Live at Kirkstall Abbey
A ruined monastery in the north-west of Leeds opens its grounds to a more modern spiritual experience. Over two nights in July, we relive some of the best of the ’00s with The Streets and The Sunshine Underground.
By the early 1500s, British spirituality was at a confusing low ebb. The cross bearers, if you will, were the heads of some 625 monastic houses that rose up centuries prior in a wave of public enthusiasm, and who now wielded tools of fraud and threat to maintain that power across every square inch of the nation. These were houses of excess, profiting from the veneration of false relics, hoarding incalculable wealth, but whose excess was often dressed up in a cowl of austerity and modesty. A monk’s life must be presented as ascetic, chaste, obedient. But they offered this presentation amidst the trappings of the wealth of a nation. The more the wealth grew, the greater the disconnect between the monasteries and the common public; the more the disconnect between the public and spirituality itself. Increasing sentiment developed among the people to redress the imbalances of power and wealth.
It was supposed to be so easy. Motivated perhaps by his syphilitic regions and an ache in his coffers as much as popular opinion, a king by name of Henry, of whom you may have heard, decided to build on the undercurrents of resentment and escalate the pace of change. What followed in the 1530s was part of the greatest upheaval of religious power a nation has ever undergone. At the end of the decade, just outside of Leeds, the chapels, houses, and cloisters of Kirkstall Abbey were wrenched from the monks’ hands. Was this merely for power? For wealth? To justify an increasing number of (previously unlawful) marriages? Or was it simpler than that? To stop sharking for a minute? To get chips? And drinks?
490 years later, there’s promise of an answer. On a Friday night in July 2026, the abbey ruins at Kirkstall sit proud in the evening glow. Recently renovated and underlit in pastel hues, this is a space at last in the hands of the people. And the people are here in their thousands. Through an afternoon of poetics, grime, and UK garage, we are led through sermons of varied faith in anticipation of the true gospel, the testament. The now-sacred text is expected to be performed in its entirety. As the sun drops low, at last. The Streets. A Grand Don’t Come for Free.
The crowd is ecstatic even before the opening lines. What follows is an uninterrupted 45 minutes that serves as a performance piece and a confirmation of the strength of the work from two decades prior. Mike Skinner is in fantastic form, willing the crowd along with him. Things pop off early with a rapturous rendition of Could Well Be In, the choir of thousands finding their voice proper for the first time, and as we work forwards through the tracks to Blinded by the Lights and mid-point high Fit But You Know It, it’s clear: this is — still — music that matters. These are words with impact, words that resonate. This is a story every bit as relevant and commanding as it was 22 years ago. This is music for us, the people, and we’re all in it together. To press this home, Skinner spells it out. In large white letters across the prop bus shelter centre stage: don’t monk yourself. A message 500 years in the making.
The Streets
We work through chapter and verse. You know it: Simone, Dan, Scott. The bookies’, the chip shop, the Empty Cans. This final song, following a sublime and unifying rendition of Dry Your Eyes, closes out the tale with its two-part crescendo, tension and aggression giving way to that divine chord progression and, fittingly, the end of something we do not want to end. But where the album stops, the hits begin, and we are treated to a second coming that works through almost a dozen tracks from both before and after A Grand… that lift the whole evening to even dizzier heights.
Lockdown-era smash Who’s Got the Bag has many reaching for their sacraments. The UK Garage tinge from Has it Come to This? and Weak Become Heroes ignites ancient passions. Don’t Mug Yourself provides a central, guiding light. And before we even know it has begun, the second stanza of the evening is at an end, and delirious we pour out into the suburbs, a long long walk back to town ahead for those willing the night on further.
Just before the dissolution at Kirkstall, in 1538 Henry VIII outlawed pilgrimages to monastic shrines. The ostensible aim was to reverse the increasing religious focus on relics, miracles, saints and the like, and return spiritual life across the nation to a form with more inherent value for the commoner and their day-to-day existence. Pilgrimages were seen to serve the monasteries, not the people. But it seems this aim may have been misguided. On Saturday 25 July, the day after The Streets’ performance, a call was heard for a new kind of pilgrimage: one with a mid-’00s vintage. One with the potential to enhance the spiritual experience of the commoner, rather than diminish it. The only condition to heed the call was that each pilgrim had received the appropriate baptism and confirmation, some 20 years prior.
“If the NME was your bible in 2006, this show here is your pilgrimage”
The lineup might best explain what I mean. The Whip. The Twang. The Futureheads. Hard-Fi. White Lies. The Sunshine Underground. If you’re reading this without any sort of vibration of your spiritual aura, then yours may be a soul lost. If instead you find through all of this the shining of a divine light within you then, well, come on brothers and sisters, we’ll have you climbing up the walls.
The crowd files in through the afternoon. The Whip bring riffs and beats in abundance, and you can’t help but think they’d be more suited to a spot at two in the morning rather than two in the afternoon. The Twang get the crowd in chorus again, those who have returned from the previous night’s mass. The Futureheads prove that they’re far more than that one song, for any hangers on who were in doubt. There’s barely a face that looks under 30, but youth isn’t the point. Fun is. Hard-Fi try their best to bring some, but a few attempts at crowd wrangling fall flat, and an unwillingness to ‘shut up and play the hits’ goes against the grain of the afternoon. White Lies come forth in salvation, with a gothic sprinkle that suits both the venue and the crowd, and willingly we’re brought back up to speed. For the main event.
The Sunshine Underground cut their teeth under the NME’s mid-’00s obsession with the term ‘nu-rave’, which for the unconverted means a blend of indie rock and dance music. File next to Klaxons, Hadouken!, and the like. For ‘Sunny Unny’, Live at Kirkstall Abbey is a homecoming show (of sorts), and comes after a 10-year hiatus. If the NME was your bible in 2006, this, this show here, is your pilgrimage.
And lo!
The crowd belts every word. Bodies in their late 30s or early 40s move in ways that have been considered unholy for at least 15 years. Craig Wellington, the band’s frontman, is in fine voice and, along with bandmates Stu, Daley, and Matt, looks perhaps better than ever. In contrast to the show from the previous night, the setlist is a carefully curated mishmash rather than a play-through, and in it we find only the most danceable and crowd-indulging tunes from the first three of the band’s four studio albums. Raise the Alarm is here in full, all 11 tracks. Five tunes appear from sophomore Nobody’s Coming to Save You. Only opener Start makes it in from The Sunshine Underground.
The Sunshine Underground
Whatever this is, it feels good. It feels like hit after hit. Wellington tells us more than once that the gig almost never happened. He tells us they thought nobody would really care. But we are true believers, and our presence in numbers is a demonstration of our faith. We preach of a Commercial Breakdown. We share prayers through other-worldly versions of Borders and Somebody’s Always Getting in the Way. We kneel before the majesty of I Ain’t Losing Any Sleep. Through a good-old-days lengthened version of Put You in Your Place we are brought to a rapturous end, with a victory lap of two album closers as an encore.
The pilgrimage has taken from us; our bodies are sore. But our souls are full. Through one weekend (and with more scheduled), Leeds-based promoters Futuresound have brought the best from their past, and Live at Kirkstall Abbey is a qualified success. The monasteries were guilty of shrouding their excesses in a cloak of austerity. Here, now, with austerity feeling like all we’ve ever known, we find a way to indulge in excess instead. A grand does not come for free, sure. It may be true that nobody’s coming to save us. But on this weekend, we are all richer. We are all blessed. ⚭
Dan JohnsonThe Streets and The Sunshine Underground were at Kirkstall Abbey 24 and 25 July 2026, respectively
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