Having missed the first support act because of the queue, an already impatient (and very big) crowd packed in to the Academy were treated to the second support band The Living End as the only way to vent their impatience for the heavies. It wasn't a bad effort, the sort of band to have a double bass with black and white ska checks down the side couldn't really go too far wrong, proffering something different enough from both bands to be interesting; a sophisticated slap-bass and a rockabilly groove not to be expected from the pop-/rallying-Irish-punk that was to come.

With chants of 'Let's go Murphys' (how do people know to do that every time, at every venue and always in tune?), then, the Dropkick Murphys themselves appeared to a very floaty traditional Irish folk song, sung with delicate female lyrics and for a very long time... Until they finally kicked in to 'Boys on the Docks', riling up the audience - as well as themselves enough to be in the pit with the crowd at only the second song.

Coming on first meant a shorter set and no encore, but the Murphys made up for it with mettle, not letting it stop them get the ladies up onstage for 'The Spicy McHaggis Jig' at the end as usual. Their shows are always full of the echoing cries of friends lost and politics, of poor Irish lads and American excess, but this does make it predictable enough to be verging on nostalgic, no matter how rallying and current their music is. Maybe that's because of the nature of the tunes - always tinged with the rougher side of folk and those impressively loud bagpipes - but whatever it is I've never seen a crowd that didn't love it.

It was a shame, then, to go from that to the likes of Less Than Jake. Though with enough songs under their collective belts that everyone there had to have least one drunken memory of skanking along in a club on a good night out, tonight had the feel of reliving an earlier musical era; where pop-punk was the key to good sales and the hearts of the teenage masses. The room, thanks partly to the passage of time and partly to the Murphys fans, was not particularly full of the teenage masses; jokes about shagging and getting a couple of the older generation onstage to recreate a porn movie didn't go down as well as expected.

The best songs of the night were far too clearly the oldies – 'All My Best Friends are Metalheads', 'Everything is Overrated', 'Johnny Quest is a Sell-Out' – and the new material doesn't have a patch on it whether you're measuring in crowd reaction or quality (the two never really being the same). You get the feeling from their shows that it's mostly a revisit of good times long gone, and despite (or because of?) the Downs Syndrome jokes and the Guinea Pig hat, there's not much steam left in LTJ's sound.

Though none of the crowd left in between the two main bands, there was definitely a mood shift from the passion and intensity of the 'Murphys to the childishness of LTJ. Neither band has moved on too far in the past few years, but at least the Murphys have something grown-up to hold on to.

Rating: 4/5 by Sophie Baker

Further links

Dropkick Murphys.com

Official site of the Epitaph band

Less Than Jake.com

Official site of Gainsville's favourite sons

The Living End.com

Rockabilly band from Melbourne, The Living End