My First Time - Rough Trade - 13th October 2022

As one of the city’s most whispered about up-and-coming bands, My First Time take the stage to shouts and applause.

The band’s cult following developed with the same lightning speed frontman Isaac Stroud-Allen sings at. Their live show history is sparse but notorious.

Every member looks entirely different; it’s as if the kids sat at the back of detention started a band. Bassist Niamh Jones weaponises a black corset, armed with the instrument for her siren call. James Mellen folds himself over his guitar; six foot four to the ground, donned with daisy chain tattoos and plastic necklaces. Drummer Jordanna Forsey’s black hair flies; her expression is turbulent, her skill flawless.

Stroud-Allen, though, is the real force to be reckoned with. He’s a playground wordsmith born to sing on the soap box. He writes like a more radical James Smith and paces like Ian Brown with wilder eyes.

He’s twenty but looks younger; it’s a strange selling point he uses to his advantage. Stroud-Allen may look like a kid, but he commands both band and crowd with veteran ease. He doesn’t even need a stage persona; his confidence is both completely unreal and totally steeped in reality.

Their best song is ‘A Man of Ill Repute’; it’s thematically adjacent to Yard Act’s ‘Fixer Upper’ but textured with Stroud-Allen’s vulgar and shockingly intelligent takes.

As he shouts “boys will be boys!” the punks in the front row take their cue to mosh. It’s a strange sight at a support act show, but the energy they conjure is unmatched - even by the band they were there to warm up for.

At ‘Sandpaper Scraping’ – the only song in their arsenal that has the crowd nodding heads instead of clutching pearls – Stroud-Allen winks at his girlfriend, who watches from the front row. They may be rockstars in the making, but they’re still kids. It’s uncanny how easily they convince you otherwise.

They say you never forget your first, and no one’s forgetting My First Time any time soon.