to the style without being a carbon copy of them both. Chiquitita follows and gets the crowd moving a bit more, all bouncing on beat to a song that feels like it Limp Bizkit wrote an Abba song, instantly a banger.
As the show continues at a blistering pace, tracks like I Don’t Listen To You draw huge responses from the crowd, each member of the audience bellowing the lyrics back. The song itself takes aim at controlling boyfriends which offers a moment of catharsis to those in the audience able to relate. Whilst only two members of Bon’s backing band play instruments, it doesn’t detract from the performance one bit.
They make one hell of a racket as Bon and her backing singer provide more than enough fire power through their stage presence to keep the crowd bouncing. What made the show so special was it was the perfect place for those shunned by the world, here everyone was allowed to be themselves where all types of folk were in the audience able to dance the night away without a care in the world, it made for many sweet moments throughout the show.
As the show progressed, we were treated to a whole plethora of hits such as I Am The Best, The Internet and Epstein all have a rightful place in the setlist, however it is the song Clown which is one of the stand out moments of the night. It brought an element of theatrics to the night with the backing band walking round the stage wielding baseball bats in what is one of the more sinister tracks of the night. This continues throughout Freak Alert in which many fake dicks were worn on stage by the band members being waved around to lyrics about wanting to chop off the dicks of dickheads. This provided plenty of laughs throughout the night and resulted in plenty of fun banter and interaction with the crowd that kept their energy at 100%. Amongst all the comedic moments, War On Women proved to be one of the more poignant moments during the show.
The song itself is an act of defiance against those who are misogynistic and hits even harder at the moment due to the election results in the US. It was a great moment of unity in the crowd as it became a collective middle finger to all those who use the disgusting rhetoric of “your body, my choice” comments that have appeared on Twitter.
As the night comes to a close, the final assault of I Wish A Bitch Would and Dead Men Don’t Rape are given monstrously good performances that sees the crowd somehow be the loudest they’ve been all night, the latter having a delightfully grungey guitar riff to boot that helps the audience whip up into one final frenzy of the night. Maverick closes out the night in perfect style with everyone giving their all one last time before the night is over.
Overall Delilah Bon gave a triumphant, epic and cathartic performance. Her performance throughout the night was nothing short of excellent, her songs are powerful, packed full of meaning and incredibly energetic which filters through the crowd who were just as energetic throughout the show. For those looking to blow off a bit of steam due to all the injustice happening in the world, a Delilah Bon show is the perfect medicine for that.
Words by Ed Walton
Photos by Ellie Dawson
