LIVE: JESSIE WARE – 25/01/2015

– ACADEMY 1, MANCHESTER – “Sorry if you thought you were coming to see Jessie J. She was here last night. I’ll try and put on a good show though” claims Jessie Ware. And she didn’t disappoint us– not at all. Those of us who missed out on her intimate gig at the cathedral last year were treated to a second date […]
– THE CASTLE HOTEL, MANCHESTER – Menace Beach have the unconstrained fervour of a rock ‘n’ roll band that encounter newfound adulation in every sweaty pub venue in every town they roll into. Tonight marks exactly a week since their excellent debut album Ratworld was unleashed upon the world, and as given away when frontman […]

LIVE: MENACE BEACH – 26/01/2015

LIVE: BC CAMPLIGHT (ALBUM LAUNCH) – 23/01/2015

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – What’s in my head right now is trying to suss out the connection between a potential Mancunian slow dance and a gorgeously dreamy Californian sound. I’m a bit off kilter on both counts. BC Camplight’s latest album title ’How to Die in the North’ (out now on Bella Union) would give […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Emmy the Great is at a pivotal moment in her career. Six years after debut album, First Love, established her on the bustling London anti-folk scene, and just months before the release of her third full-length, she remains to this point a somewhat peripheral figure. In those six years, […]

LIVE: EMMY THE GREAT – 23/01/2015

LIVE: MARK LANEGAN BAND – 23/01/2015

– THE RITZ, MANCHESTER –  Pushed by this January night’s icy wind and rain, and pulled by the prospect of live music from Mark Lanegan Band, I am more or less sucked in through the open doors of The Ritz. The interior climate is immediately to my liking, and I do not instantly melt from […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – “Just in case there is any confusion, it’s pronounced ‘Always!’” laughs singer Molly Rankin, offering the same clarity everyone who has ever written about the band is obliged to cover. With their kitschy name and capacity to count Real Estate and Pains of Being Pure at Heart as past […]

LIVE: ALVVAYS – 21/01/2015

LIVE: J MASCIS / LULUC – 10/01/2015

– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – My friend and I arrive at The Ruby Lounge very early, so we are able to enjoy watching the flow of the incoming crowd, with the sounds of Pavement and Sonic Youth in the background. The gig is sold out and the venue starts getting populated after 7.30. While […]
Noah’s voice is somewhere up in the ether. Opener ‘Sequential Circuits’ christens the album with a languorous sweep of the arm, the choral vocal so drenched in reverb that the edges blur. Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) harmonises with himself as sustained, echoing synth plays the same trick. The beat is a damp pulse, a squidgy […]

Album Review: Panda Bear – Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper

ALBUM REVIEW: DAN MANGAN + BLACKSMITH – CLUB MEDS

With the 2014 albums of the year lists still fresh in the memory, early releases for the new year have the responsibility of filling us with optimism for the next 12 months. Step up – Dan Mangan + Blacksmith. The multi-instrumentalist Canadian folk popster, Dan, grew up on a diet of Nick Drake and The […]
The self-titled debut album from New York based band Klozapin is an exciting and vibrant mixture of genre, sound and influence. With so much going on identifying a category in terms of genre has proven difficult, and indeed the band pride themselves in this lack of restraint in the music (with elements of psychedelia, rock, […]

ALBUM REVIEW: KLOZAPIN – KLOZAPIN