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 […]
The Queens Of The Stoneage frontman has once again put together a fine band of musicians for his Desert Sessions project – from ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, to Matt Berry, Stella Mogzawa from Warpaint to Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters. What started off as Josh Homme having a few days away at the Rancho […]

ALBUM REVIEW: DESERT SESSIONS VOL 11 & 12

LIVE: SUNN O))) – 27/10/2019

– 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 […]
– 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 […]

LIVE: EVERYONE YOU KNOW – 28/10/2019

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

-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 […]
-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 […]

LIVE: HOT CHIP – 25/10/2019

LIVE: PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS – 25/10/2019

-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 […]
-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’ […]

LIVE: SQUID – 22/10/2019