Hard-Fi

Hard-Fi at Rock City

Hard-Fi: Troxy, London

Watch Me Fall Apart, Cash Machine

Hard-Fi didn't need any fancy lighting, gimmicks or complex computer artwork, just the humble image of their 2005 debut LP debut, Stars of CCTV, a black CCTV camera on an almost neon yellow backdrop.

In the mid-noughties, the excitement of Britpop was a blip in the rear-view mirror. 9/11 marked the beginning of a series of terrorist outrages and we were knee-deep in a very questionable conflict in the Middle East. The Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami had just killed north of 230,000 people.

The year is 2005. Phones still have rudimentary cameras, and social media, as it is today, is still in an inchoate state. No one filmed on their phones or updated their status during gigs. There were no sneaky vapes because people legally smoked cigarettes at live venues, stinking their clothes and others around them.

Debut album 'Stars of CCTV' triumphantly announced Hard-Fi's arrival back in 2005. They gave the public both barrels of a shotgun at a time when life could have been better. The Iraq war, London bombings, a government in decline, that was the backdrop that nurtured the first LP.