ALBUM: BELLE AND SEBASTIAN – HOW TO SOLVE OUR HUMAN PROBLEMS

Belle and Sebastian have always produced the kind of music which is delicate on the eardrums, yet with a feisty rock n roll streak tearing through its core. They’re one of those bands who you think you’ve got figured out, then they go off and do something unexpected. Live, their gigs transform into a communal […]
-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Arriving early, I dawdle at the unmanned merch stand. Jack Cooper’s debut solo record Sandgrown is for sale. The cover is black and white and carries the effect of a woodblock print. A drawing of a straight-faced Cooper with his eyes closed foregrounds the silhouettes of key Blackpool architecture, notably the tower. […]

LIVE: A. SAVAGE / JACK COOPER – 01/02/2018

LIVE: SHOPPING – 03/02/2018

-THE EAGLE INN, SALFORD- Just two weeks after the release of their third album The Official Body, dance-punk trio Shopping are in town and tonight is a sell-out in the Eagle Inn – it seems we are in some need of some retail therapy and everyone who made it in tonight has bagged a bargain. […]
-GULLIVERS, MANCHESTER- Meat Wave do not mess around. The Chicago-based three piece are a road hungry band that have been going non-stop since the release of their superb LP The Incessant pretty much a year ago. I managed to catch the band last summer in Leeds and it was a fully pumping rock show. Therefore, I […]

LIVE: MEAT WAVE – 07/02/2018

LIVE: THE BLINDERS / STRANGE BONES – 03/02/2018

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- It’s Saturday night in blustery Manchester and it’s time for something loud, aggressive yet infectious all the same. Tonight’s supper is a run in with Doncaster’s latest and probably best export (because let’s face it the football team isn’t anything to write home about) which comes in the shape of a psych/punk […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- Certain bands have an air of anticipation affixed to their name. You don’t always expect glitzy, show-stopping stunts but you know you’re going to be in for a treat in some way. Mogwai is one such band. Having graced the prog-rock scene for well over two decades, their two nights at Manchester’s […]

LIVE: MOGWAI / BEAK / MUGSTAR – 04/02/2018

LIVE: GUS DAPPERTON – 02/02/2018

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Hailing from the US, Gus Dapperton – the latest indie dreamboat to land on our British shores – lays the turnup jean loving crowd to waste in the nicest possible way imaginable. Blending 80s inspired indie with garnishes of dream pop and kitsch singer-songwriting, the 20-year-old certainly impresses with songs such as ‘Moodna, […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- “Sorry we’re a couple minutes late. We were water skiing.” With that explanation out of the way, the tooth that’s all silver and shiny in the mouth of Deer Tick’s John McCauley might be a fortified one he uses to bite off his beer-bottle top before his exhaled breath propels it up […]

LIVE: DEER TICK – 01/02/2018

LIVE: MOON DUO – 01/02/2018

-THE WHITE HOTEL, SALFORD- Far from the Northern Quarter, the beating heart of Manchester’s thriving indie scene, lies a desolate industrial complex. Surrounded by scrap tips and disused lock up garages, in the arse end of Salford, stands the equally desolate looking White Hotel. However this desolate exterior hides a much darker secret inside… As […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Drawing their name from the Margaret Greaves children’s book Little Jacko and the Wolf People, Wolf People are a psychedelic quartet formed in 2005 in Bedfordshire. Tonight, they play Deaf Institute in Manchester. As the disco ball dangling above the crowd shoots amber and violet hues across the room, four unassuming thirty […]

LIVE: WOLF PEOPLE – 27/01/2018