O2 Academy // Birmingham, England // 25 June 2022
Photos and review by Sophie Jones
After a bunch of rescheduling and a long time waiting; it was finally time for Waterparks to bring their “See You In The Future” Tour to Birmingham’s O2 Academy where droves of colourful-haired fans had already started to queue around the block in excitement.
After a quick stage turn-a-round, the lights turned to red and the stage started to fill with a Smokey haze from the machines It was time for the trio to take front and centre. Geoff came running out and took to riser set out in front of him waving and welcoming the audience, Otto takes his place behind his kit which is set to the far back of the stage and finally Awsten comes bursting out before going into “stupid for you” where the lighting when into a colourful frenzy.
The setlist is jam-packed with all their hit songs taken from all their multiple albums with many of them featuring on the critically acclaimed Greatest Hits album released back in May. Which lead Awsten to joke with the audience about how to pronounce “Birmingham” correctly as he stated “I got ribbed for pronouncing it wrong on the only waterparks DVD to exist which was filmed in this city” before continuing to say “Birmingham” down the microphone switching between an America and British accent. Later in the set-in reference to the DVD again Awsten said the one thing he missed from that night was the pits and crowd surfing in-sighting the fans to do just that.
The Texan trio continued through their set before Awsten took to the mic to speak with the fans mentioning the next song “Telephone” was used about a month ago in a Netflix show called Heart Stopper to which the room erupted into cheers at the mention before the trio played said track.
It was now about halfway through the show and again Awsten took to the mic to speak with the audience; He noticed the majority of the crowd were wearing light-up glasses and said “where is everybody getting these” before laughing and asking “what on earth is going on” as people started to climb upon each other’s shoulders.
This led into 10 minutes of set being wasted as Awsten got the audience to sing Happy Birthday to a fan but in a low-pitched “demonic voice” he said. Following him pulling out his phone and playing what I can only describe as sounding like a high-pitched mouse singing Happy Birthday as he put his phone to the microphone for the room to hear; which he played in a few different variants. He then continued to run with this saying “have you heard the New Kids on the Block version it’s so creepy” as he re-sighted some of the lines while trying to find the sound clip on his phone. Once he played the lines, he re-sighted via the clip through the microphone to the room he said to the audience “ Turn it off, Turn it off, someone send them to jail” before laughing.
Awsten then admitted “I’ve spoken so much I’ve fucked the setlist” before skipping Rare, Not Warriors, 21 Questions and went straight to playing Lucky People.
I can’t lie this wasn’t the best Waterparks show I’ve attended; I’ve seen them do better but that didn’t stop the hardcore fans from singing their hearts out and lapping up the banter Awsten was providing.
Setlist:
Stupid for You
Watch What Happens Next
FUNERAL GREY
You’d Be Paranoid Too (If everyone was out to get you)
Telephone
Gloom Boys
High Definition
Fuzzy
Snow Globe
[Reboot]
I Miss having sex but at least I don’t wanna die anymore
Rare
Not Warriors
21 Questions
Lucky People
Dream Boy
Brainwashed
Lowkey as hell
Violet!
Numb
Turbulent
