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

LIVE: CLEAN BANDIT – 17/10/2014

– ACADEMY 1, MANCHESTER – Following an undoubtedly successful summer, Clean Bandit’s marathon of dates subliminally catalyse their position at the front of public consciousness. Notably reflected in the quartet’s newfound take on electronic music, and symbolised by the dramatic soar in venue capacity, Clean Bandit scream modernity breaking the archaic stereotype of not only […]
– SOUND CONTROL, MANCHESTER – If you’ve been any rock festival or gig in the past 12 months, chances are you’ve seen Baby Godzilla. The Nottingham-based foursome have been working super hard on the live front this year, playing absolutely anywhere they’re asked to and with an army of fans growing at each gig and […]

LIVE: BABY GODZILLA – 20/10/2014

Album Review: Trojan Horse – World Turned Upside Down

Prog, eh? Apparently it’s not a dirty word any more, but it’s still an ugly one isn’t it? That horrible image of men in capes making bloated pseudo-classical music that my dad listens to still comes to mind. Fortunately, Manchester heroes Trojan Horse have been challenging that preconception for the past few years now with […]
Thurston Moore’s new album The Best Day sees the US singer back on more familiar territory after 2011’s acoustic album Demolished Thoughts.  Performed by a newly formed Thurston Moore Band and running at 8 tracks across 51 minutes (double LP on Vinyl) this is on first listening very much an “album” in the classic sense, […]

Album Review: Thurston Moore – The Best Day

Album Review: Mark Lanegan Band – Phantom Radio

In my review of Mark Lanegan’s recent No Bells On Sunday EP I predicted that the subsequent album, Phantom Radio, Lanegan’s third as the Mark Lanegan Band, would be a good one. Assuming he hadn’t used up all his best songs on the EP that is. Well, it does seem he used up quite a […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – It was Christmas day of 1996 when I first heard the distinctive vocals of Mark Morriss. I had just received my first CD player and the only CD I had to play on it was Now 35. One of that compilation’s highlights was The Bluetones’s ‘Marblehead Johnson’. Some 18 […]

LIVE: MARK MORRISS – 12/10/2014

Album Review: Kindness – Otherness

I had the pleasure of watching Kindness perform at the Berlin Festival last month and was impressed by his mixture of modern day soul and outright smoothness. The combination of decent tunes, a fantastic wardrobe and one of the tightest backup bands going around, made him my favourite musical discovery of the festival. This lasting […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Going from gig to gig around Britain with a guitar and a suitcase, a young Paul Simon once sat on a Cheshire railway station platform and wrote a lonely song about missing a home far, far away. Tonight, almost 50 years later, two other great American troubadours are in north-west […]

LIVE: GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS & HOWE GELB – 10/10/2014