LIVE: FRANKIE COSMOS – 21/10/2019

-NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER- New Yorker Frankie Cosmos (or Greta Kline, to give her her given name), is nothing if not prolific. Since 2014 she’s released four albums and two EPs, with two of those albums and one of those EPs coming within the last year. It’s not just the volume of albums either; […]
What would you get if you crossed the husky deep vocals of a rock bluesman with dark synth pop, the answer is the new Mark Lanegan album ‘Somebody’s Knocking’. Lanegan stated on the press release that he’s been into Joy Division, New Order and electronic music all his life, even before his days in seminal […]

ALBUM REVIEW – MARK LANEGAN: SOMEBODY’S KNOCKING

ALBUM REVIEW: SIR WAS – HOLDING ON TO A DREAM

Despite the word ‘dream’ being closely associated with the music of Sir Was, the opening track of ‘Holding on to a Dream’ begins with a sense of urgency; the pop element of his ‘Dream Pop’ being most apparent. The pop that Sir Was does purvey isn’t annoying and has the right amount of reflection too, […]
Having sustained my first ever moshpit injury at a Sonic Youth gig in the early 90’s at The Reading Festival, involving someone else’s Doc Marten boot, squelchy mud and my head, to seeing their last ever gig in Manchester, it’s fair to say Kim Gordon’s former band, Sonic Youth, have occupied a large portion of […]

ALBUM REVIEW: KIM GORDON – NO HOME RECORD

LIVE: HENGE – 19/10/2019

-ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER- It’s cold. Save for one brief run and the odd cursory hands over my eyes glance at the news, I’ve spent almost all day reading under a blanket. It gets to early evening and my housemates are making bread from scratch. Our home is just one pumpkin spiced beverage away from wholesome […]
-BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER- What an absolute triumph this show is. Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor to her mum) returns to Manchester after playing Yes earlier in the year for what is a kind of a victory lap for her brilliant debut album Compliments Please, and absolutely slays it. The packed out Friday night […]

LIVE: SELF ESTEEM – 18/10/2019

LIVE: RISING UP! PETERLOO 2019 – 17/10/2019

-HOME, MANCHESTER- When the line-up for this year’s Manchester Folk Festival was announced, tonight’s show at HOME was the one I was most looking forward to. 2019 is the 200-year anniversary of the Peterloo massacre that took place at St. Peter’s Fields, a few minutes on foot from where I am now sat. Following on […]
-RETRO BAR, MANCHESTER- Akin to all alldayers of old, Deco pick and mix from an eclectic inventory of bands that vary in sonic and, unfortunately, qualitative terms. Allowing inexperienced bands to share the bill early on is admirable, affording them an opportunity to hone their craft and test their metaphoric mettle; yet as a spectator […]

LIVE: DECO RECORDS ALL-DAYER AT RETRO – 28/09/2019

LIVE: CHASTITY BELT – 16/10/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- Dear readers, I have recently returned from Poland’s absolutely unbelievable electronic music festival Unsound, and it’s fair to say my brain is slightly addled. Five days of 5am finishes, dancing the night away in a disused brutalist hotel in the middle of Krakow to some of the most exciting, cutting edge electronic music […]
-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Mass Datura Suspect incense aside, the support act is the numerical equivalent of a half-dozen; they possess the standard line-up of bassist, drummer and guitarist; but to pad out the sound they have a synthe…sist, violinist and a handler of lap steel. The venue’s sound fails to properly accommodate the band’s ‘busy’ […]

LIVE: BLACK MOUNTAIN / MASS DATURA – 15/10/2019