The Cheese and Grain in Frome has become quite the destination for touring acts over the last few years, helped in part from their connections with Emily Eavis who runs the Glastonbury Festival held about 20 miles away. Tonight that is not the only Glastonbury connection and Reef are in town, who happen to hail from that very place. Yes I know the festival is not held directly in Glastonbury, before people write in.

Reef probably had their purple patch in the mid-nineties being a staple on shows such as TFI Friday, but have been going pretty much since 1993 with a few years gap in the 2000’s. So they are not part of the recent trend of 90s bands to reform, or if anything could be argued to have trailblazed it. Looking around the audience it’s likely that most of them discovered Reef in their heyday.

This gig is a warm up for their tour support with Deep Purple and what a way to get in the mood, with what’s verging on a hometown gig. This is emphasised by the deep west country twang of lead singer Gary Stringer. They play a mix of tunes from across their career but perhaps recognising my observations about the fans being of the 90’s vintage about half the songs are taken from breakout album 1997’s ‘Glow’.

These being ‘Come Back Brighter’ and ‘Consideration’ played early into the set. Of course, the ubiquitous ‘Place Your Hands’ came out too, placed mid set rather than the possible close that might have been expected. Though from my vantage point at the back (I’d hurt my leg, so no moshing today) it was more a case of place your phones up as about every other person shot them into the sky to record the “hit”.

What I did find surprising was after this, there was a slow trickle of people leaving, who were obviously only there for one song, which I find a bit disrespectful of a band who have way more to them than one 3 minute ditty good as it is. Oh well, certainly their loss rather than ours, makes the bar queue shorter anyway and more space for us to enjoy the rest of the set.

They have plenty more to give too with the band evidently loving what their doing. Now I admit I am in the following category but for those that have lost track of them a bit over the last couple of years, it was great to hear their newer material too with ‘Refugee’ and title track of new album ‘Shoot Me Your Ace’ particularly standing out. The latter being the end of the main set.

The encore opened with ‘Yer Old’, well yes we know we are now, crowd and band getting older but still coming out on a Sunday night to rock out. This was followed by a wonderful version of ‘The Chain’ and closing track ‘The End’ which pretty much does what it says on the tin. Reef are definitely still out there to rock out and enjoy it with their fans, for which there are plenty as tonight was totally sold out. We’ll certainly place our hands up for many more nights like this.