LIVE: THE TWILIGHT SAD – 27/02/2019

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Sweet baby Jesus, The Twilight Sad (TTS) are an astonishingly good live band. Scrap that; they’re just an astonishingly good band full stop. Here to support their ridiculously great new album IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME (which, annoying punctuation and capitals aside, is their best effort since their peerless debut […]
-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Chew Magna The first to grace the Soup Kitchen ‘stage’ consists of a band whose central methodology involves making their guitarists clash against one another’s grain, stout basslines whose texture can’t quite pierce the evident sound mixing issues and drums (loose cymbals sink beats) that serve their purpose, perhaps content in their […]

LIVE: MOTHERS / BLANKETMAN / CHEW MAGNA – 22/02/2019

LIVE: WILLIE J. HEALEY / EGYPTIAN BLUE – 20/02/2019

-YES, MANCHESTER- I’ve comprised a theory that Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice and Nick Valensi of The Strokes secretly had four children. They’re stood right in front of me, being blinded by the projector showing images of a trippy nature; disturbing to some viewers but hypnotising to most. They might’ve thrown in some of Ross […]
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 […]

SINGLE REVIEW: SPRINGFIELD ELEMENTARY – JACKED UP ON JESUS

LIVE: THE LEMON TWIGS – 21/02/2019

-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 […]
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 […]

ALBUM REVIEW: SLEAFORD MODS – ETON ALIVE

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

-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 […]
-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 […]

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

ALBUM REVIEW: CELLAR DOORS – CELLAR DOORS

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 […]
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 […]

LIVE: LALA LALA – 19/02/2019