As Andrew Cushin opens Museum Gardens for another music and comedy festival it’s glorious. The event is blessed by Mother Nature in the capital of God’s country.

Review and Photos by Stuart Duthie

Tonight, the sun is out, the mercury is at the top of the scale, and the audience here knows what that means. Tonight, it’s a garden party vibe – the kind of place where you don your summer dress or your floral shirt, straw hat, the mid-week relaxation to help carry you through to the end of the week.

And who better to open than this Newcastle lad giving us his blend of pleasant? You can see why Noel Gallagher is one of his supporters; there is a little of that Britpop vibe in here.

Tonight, we are going back further than that, back to the warm summer nights of our memories (although it was never as warm as this), the heyday of synth-driven memories.

Next up were China Crisis. They were always at the chilled melodic end of the synthesiser scale and like a fine wine has, if anything, mellowed further over the years. At least it wasn’t corked and the crowd lapped up the flavours in the sun, joining in and clapping along. “I know you can’t believe we are a warmup act and we f*cking are,” announces Gary Daly. “We are playing the Crescent in October so get yourself down there.” That’s one to look out for if you like this type of music.

Then we had Heaven 17. I last saw them play almost ten years ago at the most incongruous event – the annual insurance awards at the Albert Hall. Those underwriters can party, let me tell you. We only got three songs that night, whereas tonight we got the full hour.

Their second song was Fascist Groove Thang. Singer Glenn Gregory signed his hat with ‘[We don’t need this] Fascist Groove Thang’ and threw it into the crowd. A great song and sad that it continues to be so relevant some 45 years after its release, perhaps even more so now. They sounded phatter than I remember – a subtle updated mix of their own sound to amp up the energy – and in fine voice. It acted as a wakeup call-to-action for the mainly middle-aged crowd.

Their cover of Bowie’s Let’s Dance did nothing to change my view of cover songs (if you must do them, do them differently to the original and add something new) but got people moving at the front and swaying at the back.

As the warm sun dipped behind the trees, Heaven 17 turned up the heat with Penthouse to Pavement. This delivered what the audience wanted. Only one thing for it, Temptation. That was the song I was waiting for, with Carol Kenyan’s part ably picked up by current member Kelly Barnes. This was probably the high point of the evening (but I have a soft spot for that song with hazy memories of singing and dancing to this in a ski bar in the late ‘90s).

And then on to the headliner OMD. As they took to the stage, the energy seemed to change. My memories of them were far less “party” than they were tonight. This was the electricity that we needed, a Tesla supercharger for the audience. It got the crowd jumping at the front and dancing all the way to the very back of the audience.

In the second song out came the live bass guitar. I’ve mentioned in a previous review the difference a live drummer makes to a performance and it was the same tonight. It’s difficult to make synthesiser playing a stage performance, so it was great to have bass and drums as part of this.

Enola Gay despatched early on (this is what we came for). As the set progressed, we had hit after hit. I had forgotten how much OMD occupied the charts in the early ‘80s.

This was a popular night and a sell-out at Museum Gardens. It’s a friendly event and the food and beer are way nicer than most festivals I have been to. It’s great that York puts this on and I am looking forward now to what is on offer tomorrow night.

Andrew Cushin, China Crisis, Heaven 17 and OMD played at The Museum Gardens, York on Thursday 9 July 2026.