SINGLE REVIEW: SPRINGFIELD ELEMENTARY – JACKED UP ON JESUS

Seemingly what I am hearing appears to be lurking in the youthful exuberance aisle; the distorted guitars forcefully yanking the shopping cart further into the unmapped retail complex that I’ve decided this review will be set in. It’s the changes in pace throughout the song that seem to invoke a kind of indecision… should one […]
-RITZ, MANCHESTER- Popular cultural habits have always loved making their return to our society, with things such as record players, musical influences and even some questionable fashion decisions which you’d think had been buried in the past, somehow making a revisit to the 21st century. Some of these things make their return with a great […]

LIVE: THE LEMON TWIGS – 21/02/2019

ALBUM REVIEW: SLEAFORD MODS – ETON ALIVE

It’s the constant dilemma for bands when they become successful and maybe have a bit more dosh, how to revive that impulse that drew you into making music in the first place. How do you keep your songs as meaningful to you, and hopefully your audience, as you did when you first started? In the […]
-YES, MANCHESTER- Gong Gong Gong Probably the first foreign (not that it matters really) music act I have reviewed, this duo of but bass and guitar invoke deliberate repetition in their playing style; unusual I suppose. The vocals, adequate in their delivery as the set progresses, are sung in Cantonese lyrics; while I am fond […]

LIVE: BODEGA / GONG GONG GONG – 17/02/2019

LIVE: SNAKERATTLERS / BONES SHAKE / THEE WINDOM EARLES – 15/02/2019

-THE PEER HAT, MANCHESTER- Thee Windom Earles In the congested, oddly lit confines we all know as the Peer Hat basement, a band that evidently borrows from the 1950s emerges… albeit with a more spirited approach to guitar playing and drumming that probably wouldn’t have existed in that particular timeframe (Who likes pizza?). The alternating […]
Hippies running wild with far away glazed eyes, flowers being handed out on every street corner and a sniff of revolution in the air, if that’s what San Francisco psychedelia used to conjure up, then Cellar Doors are here to give it a bit of a kick up the arse. This Californian trio have created […]

ALBUM REVIEW: CELLAR DOORS – CELLAR DOORS

LIVE: LALA LALA – 19/02/2019

YES (THE BASEMENT), MANCHESTER- First of all: what a name for a project. Imagine all the songs in the world that have ‘lala’ in them, then thinking ‘I’m going to call my band that’ and sticking another ‘lala’ on the end of it and thinking ‘my work here is done’, and you’d be right in […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- Walking into the Albert Hall I have always felt mixed levels of excitement. I’ve seen David Gray there at an all seated event, feeling like the youngest person in there, and then King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard in the middle of summer, probably the sweatiest gig I’ve ever attended. So, as […]

LIVE: WHITE DENIM – 15/02/2019

LIVE: TOY – 15/02/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- The last time I saw Toy was when I reviewed them for Silent Radio back in 2012. A lot has happened since then, but I still remember their instrumental wonders filling all corners of the Soup Kitchen. Tonight, they’re playing at Yes. I’ve yet to see a gig here and I’m excited to […]
-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Emotional Olympics Curiously we start with a one-man-guitar show; the other Olympians were sadly trapped in the confines of the capital. He somehow manages to turn the dismembering sensation of lacking a full band into a melancholic exhibition that displayed some capable vocal abilities, featuring a bright falsetto, humming in the low […]

LIVE: MOLD / SWEATY PALMS / EMOTIONAL OLYMPICS – 14/02/2019