Review: Meet the Vamps, Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff

I’ve seen a few boybands in my time so it’s little surprise to me that my 10-year-old has developed something of a penchant for them too.

Having seen One Direction last year, and experiencing the noise a largely female, teenage audience can make, I was well prepared for plenty of shrieking and whooping and general over-excitement.

And the expectant crowd certainly didn’t let me down. In fact, they were louder, even screaming as the video clips of the foursome were shown on the screens in the run-up to the show.

The band are made up of Bradley Simpson, Connor Ball, James McVey and drummer Tristan Evans – who came onto the stage draped in a Welsh flag and revealing to the delighted audience that he was in fact half-Welsh, and excited to be ‘half-home’ – which led to even more hysterical shrieking.

They kicked off the show, after support from EofE, Luke Friend, and Scottish songbird Nina Nesbitt, with their hit single Wild Heart, and looked very excited to be on stage. So much so, that my daughter reckoned Bradley had had too many Skittles before the show.

But his energy was infectious and it was impossible not to be up on your feet, tapping your toes as they performed songs from their debut album Meet The Vamps, including Girls on TV, She Was The One, Somebody to You and their new version of Cecilia (Breaking My Heart), their new single, although I doubt many of the audience realised that it was a song originally by Simon and Garfunkel.

The boys, aged from just 16 to 18, also performed a medley of covers from Bruno Mars’ Locked Out of Heaven, Sigma’s Nobody to Love, Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ Can’t Hold Us.

The boys’ clearly needed no introduction with their audience, but videos of each band member was shown, and they all enjoyed some solo attention on stage.

Tristan deserves credit for his drum solo (and not just because he’s half-Welsh!) which was hugely impressive.

It’s fair to say I was pleasantly surprised by the band’s performance. They engaged brilliantly with the crowd, their excitement was obvious and as they performed their encore with Risk It All and Can We Dance I was almost sorry it had come to an end.

For die-hard fans, they are back on Friday for another sell-out show. Parents, take you earplugs!