Gig:UEA, Norwich, 30th October 2000

This gig was reviewed in the Tuesday, October 31, 2000 edition of the Eastern Evening News

"Norwich UEA, October 30th 2000

Some bands sound great on record, but struggle to reproduce their songs live. Others don't really begin to excel until they stride out on stage to stand in front of an expectant crowd. Mansun proved that they rest firmly in the latter category at the UEA last night, thrilling their fans with a passionate performance.

This was Mansun's seventh visit to Norwich, and certainly the best of the three that I've attended. On stage banter was kept to a minimum as there was little more than a nanosecond between most songs, providing a real 'concept concert' feel to the evening. Lead singer Paul Draper (interesting fact - he grew up on the same Liverpool street as Lennon) gave a soaring vocal performance of both power and grace, and he was more than ably assisted by guitar virtuoso Dominic Chad and the rest of the band.

Their anthemic songs were brilliantly reproduced to leave the audience enveloped by an epic soundscape. The set list was nigh on perfect as it took the prime cuts from their three albums to date, although the biggest roars of the evening were saved for the trio of old favourites that came ahead of the encore, namely 'Wide Open Space', 'She Makes My Nose Bleed' and 'Taxloss'. 'Taxloss' in particular was stunning, as it stop-started to great effect causing the front rows of the audience to mosh wildly. As the lights went up the consensus view around me was that we had just seen a band at the peak of their powers - don't miss them if they return.

Steve Hague"