Jake Bugg At Nottingham Rock City REVIEW

Photo © Nottingham Confidential

It was a right Nottingham knees-up sing-a-long at last night's Rock City as to frenzied cries of  'Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake!' our local neighbourhood Dylan/Donovan/Cash hybrid, the wunderkind folksy rock n roll mop-top poppet Jake Bugg ambled on stage and launched straight  into beguiling love-song 'Fire' before shuffling around to wild applause, hiking up his trousers and saying, 'Thank you very much for coming, it's nice to be back, of course.'

And it's nice to have him back, of course, our home grown ickle superstar, because at 18 years old- and up there on stage looking even younger- it really is extraordinary, enthralling and just a little disconcerting to see this kid with such maturity in his voice and lyrics, singing with genuine and fervent emotion and inspiring a huge swelling of a lot of local Nottingham pride in the room.

Photo © Nottingham Confidential

As a heaving and heavily mod-haircut populated sell-out Rock City happily sang along to his set of songs from that startlingly fantastic eponymous debut album whilst cheering to new song Slumville Sunrise it was, of course, Clifton hit song Two Fingers that cranked the mosh up that extra notch and got the 'Nottingham, Nottingham, Nottingham' crowd chant, whilst Jake's de rigeur sulky teenage look only finally broke into a grin at the boos in response to him announcing Lightning Bolt as 'my last song'  to which he added, 'well, if you cheer I might do another one...'

With an encore that included the beautiful ballad Broken, confidentially our current fave offa the album, punctuated in a 'differently' beautiful way by the belting 'woooooahhhs' from the crowd, together with a foot stamping Folsom City Blues cover, the moodily cute, altogether frickin-awesomely talented Jake Bugg is the first Nottingham artist to sell out Rock City, but if you didn't get a ticket this time, you can get all Bugged up when he headlines Splendour at Wollaton Park in Nottingham this summer oh, and good luck at those Brit Awards too, love.

You can see more photos from Jake Bugg's Rock City gig on our Nottingham Confidential Facebook page album here

And you can download Saffron by Jake Bugg for FREE from his official website http://jakebugg.com/