LIVE: DZ DEATHRAYS – 19/09/2014

– NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – The listing calls it Thrash Pop, which I don’t really like, and I think it’s been called Dance Metal. I read Pop Rock somewhere which I thought was the kind of stuff the Goo Goo Dolls make. I made up Avant Hard because I thought it was funny […]
– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – Sohn, aka Christopher Taylor, strolls onto the dry iced stage in a sweltering Gorilla, black hoodie pulled over his head, looking every bit the mysterious, enigmatic electronic artist we see so much of today. Taking his seat at a keyboard at the front of the stage, flanked by a couple of […]

LIVE: SOHN – 17/09/2014

LIVE: WILD CUB – 14/09/2014

– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Nashville’s Wild Cub come to the Deaf Institute this evening for one of only two gigs in the UK this month. Support for the show comes from VYKTORIA. The four members of VYKTORIA swagger out onto stage and get stuck straight in to their opening song. Their sound, laden […]
– THE CASTLE HOTEL, MANCHESTER – Dan Michaelson has always struck me as endearingly old fashioned, in that he concerns himself with the craft of writing songs, and the subtlety of his songs on record demonstrate a becalmed, bleached and sparse beauty, where space and brevity become sumptuous and rich. In the live setting the […]

LIVE: DAN MICHAELSON & THE COASTGUARDS – 11/09/2014

LIVE: CATE LE BON – 12/09/2014

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – I last saw Cate Le Bon in support of St. Vincent at The Deaf Institute almost 3 years ago. Since that superb set, where she stood on stage with just a small pink practice amp and a guitar for company, she has released her finest album to date – ‘Mug Museum’, […]
– RNCM, MANCHESTER –  American Interior is the name of the new album by former Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys. It is also the name of his new book, his new film and his new app – he has, in essence, made a multimedia art project. It details his quest to track down his […]

LIVE: GRUFF RHYS – 10/09/2014

LIVE: GET CAPE, WEAR CAPE, FLY – 28/08/2014

– THE NIGHT & DAY CAFÉ, MANCHESTER – I’m not even at Night & Day, and yet I somehow seem to have implicated myself in a drink with the cast of the kids’ TV show The 4 O’ Clock Club.  The reasons are too convoluted to go into, but it gets even more twisted from […]
– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – I guess being the son of one of the most iconic musicians of the 20th century and an internationally renowned avant-garde artist, brings with it a lot of expectation concerning your creative talents. Sean Lennon, whose godfather is Elton John – who appeared in Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker – who co-wrote […]

LIVE: THE GHOST OF A SABER TOOTH TIGER (GOASTT) – 08/09/2014

LIVE: MARISSA NADLER – 03/09/2014

– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – I have to confess, there was a period where I fell out of love with Marissa Nadler. I was pretty obsessed with her 2009 album Little Hells which, in my eyes, is about as perfect as a singer songwriter album can possibly be. Then she released a couple of so-so albums […]
– BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER – Perfume Genius, or Mike Hadreas as his friends probably call him, has the audience of a sweltering Band On The Wall in the palm of his hand. Every person in the room is silent, in absolute awe of the beautiful, frequently devastatingly show he’s putting on tonight, and […]

LIVE: PERFUME GENIUS – 02/09/2014