I first heard of Stand Atlantic whilst searching artists that would be on the Slam Dunk lineup, and realized they were the band behind ‘Mess I Made’.

That song kept coming up on my Spotify whilst listening to other bands. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend Slam Dunk this year and thought I would miss out on the chance to see them live, so I was excited to hear they would be playing a warm-up show at Camden Assembly that I could attend.

Stand Atlantic came out and opened their set with ‘Push’, a track off of their recent EP – Sidewinder. the crowd went wild as soon as vocalist and guitarist Bonnie Fraser opened her mouth and were singing along at the top of their lungs, dancing to the pop-punk chords emanating from the stage. “The next ones an old one,” Fraser told us as the band immediately broke into ‘Tonight We Stay’ and it was clear the room was full of die-hard fans because they all knew it, despite its vintage. 

My favorite song ‘Mess I Made’ was up next and Fraser commanded the room to jump, which they did. The energy in the room was electric with the fans lapping up every second, note by note.

“Holy shit London, how you guys doing?” Fraser exclaimed and I was expecting this to be the part where the frontwoman would talk for a while, thank us all for being here, thank the support band which technically she did, in about one sentence, before quickly moving onto the introduction for the next song.

By the time we got to ‘Chemicals’, members of the crowd had begun surfing up to the stage and jumping off back into the audience, one even took Fraser a little by surprise. However, security decided to intervene and reprimand people for crowd surfing which was surprising because I had not seen this happen before at Camden Assembly and the kids were really just having a good time.

The set was moving along quickly and Fraser’s lack of talking was a factor in that but actually, it was nice and refreshing. After all who needs to do a lot of talking when music this good really talks for itself? It’s pop-punk at its finest and it made me feel like I was in my late teens and early twenties again reliving the great pop-punk sounds of the 2000’s era… if I was that young I would have fit in nicely with the kids at the front!

Whatever the song was that came up next will remain a mystery for the time being as Fraser explained that they had been writing a lot and this was a new song about wanting what you can’t have, but she was not going to tell us what it was called. Despite being unknown it was greeted with much delight and nearly every person in the venue was clapping along.

The way to best describe the set: energy, energy, energy. David Potter absolutely ripped on guitar, their touring bassist looked like he was having more fun than all of us put together and this rubbed off on the onlookers and lit up the room. Even some slight complications with a wonky mic did not hold Fraser back – well at least not for long. She really could be the new pop-punk princess that we’ve been waiting for.

Just to cement her brilliance she explained that next she would be doing a little acoustic mash-up, not knowing what to expect I paused in anticipation and was thrilled to hear Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ and before long The Chainsmokers’ track ‘Closer’ was thrown in the mix, which settled it: I’m in love with this woman. Everything about that couple of minutes was perfect.

The band only played two more songs, an oldie called ‘Wasteland’ and the title track from Sidewinder before they left the stage. However, they had not played ‘Coffee At Midnight’ yet so we all knew they were coming back for an encore which they did to finish with that exact song and go out with a bang.