Transvision Vamp – Live In Belfast

Support tonight is Northern Ireland’s alt-pop princess Susi Pagel and her bouncy brand of metal-fused pop is a big hit with the Limelight crowd. She’s sparky and bounces happily between pure pop and heavy riffing – a fitting entree for what is to come. Her live drummer’s work is a bit lost in a soupy mix but the backing thunders and she has some great tunes. But here is the real news. Transvision Vamp are back. They’ve been away for a long time. A long, long time and in the meantime, since their halcyon days, scenes and genres have come and gone. So, as they say round Belfast way, what’s the craic with Transvision Vamp today, thirty-odd years later?

Before we can answer that, let’s rewind to the late 1980s. Wendy James and her band were sexy, cheeky popsters with an uncanny knack for crafting pop-punk earworms. They burned brief and bright, producing two albums (plus one you’ve hardly heard of) of tough bubblegum guitar pop music before burning out. They left a bigger footprint than some of their contemporaries and had that insouciance that some of those around at the time did not. In Wendy James, the band had a saucy minx as a focus but she was no airhead pop poppet. Her band were loud and brash, the whole package was dayglo and intense.

So now wind forward to the present. Transvision Vamp are indeed back and what looks a sellout Limelight crowd is vibrating with anticipation. But why are they here? Is this going to be a leaden plod through the back catalogue to stir the dying embers of a lost youth? Are people curious to see how the years have treated Wendy – because let’s be honest, she is the face of Transvision Vamp; the rest of the band could pass you on the street and you would hardly know.

After a dramatic build up, the band bound onto the Limelight stage and crash into Trash City and all questions are answered. Wendy is looking fit and perky, the band is tight and really on it. What unfolds from this point is a kind of communion. Each song is ecstatically received and Wendy regales us between songs with snippets of history and anecdotes about the songs. And what songs they are. This is one of those bands that produced more hits than you can remember. And we get them all tonight – Baby I Don’t Care, Tell That Girl To Shut Up (the Holly and the Italians song), I Want Your Love and Landslide of Love.

If you had any doubts about Wendy’s ability to hold a crowd or a note, this show would have dispelled them. She’s still full of confidence and fire and her band are magnificent. She is also touchingly appreciative of the adoration she commands. Was this a Greatest Hits package? Yes it was, but Transvision Vamp can’t do anything else because that’s what they do. With Wendy announcing plans for a new album, this is one band from back then whose glittering future is not necessarily stuck in the past.

Live photographs from Transvision Vamp‘s 2026 UK tour courtesy of David Leigh Dodd.