LIVE: DAUGHTERS – 17/04/2019

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Chaos. Total and utter chaos. That is what unfolds tonight at Deaf (an absolutely apt name for a venue where this band is concerned, sweet Jesus it’s LOUD tonight), the mayhem orchestrated by Daughters’ extraordinary frontman Alexis S.F. Marshall who is quite unlike anyone I’ve seen perform. An absolute whirling dervish of […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- Best known as leader of Britpop heroes Blur and virtual pop superstars Gorillaz, Damon Albarn has never been one to stick to one project and for that has become the most forward thinking and prolific artist of his generation. The Good, The Bad & The Queen is a project he launched back […]

LIVE: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN – 16/04/2019

LIVE: AK/DK / ACID CHILD – 12/04/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- Acid Child With a name as ‘incendiary’ as titled and opening for a headliner dubbed ‘electro punk’, you’d expect some questionable attempt at hardcore along with runic tattoos and enough profanity to warrant an OFCOM intervention… it appears my imagination dreamed big. They have a sound veering around that middle-of-the-road-psych you see with […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- “REEE-DERS! REEE-DERS! REEE-DERS” Between songs, this low-lung call rings out around the walls of Gorilla like a football chant, like Utd fans singing “Roo-ney” back in the day. A quick scan of the crowd and it’s a real stew… some grey beards (perhaps surprisingly for a band of this relative youth) but up […]

LIVE: THE SLOW READERS CLUB / LIAM FROST – 11/04/2019

LIVE: YAK / MUSH / DEJA VEGA – 09/04/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- Déjà Vega The 3-piece’s formula could be deciphered as: drumming reminiscent of one of those Palm Desert bands from the early 1990s, no doubt putting the kit’s structural integrity into question as the concussive quality surprisingly rings through a sound system I certainly wouldn’t count as Manchester’s finest. The bass playing, with a […]
-GULLIVERS, MANCHESTER- We have a double whammy of John Fairhurst tonight. First up is a stripped-down acoustic set, as he muses how it’s good to make some chilled acoustic after making such a heavy album. But chilled may not have been the best choice of word for it, excellent fingerpicking at the start of tracks […]

LIVE: JOHN FAIRHURST – 10/04/2019

LIVE: THESE NEW PURITANS – 10/04/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- Can’t lie kids, this is going to be pretty gushing. What unfolds tonight in Yes is by far the best thing I’ve seen so far this year, it’s all the words like ‘astonishing’, ‘scintillating’, ‘fucking unbelievable’, those kind of descriptors. Because TNP are by far and away the best band in the country, […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- “The ones that sound like you’re on holiday? I’d have gone to see them!” My mum is 63-years-old. She loves The Beatles and Motown and Take That. She also, it turns out, has been as charmed by Beirut’s swaying melodies as I have and packaged that appreciation up in a turn of […]

LIVE: BEIRUT – 10/04/2019

LIVE: JAMES BLAKE – 07/04/2019

-VICTORIA WAREHOUSE, MANCHESTER- If you’ve listened to James Blake’s beautiful new album Assume Form, read any interviews with him recently or looked on any social media about him, you’ll know one thing: James Blake is fully loved up. His relationship with actress and all round hero Jameela Jamil appears to have fundamentally changed Blake’s outlook […]
-YES, MANCHESTER- Nilüfer Yanya has recently cashed in on a couple of years’ steady hype with her debut album, Miss Universe. Plaudits have rained in from internet corners far and wide, her ascent into the mainstream of the alternative complete. It is fully deserved, too. Miss Universe is a charmingly strange album, one of those that […]

LIVE: NILUFER YANYA – 04/04/2019