A superb night of rock anthems

Helen Dalby reviews Welsh rock legends Stereophonics who brought their 2025 tour to the Utilita Arena on Saturday night

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Stereophonics' cool frontman Kelly Jones belted out some of the band's classics Stereophonics rocking the Utilita Arena Thirty years-plus and the Phonics are still rocking

IF there’s a better musical cure for the glumness of a rainy weekend in this frenetic and dark part of December than watching Stereophonics live, I'm not sure what it is. Saturday night's concert at the Utilita Arena left everyone with big smiles heading out into the drizzle.

I always think of Stereophonics as a feelgood band. Partly that’s because they were a soundtrack to my university years, so there’s a surge of warm nostalgia brought on by their music.

It's also fair to say they have plenty of darker, gritty tracks - and that their rockiest songs are all bangers - so I mean feelgood very much as a compliment.

However, they do have a particularly impressive back catalogue of tracks that just somehow make you smile. Perhaps the best loved of these is Dakota, a summery anthem with which they've always closed the show in the last twenty years or so that I've been watching them live.