LIVE: FALSE ADVERSTISING – 23/O2/2017

– DIVE NQ, MANCHESTER – Being a music fan in Manchester is the gift that keeps on giving. Quite apart from the treasure trove of gig venues that we have the fortune to frequent on a regular basis, every now and then a new place will pop into your schedule. The newest addition to my […]
– RNCM, MANCHESTER – Last week, this picture popped up on my Facebook feed. In short, it recycles an old and often repeated claim about what the very highest level of musical taste is – that is, to like “everything except rap and country”. I’m going to have to leave that extremely dodgy sweeping generalisation […]

LIVE: THE HANDSOME FAMILY / COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS – 22/02/2017

LIVE: TOUCHE AMORE – 18/02/2017

– SOUND CONTROL, MANCHESTER – The distressed voice of Daniel Johnston suffocates the room in thoughts of an eternal, inescapable funeral. Calls to forever close, and the silence invites a dangerous animal to the stage of Manchester’s Sound Control. Restless and feverish, the platform is paced to the soundtrack of melodic incline, before cathartic contraction […]
– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – Championed by BBC 6 Music and just this week announced on the bill to support Belle and Sebastian in Glasgow as part of the 6 Music Festival next month, Julia Jacklin is an artist going places. Tonight, she plays a sell-out gig at Manchester’s Soup Kitchen, touring her debut album […]

LIVE: JULIA JACKLIN / KETO – 23/02/2017

LIVE: PINEGROVE – 23/02/2017

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Pinegrove make genuinely warm music that exposes all our fallibilities and good intentions. Their music is wracked with nostalgia, recalling late nights, old friends and drunken mistakes. The six-piece alt country band were one of the breakthrough acts of last year, with their album Cardinal featuring on numerous end-of-year lists […]
– FRED’S ALE HOUSE, MANCHESTER – “You wanna keep your change down your socks on this road. And your notes up your…” Mark Morriss seems to have Stockport Road all worked out during his two-night residency at Levenshulme’s Fred’s Ale House. He should know the score by now, this being his third two-night stint at […]

LIVE: MARK MORRISS – 17/02/2017

LIVE: MODERN BASEBALL – 17/02/2017

– ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER – Modern Baseball (MoBo from herein, shamelessly stolen from a Pitchfork review), are a band at the forefront of that oft misunderstood genre ‘emo’. I say misunderstood, because it conjures up images of sad teenagers dressed in various shades of black being sad about how sad their lives are, taking all […]
– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Back in 2010, Young Legionnaire were quite a promising prospect. They had big support slots booked, a huge sounding debut album in the bag and an ever-growing following that were transfixed by their heartfelt brand of alt rock. Sadly, things didn’t really take off the way in which many initially […]

LIVE: YOUNG LEGIONNAIRE – 14/02/2017

LIVE: TUSKS / ALPINES – 17/02/2017

– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – Tusks is the solo project of Emily Underhill. The Hastings-born singer-songwriter shifts from genre to genre, at one moment making a tense electronic song and at others channeling her inner King Krule as she aggressively strums her guitar whilst delivering a faultless vocal. Tusks is signed to the same label […]
– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Since 2001, German ambient techno master Ulrich Schnauss has been making the kind of music that sounds incredible through headphones; particularly when you’re on a long train journey, when you’re just staring out of the window watching the beautiful/bleak (delete as appropriate) landscapes of England’s sometimes green and pleasant land […]

LIVE: ULRICH SCHNAUSS – 15/02/2017