LIVE: MUSH / SPRINGFIELD ELEMENTARY – 30/10/2019

– Yes, Manchester – Having only ever played two gigs in my entire 23 years I’m not best qualified to dish out advice to aspiring bands but there are a few musical truisms that even I’m aware of. One of these is that if your drummer counts in by shouting ‘1 2 3 4!’ and […]
-Yes, Manchester – Young people matter, young people matter, young people matter… Walking into the pink room tonight at Yes, I look around and the place is full of them, young people. Leather jackets, dungarees and even a couple of mullets, LIFE have a voice for our generation and it’s relentless. Straight off the back […]

LIVE: LIFE – 27/10/2019

LIVE: WEYES BLOOD – 29/10/2019

– Club Academy, Manchester – Natalie Mering, commonly known as Weyes Blood, has made one of the very best albums of the year in Titanic Rising. On the cover of this extraordinary album, Mering floats underwater in a what looks like her teenage bedroom, an otherworldly, slightly unsettling image as she looks directly at us […]
– Albert Hall, Manchester – Upon entry, I walk upstairs through a building that could pass as a mental idealisation of a natural history museum; the high ceilings and dated decorum compliment the main hall which itself could easily house a selection of skeletal theropods; reinforcing my abstract visualisation. The seated area has a vague […]

LIVE: SUNN O))) – 27/10/2019

LIVE: EVERYONE YOU KNOW – 28/10/2019

– Soup Kitchen, Manchester – It’s Monday night and after touring for nearly a week, Everyone You Know have arrived in Manchester. The band, consisting of two half-brothers, has recently released their second EP ‘Look After Your Pennies’ and started their first proper headline tour on 22nd October. I haven’t seen a gig at Soup […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Binge With the headline act billed as one of Japan’s most interesting ‘noise’ bands, it’s not a particular surprise that this opening act is also a two-piece, with a technical heaviness that places the 4/4 convention into a dustbin and promptly kicked down an escalator, never to return. With but a guitar and […]

LIVE: MELT-BANANA / BINGE – 21/10/2019

LIVE: HOT CHIP – 25/10/2019

-VICTORIA WAREHOUSE, MANCHESTER- Somehow I’ve never managed to see Hot Chip live, despite them being one of my all time favourite bands. I was, like many, caught hook, line and sinker by the majestic ‘Over & Over’, that monkey with its miniature cymbal burrowing its way into my brain like the world’s most potent ear […]
-BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER- A lot can happen to a band in just over a year and for Perth’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, to use the term bumper would be a huge understatement. Returning to Manchester for the fourth time in thirteen months, the band, somewhat unsurprisingly, have sold out yet another venue and continue […]

LIVE: PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS – 25/10/2019

LIVE: SQUID – 22/10/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- I don’t even know where to start with this. Part of the ridiculously brilliant Speedy Wunderground crew (including black midi and Black Country, New Road), Squid are making weird, wild, unpredictable, fascinating music seemingly with no boundaries or conventions, just doing what the fuck they like and seeing what happens. Tonight in Yes’ […]
-NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER- New Yorker Frankie Cosmos (or Greta Kline, to give her her given name), is nothing if not prolific. Since 2014 she’s released four albums and two EPs, with two of those albums and one of those EPs coming within the last year. It’s not just the volume of albums either; […]

LIVE: FRANKIE COSMOS – 21/10/2019