Brudenell Social Club
33 Queens Road, Leeds LS6 1NY
Tucked into the student streets of Hyde Park in Leeds, the Brudenell Social Club is that rare thing: a working men's club that became one of the country's most cherished small venues without ever quite shedding its origins. The club dates back to 1913, with the present brick building opening in 1978; the Clark family took on the licence in 1992 and began putting on gigs as the area filled with students. It runs today as a social enterprise, with two 400-capacity concert rooms (the second, the Community Room, opened in 2017) and a bar that still keeps the comfortable chairs, pool table and cask ales of its origins.
The Brudenell has long been a primary cog in the Leeds music scene, hosting secret shows by the likes of Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand, three consecutive Cribsmas nights from The Cribs in 2007, and a centenary run in 2013 featuring The Wedding Present and The Fall. Mogwai and Waxahatchee opened the Community Room. It has been shortlisted repeatedly for best small venue honours, the affection of touring bands more or less guaranteed.
Belgrave Music Hall
1-1a Cross Belgrave Street, Leeds LS2 8JP
Belgrave Music Hall sits on Cross Belgrave Street in central Leeds, a venue that spreads music, art, film and food across three floors and tops the building with one of the city's most popular roof terraces. The format is as much social space as gig room: kitchens and bars on the lower floors, a live space woven through the building, and that terrace drawing crowds well beyond the bands.
It has established itself as one of Leeds's go-to mid-sized rooms, the sort of place that programmes new music alongside its broader cultural offering and pulls a crowd whether or not there is a band on. The mix of food, drink and live performance is the whole proposition.
O2 Academy Leeds
55 Cookridge Street, Leeds LS2 3AW
O2 Academy Leeds stands on Cookridge Street near Millennium Square, a Grade II listed Gothic building first opened in 1885 as the Coliseum. Over the following century it served variously as cinema, television studio, bingo hall and, from 1992, the Town and Country Club, before a redevelopment and a spell as the Creation nightclub. The Academy Music Group took it on and reopened it in its current form in 2008, with a main room holding 2,300 including a 500-capacity balcony, plus a 400-capacity basement for emerging acts.
Kaiser Chiefs opened the venue in October 2008, fittingly for a room that has since hosted Foals, Ellie Goulding, Twenty One Pilots, Paolo Nutini, Johnny Marr, Madness and many more. The earlier Town and Country years had already seen Blur, The Stone Roses and Placebo pass through, giving the building a long musical memory.
First Direct Arena
Arena Way, Leeds LS2 8BY
The First Direct Arena, in the Arena Quarter of Leeds city centre, opened in September 2013 and gave the city its first major indoor arena after decades without one. It was built in an unusual fan-shaped, super-theatre orientation rather than the conventional bowl, putting every seat closer to the stage; the longest sightline is around 68 metres. The flexible layout scales from 1,500 up to a maximum of roughly 13,500, and the honeycomb-patterned facade can change colour to suit the show.
Bruce Springsteen played the first concert in July 2013 and Elton John the official opening in September. The room has since hosted a sweep of major names from Prince, Fleetwood Mac and Kylie Minogue to The Killers, alt-J, Foals and the Kaiser Chiefs, the local band who lent their voices to the long campaign for an arena in Leeds. It was named best new venue in the world in 2014.
