Thirty Years After Expecting to Fly, The Bluetones Play It in Full

The record came out on 12 February 1996 and entered the UK albums chart at number one, knocking Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? off the top for a week. Slight Return, the band's signature single, reached number two in the singles chart. Thirty years on, the promoters print both facts at the head of the listings, and the band has written the evening around the record: the album from start to finish, alongside a selection from the rest of the catalogue.

The road to Shepherd's Bush

The tour proper opens at the Empire Music Hall in Belfast on 8 October and Whelan's in Dublin the following night, then crosses back for two nights at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on 14 and 15 October. Carlisle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Wolverhampton, Cambridge, Oxford, Newport and Barnsley come next, before the two dates the announcement led with: the O2 Ritz in Manchester on 30 October and the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire in London the night after.

November keeps going. The listings run through Concorde 2 in Brighton, the Old Fire Station in Boscombe, the Cheese and Grain in Frome and the Roadmender in Northampton to The Drill in Lincoln on 8 November, with the Shiiine On Weekender at Minehead the weekend after. Manchester and London were announced on 26 January, and tickets for both went on sale four days later.

It is a long run for an anniversary, and it is laid out like any touring autumn: two nights in Leeds, a northern and Scottish stretch, the two big-city nights, then a week of smaller towns in November. The record is the reason given for the tour. The itinerary reads like a working band's year with a famous album at the centre of it.

New songs in the set

The band arrives at the anniversary with new material as well. Atlas, their seventh studio album, came out on 1 May on their own Brainhole Records, gathering the nine tracks from three EPs released in 2024 and 2025 and adding a bonus track. It reached number twenty on the Scottish albums chart and missed the UK albums chart altogether.

Over the summer the band was already playing the new songs live. On 5 August The Bluetones played Things Happen Here in Dartington, Devon, a sold-out full-band show with Colour TV in support. Musomuso's review describes a set that put fresh songs from Atlas beside Slight Return, Marblehead Johnson and If, and notes that Mark Morriss had played the same room on his own the previous year. Earlier, on 24 July, The Underground in Stoke-on-Trent had the band headlining, with Six Towns and Andy Gowers Guns For Hire in support.

That is the context worth keeping in mind when the album is played in full this month. A band that only ever revisits its first record turns into a tribute to itself. One that spent the summer fitting new songs between the old ones, in rooms like Dartington, is still doing the ordinary work of a touring band.

What we are not telling you

This piece did not reach us the usual way. The Bluetones appear on our Spain chart this week, and that is a filing error on our side: our registry had placed the band's account in Spain on the strength of a contact address. The band is from Hounslow in west London, where it formed in 1993. The account has since been moved to the United Kingdom and will be scored there from next week. We have not printed that chart's figures with this piece, and nothing written here leans on them.

Our own file holds three summer dates for the band: The Underground on 24 July, The Booking Hall in Dover on 29 July and Things Happen Here on 5 August, all filed under an event name that is a listing artefact rather than a show title. The Underground and Dartington we could match to the venue's listing and to a published review; Dover only to our file. Everything else on this page comes from promoters, venues, public listings and the press. We hold no attendance figures and no confirmed capacities for the tour's rooms, and we cannot say how the new songs sit beside the old record, only that the band has been playing them.