LIVE: EAGULLS – 01/11/2014

– SOUND CONTROL, MANCHESTER – Like many a Manchester punk gig, the floor is sticky. The bottom of your shoes squelch and a giddy swirl of shaved heads and Doc Martens spring as if in slow motion at the front. This scene, I have only ever witnessed in flashback programmes to the Wilson era. A […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Lamb were arguably at their peak when I was most impressionable, blending genres that I was immersed in at the time – trip-hop and drum & bass. 22 years ago, Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow agreed to start a band, in a bar on Manchester’s Oldham street – they made […]

LIVE: LAMB – 01/11/2014

Album Review: Aldous Harding – Aldous Harding

The plain unadorned picture of Aldous Harding (actual name Hannah) looking back at you on the cover of her début, eponymously titled album, in many ways hints at the subtle pleasures hidden within. It’s an album of stark beauty, an album which could have been made any time in the last fifty, if not a […]
Hello, Wonkites! Occasionally I get to review a new release from a band that I really like. Occasionally I get something to review which I really don’t connect with. Today, the Candyman has brought me both of these at once. Primus & the Chocolate Factory is more-or-less a track-for-track re-make of the soundtrack of the […]

Album Review: Primus – Primus & the Chocolate Factory

LIVE: JOSH PYKE / PYLO – 31/10/2014

– THE NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – It’s been a couple of years since I last saw JOSH PYKE at Manchester’s Deaf Institute: and in that time you can see his growth as a performer. In my interview (HERE) with the acoustic singer-songwriter, he told me his latest album The Beginning and The End […]
– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – So, it turns out halloween is an appropriate time to catch Foxygen. Now touring their third album in 2 years, the Californian duo of Jonathan Rado and Sam France have genre hopped from Sergeant Pepper, and The Velvet Underground to Bowie and The Rolling Stones, emulating many other prevalent bands from the […]

LIVE: FOXYGEN – 30/10/2014

LIVE: 65DAYSOFSTATIC – 29/10/2014

-MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL, MANCHESTER – Tonight is a special night. It’s ten years since Sheffield post-rockers 65daysofstatic released their debut album The Fall of Math, and tonight they are playing it in full in the magnificently moody surroundings of Manchester Cathedral. It couldn’t be more perfect for them, the grandeur of the venue matching the scope […]
While the Beatles are remembered as a band that recorded staggeringly good albums, it is in the live arena that the Flaming Lips truly excel. Their shows are magical and euphoric, whereas even their best albums – The Soft Bulletin (1999) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) – are patchy. In short, they are […]

Album Review: The Flaming Lips – With A Little Help From My Fwends

LIVE: ST. VINCENT – 22/10/2014

– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – It is now almost a year since Black Francis appeared at Albert Hall to mark my first live event here at this Wesleyan chapel that had been largely hidden away and out of public consciousness for four decades. But it is only really in 2014 that the building has been […]
– ST PHILIP’S CHURCH, SALFORD – On How To Dress Well’s (aka Tom Krell) second album Total Loss, there’s a song called ’Say My Name Or Whatever’ that opens with a spoken word monologue from a boy that ends with the line ‘the only bad thing about flying is having to come back down to the […]

LIVE: HOW TO DRESS WELL – 23/10/2014