Album Review: Primus – Primus & the Chocolate Factory

Hello, Wonkites! Occasionally I get to review a new release from a band that I really like. Occasionally I get something to review which I really don’t connect with. Today, the Candyman has brought me both of these at once. Primus & the Chocolate Factory is more-or-less a track-for-track re-make of the soundtrack of the […]
– THE NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – It’s been a couple of years since I last saw JOSH PYKE at Manchester’s Deaf Institute: and in that time you can see his growth as a performer. In my interview (HERE) with the acoustic singer-songwriter, he told me his latest album The Beginning and The End […]

LIVE: JOSH PYKE / PYLO – 31/10/2014

LIVE: FOXYGEN – 30/10/2014

– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – So, it turns out halloween is an appropriate time to catch Foxygen. Now touring their third album in 2 years, the Californian duo of Jonathan Rado and Sam France have genre hopped from Sergeant Pepper, and The Velvet Underground to Bowie and The Rolling Stones, emulating many other prevalent bands from the […]
-MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL, MANCHESTER – Tonight is a special night. It’s ten years since Sheffield post-rockers 65daysofstatic released their debut album The Fall of Math, and tonight they are playing it in full in the magnificently moody surroundings of Manchester Cathedral. It couldn’t be more perfect for them, the grandeur of the venue matching the scope […]

LIVE: 65DAYSOFSTATIC – 29/10/2014

Album Review: The Flaming Lips – With A Little Help From My Fwends

While the Beatles are remembered as a band that recorded staggeringly good albums, it is in the live arena that the Flaming Lips truly excel. Their shows are magical and euphoric, whereas even their best albums – The Soft Bulletin (1999) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) – are patchy. In short, they are […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – It is now almost a year since Black Francis appeared at Albert Hall to mark my first live event here at this Wesleyan chapel that had been largely hidden away and out of public consciousness for four decades. But it is only really in 2014 that the building has been […]

LIVE: ST. VINCENT – 22/10/2014

LIVE: HOW TO DRESS WELL – 23/10/2014

– ST PHILIP’S CHURCH, SALFORD – On How To Dress Well’s (aka Tom Krell) second album Total Loss, there’s a song called ’Say My Name Or Whatever’ that opens with a spoken word monologue from a boy that ends with the line ‘the only bad thing about flying is having to come back down to the […]
– CLUB ACADEMY, MANCHESTER – Manchester is often a tough crowd for bands. The city’s arguably unparalleled musical heritage means us Mancunian folk expect a lot when we venture out on a wet Wednesday evening. But Wolf Alice have no problems with that. The London four-piece are welcomed to Club Academy like returning heroes, with an […]

LIVE: WOLF ALICE – 22/10/2014

LIVE: DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 – 21/10/2014

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – May 4th, 2011. I’m off to the big smoke to see the reformed Death From Above 1979 play the HMV Forum – A band adored by many, but one whose future looked bleak. At the time of their departure from the music world in 2006, the much loved Canadian punk rock […]
Seven years and four studio albums have been punctured by shape-shifting releases in between. …Killed my Parents and Hit the Road was a stripped back b-side to the critically acclaimed Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, as was often the case with companion E.P. Here, It Never Snowed, Afterwards It Did. No One Can Ever Know […]

Album Review: The Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave