EP REVIEW: MAGIC SHOPPE ‘HIGH GOODBYE’

Boston’s Magic Shoppe are back with the High Goodbye EP, their third release in 18 months. They sprung to public prominence in February 2016 with Interstellar Car Crash EP and then debut LP Wonderland. Having garnered a reputation for their mesmerising live performances, the announcement that they will feature at this year’s Liverpool International Festival […]
– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – Sadly gone are the days when bands would routinely have local poets or comedians come on stage as their opening acts – the idea of John Cooper Clarke or John Shuttleworth warming up a crowd before The Damned or A Certain Ratio is something that the kids will have to read […]

LIVE: SPOON / ADAM BUXTON – 27/06/2017

LIVE: MARK LANEGAN BAND / DUKE GARWOOD – 21/06/2017

– THE RITZ, MANCHESTER – Did I mention it’s hot? I seem to spend half the day moaning about how nice the weather is at the moment, but at least I’m not off to spend an evening in a sweaty mosh pit, as Mark Lanegan’s newer material is more measured than his work with Screaming […]
– CENTRAL STATION, WREXHAM – I’ve been given license by the Silent Radio grandees to leave our Manchester stomping ground for unexplored North Walian pastures. Having been cruelly ruled out of the Manchester show with work commitments, I’m in Wrexham to watch The Wedding Present perform George Best in its entirety. Album shows are a […]

LIVE: THE WEDDING PRESENT – 20/06/2017

LIVE: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD – 14/06/2017

– THE RITZ, MANCHESTER – I only found out I was coming to see King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard an hour before they come on stage tonight. No time for a shower – throw on an unwashed tee and out to the Albert Hall in a matter of moments. To say i’m frenzied is […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Nobody’s list of priorities for a great gig is topped by seeing a band starting to tour a new album that won’t be out for a couple of months. When homeboys Everything Everything open with ‘Night of the Long Knives’, a song nobody present could possibly have heard yet, you […]

LIVE: EVERYTHING EVERYTHING – 20/06/2017

LIVE: OH SEES – 14/06/2017

– ACADEMY 1, MANCHESTER – “I lie awake until I sleep, I see the sky tear, and then it weeps,” sings the dangerously prolific bird-of-prey John Dwyer, as sheets of blood-sucking black rainbow arch over Manchester’s Academy 1 and suffocate. The founding-member and primary songwriter of Thee Oh Sees – now simply Oh Sees following […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Closed-eye hallucinations gift light where there is none. When blood-pressure drops and the visual field darkens, baptismal blackness paints stars across the ceiling of your skull – scars across the sky that surf the seam between reality and illusion. When we shut ourselves to the world, and begin to drift […]

LIVE: TYCHO – 07/06/2017

LIVE: DELIA DERBYSHIRE DAY – 10/06/2017

– BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER – In the early hours of the morning at London’s Maida Vale Studios, Delia Derbyshire unravelled an entire reel of tape down the length of a long corridor. After finishing an almost-perfect track, she had identified a single note out of sync. The only way to correct it was […]
RELAXER follows the Mercury Prize winning debut, An Awesome Wave and 2014’s #1 album This is All Yours. 2017 brings the notoriously tricky third album. Not that it has much to live up to… In my own experience, alt-J are incredibly good at dividing opinion. People either love or hate their quirky, awkward sound. I’ve […]

ALBUM: ALT-J – RELAXER