SINGLE REVIEW: The Naked & Famous

With its sparse, yet super-melodic intro, ‘Girls Like You’, the 4th single from Passive Me, Aggressive You, caught me off guard on first listen. Immediately electronic, with synth sounds swelling between percussion, it is reminiscent of MGMT’s ‘Oracular Spectacular’, which is,of course, no bad thing, but it does mean that The Naked & Famous are […]
– THE ROADHOUSE, MANCHESTER – Three support bands have been lined up for tonight and the Roadhouse only has a handful of customers. I arrive late and manage to catch Meursault (while ordering a Guinness) who I would simply describe as The Twilight Sad, if they were a little sadder. Wire lights run along the […]

LIVE: SPARROW AND THE WORKSHOP – 29/05/2011

LIVE: THE KILLS – 27/05/2011

– CENTRAL METHODIST CHURCH, MANCHESTER – High on my list of bands to see, The Kills caught my attention six years ago on a TV broadcast of Fashion Rocks. The duo of Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart played the minimal and raw ‘No Wow’ as models paraded around the stage. As a darker version of […]
– NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – What better way to continue City’s post-parade celebrations than with a good old gig at the good old Night & Day, eh? Well, as Advances In Mathematics are first up, there’s quite a few. As their name suggests, the local quartet dabble in twinkly, arpeggio-laden post-rock which inevitably […]

LIVE REVIEW: Three Trapped Tigers – 23/05/2011

LIVE REVIEW: Friends of Mine Festival 2011

– CAPESTHORNE HALL, CHESHIRE – The Friends of Mine crew have been doing good things in and around Manchester and the North West for a while now, shoving the pick of the region’s up n’ coming acts in the shop window and giving them precious exposure. A festival seemed a more-than-logical progression, and when FOMFest […]
Four years after Trees Outside The Academy, Thurston Moore has once again emerged from the little music place artsy rock stars go to hide and has come back with his most depressingly beautiful album to date. Working with legendary singer-songwriter, Beck, Moorehas managed to create an extremely moving, symphonic folk opus, well-worthy of attention as […]

ALBUM REVIEW: Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts

LIVE REVIEW: Okkyung Lee and John Butcher / Open Eye Quartet – 20/05/2011

– ST. MARGARET’S CHURCH, MANCHESTER – Improvised music can be a nightmare. Overwhelming in terms of scope and size as a ‘genre’; seeming to require an encyclopaedic set of references; over-intellectualised; pretentious; snobbish and cliquey; perplexingly theoretical. Just when you think you have got a handle on it, something new will fall in your lap […]
-THE APOLLO THEATRE, MANCHESTER- Somewhere near the beginning of Sufjan Stevens’ awesome spectacle of a performance he introduces himself as the entertainment for the night and promises a journey through space: the space of the exterior; the cosmos, and the space of the interior; the body, in the spaceship Apollo. This statement may cause the […]

LIVE REVIEW: Sufjan Stevens – 19/05/2011

LIVE REVIEW: Explosions In The Sky – 17/05/2011

– THE ACADEMY, MANCHESTER – Explosions In The Sky produce a sound that feels paradoxical in the sense that it is intimate and yet epic. They are playing to near full capacity in Academy 1 and I wonder how the venue might detract from the musical experience but rush through and forget your not in […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – I was reading an interview with Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream in Uncut a while back and in it he name-checked Chain &The Gang’s first album ‘Down With Liberty.. Up With Chains’. He went on to add that it was the only new band he was into at the […]

LIVE REVIEW: Chain & The Gang – 17/05/2011