LIVE REVIEW – SPELLLING: YES PINK ROOM – 10/06/2025

For Ingrid Blood in your pee? Contact your GP practice. NHS’s memento mori. Quick wee before the start of the gig.  From Canada, Debby Friday opened the night accompanied by her DJ. As @IngridKern338 commented on Debby Friday’s 1/17 Youtube video:  Catchy music, exuberant joyful singing, love those clouds rollin’ on by, and extremely cute […]
Victoria Warehouse has always been one of my favourite venues. The exposed brick, the industrial charm, the rawness of it all – it’s the kind of place that brings out the best in a band. Or at least, it should. When Wet Leg first burst onto the scene, they were electric, weird, witty, offbeat and […]

LIVE REVIEW: WET LEG – VICTORIA WAREHOUSE: 29/05/2025

LIVE REVIEW – EZRA FURMAN: LIVERPOOL ROUGH TRADE – 21/05/2025

“You seem like a rowdy northern crowd if that isn’t too much of a stereotype.” From the roars of the boisterous crowd, they relish Ezra Furman’s description. Record shop in store shows can be strange events. Audiences tend to be more restrained as they are often clutching CDs or vinyl, precious cargo compared to the […]
I miss Britpop. I wasn’t there – about eight years too late – but I miss it. Its optimism, rugged energy and ability to weave between storytelling and subtle social commentary all still translates today. Perhaps now though we reflect on it with the bittersweet notion of nostalgia, longing to return to a time where […]

LIVE REVIEW – SUPERGRASS: MANCHESTER ALBERT HALL – 16/05/2025

LIVE REVIEW – BRYAN ADAMS: MANCHESTER ARENA – 09/05/2025

What can I say? Flying cars, floating boxing gloves, and a heartfelt finale—I fear I have become a massive Bryan Adams fan. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting this performance to be very similar to Frankie Valli’s from 2023. You know, the almost ventriloquist act with overly enthusiastic backing singers doing most […]
  A dozen jackets hang suspended on a stage shrouded in dry ice while eerie music drones. It could be a modern gallery’s art exhibition. If anyone entering Aviva Studios prior to curtain call did not realise in advance, ‘Hamlet Hail to the Thief’ is by no means a standard Shakespearean production. Instead, it is […]

LIVE REVIEW – HAMLET HAIL TO THE THIEF: AVIVA STUDIOS – 07/05/2025

LIVE REVIEW: MANCHESTER PUNK FESTIVAL 2025: 18-20 APRIL – VARIOUS VENUES

Your Silent Radio correspondent for the tenth Manchester Punk Festival didn’t have a press pass and came home with more bruises than notes. My interactions with bands were limited to thanking them for their performances (and occasionally “bumping into them” in the pit or physically supporting them while they crowd-surfed!). I’ll just have to do […]
‘I can’t really describe how it felt watching someone you’ve known your entire life perform in front of thousands of people.’ Dial tone memories and party girl anthems stand proudly in place of a support act – because the only appropriate opener for a tour that is the musical equivalent of reading your diary out […]

LIVE REVIEW – CAITY BASER: MANCHESTER FAC251 – 18/04/2025

LIVE REVIEW – ORLA GARTLAND: MANCHESTER ALBERT HALL – 01/04/2025

Orla Gartland could have been playing to a sold-out venue (and she was), or to a room of about a dozen people. Fact of the matter is, regardless of where, when, or to whom this Irish singer/songwriter performs, she will always put on one hell of a show, just as she did at the Albert […]
Smoke machines. The neon ‘The Darkness’ logo above the stage. Stage lights that will blind you temporarily. The dramatic entrance accompanied by ‘Rock and Roll Party Cowboy’ can only send shivers and excitement into the onlookers as The Darkness show the audience how a rock n roll entrance is made. The intro to ‘Growing on […]

LIVE REVIEW – THE DARKNESS: MANCHESTER APOLLO – 31/03/2025