The Lightning Seeds, Maximo Park, Riding The Low – Live at Melbourne Hall – 25 July 2026
The second day of the inaugural Live At Melbourne Hall gives us the jangling pop perfection of The Lightning Seeds, angular indie of Maxïmo Park, and the heavy indie rock of Riding The Low.
Line up: The Lightning Seeds, Maximo Park, Riding The Low
Venue: Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire
Date: 25 July 2026
The wind is warm and threatening wildness today, rattle and hissing through grass burnt to straw by the endless sun. At the bottom of a gentle, natural slope the stage is set for day 2 of the inaugural Live at Melbourne Hall and airplanes will show the artists their underbelly as they bank on takeoff from the nearby airport.
It’s an interesting line-up: the optimistic jangling pop perfections of The Lightning Seeds will follow the angular art-but-accessible indie of Maxïmo Park after local boys Riding The Low melt a few faces with their heavier-tending emotion-driven indie rock. The spectrum of a scene a bigger festival might play out across a weekend Melbourne has condensed into a 3-band line-up on a single day, and yet – for me at least – it pays off.
Riding The Low
This year makes it 20 of Riding The Low, an indie rock band from Burton upon Trent (now an upcoming community-led cultural hub with a push for circular economies thanks in part to this band’s guitarist Chris Baldwin) fronted by Paddy Considine. He’s recognised by most for his acting and directing, but Riding The Low should in no way be mistaken as just an actor’s side hustle. Twenty years doesn’t happen by accident, and songs like these certainly don’t appear without creativity, graft and enduring friendship.
Taking inspiration in sound and stage presence from Guided By Voices their catalogue blends indie-rock and punk into what is both devastatingly heavy and emotional. An intensely energetic and physical frontman Considine leaps and high kicks around the stage after declaring they’ll do the ‘sweary ones first’.
They pull from across their catalogue – rousing and rocking as they blaze through What Has The Universe Done For Me Lately?, Above And Beyond, and Wake Me Up When It’s Over, and The Greatest Blast. The energy is as high as the guitar licks are plentiful, but the set is elevated by the rawness of Carapace of Glass, the strangely pensive and yearning Lifeboats, and the heartfelt but pointed Rocky 99.
A perennial set highlight with this band appears with Heed. Menacingly theatrical – it comes with a mask and bat for Considine to wield and spin – and downright heavy this track is a violent release of intensity with a volume that hits and lifts you like a sonic boom, and a raging relentless rhythm that your heart rate will catch on to and thrillingly chase. This is the moment when you become a part of the Riding The Low maelstrom and honestly, there is little better.
They also bring in newer tracks in Stay In You Lane and The Glasshouse which show this band are going to continue to hone the sound they are true to over the coming years. These are songs of struggling with connection, self-sabotage, and unsolicited advice about the mistakes others perceive you are making or the space you are taking. They are songs of love in all its forms: platonic, romantic, and familial. Songs of spirituality, grief and the very human grind. These are relatable and everyday things, wrapped in the biggest riffs they could find.
The band has gathered a loyal underground following but gigs like this may well help the pick up a few more fans. And rightly so – if you like your indie rock on the heavier side, but with an even heavier dose of catharsis then this band could be the one to add to your playlist and is definitely one to try and catch live.
Maxïmo Park
The indie disco has arrived in the field and we’re all up for a dance and a sing-a-long – this audience of those who fell for these tracks the first time, often carrying on their shoulders or having dancing round they feet the next generation raised on the sound.
Still sounding fresh despite 20 years passing by there’s lots in the set from 2005’s A Certain Trigger. The set opens with a run from the album including the brilliant Graffiti while mid-set it’s I Want You and a finale of crowdpleaser Apply Some Pressure. Follow up LP Our Earthly Pleasures offers up My Velocity and Girls Who Play Guitars, while there’s a gently offered political statement with The National Health.
Throughout Paul Smith shows himself to be an affable and confident frontman, throwing in warmly conversational between-song chatter as if sharing over a coffee, rather than performing for a field of hundreds.
A perfect bridge in the line-up and a set which gets us dancing, singing along, and feeling nostalgic in a way which feels like reliving rather than remembering. Maxïmo Park do angular art-rock so well, polished and intellectual but accessible and catchy to boot. Great stuff all round really.
The Lightning Seeds
With yet another World Cup behind us where men’s football teased a coming home but ultimately declined a rendition of Three Lions could have felt bitter, deflated, or just downright unnecessary. Instead it felt unifying, somewhat self-deprecating but ultimately hopeful.
And hope is a theme which runs through many a Lightning Seeds song. Shimmering, synthy, jangling pop with optimism at its heart. Something which feels somewhat naive, and can be a little rough-edged with Ian Broudie’s wavering live vocals, but also feels like a thread we need to cling to right now.
With heavy radio play over the last 30 years even the most reluctant in the field tonight could sing along to these mainstream indie bops: Change, Marvellous, Perfect, Lucky You, Pure, and The Life Of Riley. There’s even a mid-set cover of The Byrds‘ You Showed Me with the lyrics of Imagine – bassier than the songs around it, and feeling arty and earnest but in a very authentic rather than contrived way.
As the sun set, and the lights cut through the deepening darkness we all sang along, arms aloft or thrown around each other as we dance knowing that we’ll be back to a reality it’s hard to believe soon enough. For now though there’s a little bit of magic if you care to believe, for these are the days and this is the life.
~
Conditions for live music are harder than ever and festivals and large tours are starting to feel the financial pressure the grassroots has been under for a long time. Cancellations abound, costs are harder to recover, and with the cost of living those who invest in tickets are more demanding than ever.
There has been plenty who have been vocal in the comments of the local newspaper on Facebook about what could be better: more bars, more toilets, cheaper burgers and Pimms, quicker exit from the car park at the end. I can’t personally attest to their experiences as I thought all that stuff was fine, or at least what I’d expect in the current climate. I’ve seen no comments about representation and that’s where my suggestion would be: add at least one more band to the overall line-up, and recognise that women play music too and up the ratio (there’s still plenty of choice in mainstream or indie with nostalgia).
My suggestions, and even the less-satisfactory experiences some have expressed online, don’t take away from the fact that seeing a new event go ahead is quite something. And one which puts 3 ‘safe’ crowd-pleasing bands on one slightly off-kilter line-up makes me both hopeful and intrigued about what they’ll do if they make a return in 2027.
~
Images: Sarah Lay and Tristan R.
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Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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