Camp Cope @ Soup Kitchen, Manchester, 31 Aug

Melbourne's Camp Cope play to a sell-out crowd at Manchester's Soup Kitchen tonight, challenging sexism in the music scene and encouraging singalongs galore

Live Review by Chris Ogden | 04 Sep 2018

One of Camp Cope’s most famous songs, The Opener, directly tackles sexism in the music scene as their singer/guitarist Georgia McDonald mocks men who tell the band to downsize as they ‘can’t fill up the room.’ Camp Cope have no such problems here, as a capacity crowd squeezes into the Soup Kitchen basement this Friday night to see the scrappy indie trio from Melbourne, Australia.

From their opening song, a surprise part-cover of Green Day’s Warning, to the quick one-two punch of Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams and the rollicking title track from their latest album How to Socialise and Make Friends, Camp Cope quickly show why they’ve attracted such a cult following as they rock out next to a rainbow flag still hanging from Manchester Pride the weekend before.

Although Camp Cope can shred, they’re a band that primarily makes you think. For all the raw power of her singing voice, McDonald is an empathetic lyricist and shy speaker, as she thanks those singing along and cracks jokes with the crowd. Early on, she pauses the set to highlight sexual assault against women and queer people at shows, particularly asking men to discuss with friends what they can do to stop it. Faced by an unusually gender-balanced crowd, it’s a visceral moment and leads the band into an equally powerful performance of The Face of God, How to Socialise’s damning, depressing account of one of those very incidents.

From here, Camp Cope run through singalong after singalong from their rapidly growing catalogue, from Done on their eponymous debut to two songs from their 2017 split EP with Cayetana. Bolstered by Sarah Thompson’s propulsive drums and one of the best melodic bassists in indie right now in Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich, Camp Cope’s biggest strength is McDonald’s generosity of spirit and her ability to inspire communal strength through her vulnerability. Of course, The Opener is an appropriate ending here and it offers the biggest release of the night as McDonald relays the music men’s negs and the sell-out crowd yells them back, proving all those know-nothings wrong. See how far Camp Cope have come by not listening to them.

https://campcope.bandcamp.com/