LIVE: SAM BEAM AND JESCA HOOP – 31/08/2016

– RNCM, MANCHESTER – It’s like stepping through an upper-middle-class portal tonight, as the Royal Northern College of Music’s or RNCM for short, has its patrons ushered and halted and directed through doors and hallways. Holding wine in their hands, the RNCMs patrons, no more than utter a whisper throughout the performance, as Sam Beam […]
– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – It dawned on me in about 2004 that several of my favourite bands and musicians were signed to the same label, Merge Records, so I decided to splash out on the then-recent 3-CD compilation Old Enough To Know Better: 15 Years of Merge Records. As a kid I’d been given a […]

LIVE: M. WARD – 01/09/2016

LIVE: BIG THIEF – 01/09/2016

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – Whispers about Brooklyn’s Big Thief seem to have echoed across America; Npr music’s Bob Boilen, the man who saw 666 gigs last year, hailed them as a band ‘bound by big songs’ calling their album’ title track ‘Masterpiece’ “one of the best songs of the year”, while Pitchfork said songs on […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Margo Price was born into a life on a corn-and-soybean farm in Buffalo Prairie, a place name so Northern American that it almost must be fictional, as if Price is a character in a movie about an up-and-coming rockabilly star. Her life-so-far story truly has taken on cinema-worthy credentials from her […]

LIVE: MARGO PRICE – 30/08/2016

LIVE: THEE MIGHTEES / THE BELLYBUTTONS – 27/08/2016

– BIG HANDS, MANCHESTER – When you finally get to see two bands you’ve been listening to for months, it’s hard not to be somewhat starstruck when the frontmen are running the door and queuing next to you at the bar respectively. Big Hands takes the small venue dynamic to another level, with no noticeable […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Kiran Leonard is Greater Manchester born and bred, but he is far removed from the brit-pop indie stereotype that many Mancunian musicians have followed. Perhaps it’s because he was too young to have grown up engulfed by the likes of The Stone Roses and Oasis, his style is nothing […]

LIVE: KIRAN LEONARD – 25/08/2016

LIVE: JULIANNA BARWICK – 23/08/2016

– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – The Deaf Institute is a more sophisticated place than normal tonight. Decked with four rows of chairs and soundtracked by some choice ambient music between acts, the chatter rarely raises beyond a murmur. There’s certainly no crowd noise during opening act Tiny Leaves. The project of composer Joel Nathaniel […]
– MANCHESTER ARENA, MANCHESTER – Before I venture to the Manchester Arena I stop off at my favourite pub on Oldham Street, Gulliver’s. I cannot be arsed paying a tenner for a couple of Fosters when I get to the venue, the worst fucking lager going. With a lovely San Miguel sat off in my belly, […]

LIVE: MORRISSEY – 20/08/2016

LIVE: MIRACLE LEGION – 18/08/2016

– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Connecticut’s Miracle Legion became a fixture on the campus radio stations run by college and university students in North America during the 1980s. Since my teens in Manchester I’ve been retrospectively in love with their contemporaries from the ‘college rock’ days, bands like R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, The Replacements and […]
– MONO, MANCHESTER – Having had what seems like daily band practices in a friends cellar over the last 3 weeks, I arrive at Mono wondering how I’ll react hearing some music played in a space where you don’t feel like you’re constantly obscuring someone’s view no matter where you stand. However I soon realise […]

LIVE: EXPERT ALTERATIONS  – 27/07/2016