Twenty Years, Ten Thousand Cousins: Courteeners Turn Liverpool's Waterfront Into Manchester-on-Mersey – M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool
M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool – 13th November 2026
IMAGES DESH KAPUR / WORDS MATTY BEZ
God Bless The Band Tour
Friday the 13th on the Kings Dock. A Mancunian band playing a sold-out room in a city that was never supposed to love them. On paper it shouldn't work. It has worked every time they've come here, and it has never worked better than last night.
Liam Fray has been telling Liverpool crowds for years that they were warned they'd struggle on this side of the East Lancs Road. Somewhere along the way the old rivalry turned into a family argument, the kind that ends with everyone in the same pub, and the God Bless The Band tour feels like a twentieth-birthday party with the whole extended family invited. The best-of record went Top 2 in August, both Liverpool and Alexandra Palace sold out weeks ago, and the M&S Bank Arena is full and buzzing well before the lights go down.
After a brisk early set from Manchester's The Guest List, Wigan's The Lathums get one of the loudest receptions a support act has had in this building all year. That makes sense: their debut was made at Parr Street with The Coral's James Skelly, the same man who co-produced Courteeners' two new songs. Alex Moore's band are half-adopted Scousers by now, and their big-hearted, jangling choruses get the floor moving early.
At nine o'clock the lights drop, the floor surges forward and Courteeners walk out into the kind of noise usually reserved for a last-minute winner. Are You in Love With a Notion? goes off like a starting pistol, and Cavorting follows straight after: still snotty, still sounding like it was written at the back of the bus home from Middleton, and screamed back word for word by people who were in primary school when St. Jude came out.
What stands out over the first hour is how little fat there is. No You Didn't, No You Don't and You Overdid It Doll come back to back, the new Plus One Forever fits in alongside them easily, and by Solitude of the Night Bus the arena has turned into one huge, sweaty, swaying choir. Take Over the World gets the lighters-and-phones treatment, then Winter Wonderland arrives with perfect timing on a freezing November night by the Mersey: a bit of seasonal fun the whole room joins in on. Lose Control and The 17th take the main set out in a rush of strobe and sweat.
Then everything goes quiet. Fray comes out alone for the acoustic section, the band's most quietly brilliant tradition, and this is where the night moves from great gig to special one. International, rarely heard live in years, gets the room hushed and hanging on every word. Hanging Off Your Cloud shows just how good a songwriter he has become.
Then he plays the opening chords of James's Sit Down, and ten thousand people join in singing a Manchester song at full blast. It sums up the night.
The encore leaves nothing in reserve. Cavorting and Beautiful Head keep things boiling, and then the songs everyone has been waiting for arrive. Not Nineteen Forever is less a song now than a ritual. It turns the floor into a heaving mass of shoulders, flailing arms and hugging strangers, and the noise rattles the roof.
Twenty years ago Courteeners were four lads from Middleton with a demo and a lot of nerve. Tonight they're a national institution that still plays like it has something to prove. Liverpool was supposed to be enemy territory. Instead it got a family reunion, and a reminder that few British guitar bands still mean this much to this many people.
God bless the band. And on this evidence, God bless Liverpool for having them.
Courteeners still have dates at Alexandra Palace in London (14 Nov), the OVO Hydro in Glasgow (20 Nov) and the Utilita Arena in Birmingham (21 Nov).
SET LIST
Are You in Love With a Notion?
Acrylic
No You Didn't, No You Don't
Summer
(Tour debut)
Please Don't
Plus One Forever
Bide Your Time
Fallowfield Hillbilly
Take Over the World
Solitude of the Night Bus
Winter Wonderland
Sycophant
Modern Love
(Tour debut)
The 17th
ACOUSTIC
International
Hanging Off Your Cloud
Sit Down
(James cover)
ENCORE
Cavorting
Beautiful Head
Not Nineteen Forever
What Took You So Long?
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