LIVE: GHOSTPOET – 28/05/2013

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – Things are really moving fast for Obaro Ejimiwe, a.k.a Ghostpoet. His bedroom produced debut album ‘Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam’ was nominated for the Mercury Prize, which thrust him into the limelight with a little help from Gilles Peterson’s label Brownswood. Two years on, he has released his 2nd album (through […]
What’s Left To Eliminate? is the fourth studio album from Montreal Punk/Rock/Metal band Trigger Effect. They have already toured as an opening act for Iron Maiden, Queensryche and Rob Halford. This album doesn’t just start, it lurches into a loud, violent, attack from the very start that doesn’t stop until they are finished. Every track flows into the next in […]

Album Review: Trigger Effect – What’s Left To Eliminate?

Besnard Lakes

LIVE: THE BESNARD LAKES – 23/05/2013

– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER –  Formed in 2003 by Québécois husband and wife team Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, The Besnard Lakes are something rather special live. With earlier albums The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse and The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night erring towards the intellectual indie side of indie rock, over […]
You know that feeling that only arises as a result of watching Eurovision? That nauseous glee that accompanies a man from Belarus singing like he’s got a pineapple in his colon; or the haughty guffaw at a trio of leather-clad Moldovans babbling over some mimed sub-Rihanna dance-pop. This, combined with the schadenfreude developed as a […]

Album Review: Little Boots – Nocturnes

LIVE: MOUNT EERIE – 23/05/2013

 – SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER –  I’ve only relatively recently gotten into Mount Eerie, the moniker adopted by Phil Elverum after he stopped the incredible Microphones (seriously, if you never have, check out The Glow Pt 2 album…all sorts of amazing), so this show at the ever brilliant Soup Kitchen was my chance to see an […]
– SOUND CONTROL, MANCHESTER – There aren’t many bands that have been playing to mosh pits around the world for longer than I’ve been alive, but NoMeansNo are one of that distinguished few. Having formed in 1979, and released their first record in 1980, NoMeansNo have been a dark undercurrent in the world of rock […]

LIVE: NOMEANSNO – 22/05/2013

LIVE: LORD HURON – 23/05/2013

– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – The punters inside the city’s most opulent venue tonight are at the more mature end of the gig-going spectrum, and they’re stood in rapt silence at Nataly Dawn. Her short blonde hair is swept forward from left-to-right while she flicks at a decrepit looking guitar which could have been […]
 – SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER –  I think we’re all starting to lose count of the number of bands like Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs who have emerged in the last 2 or 3 years. You know the ones – bands in a perpetual haze of smoke, with brightly coloured imaginations and great swathes of static […]

LIVE: CHARLIE BOYER AND THE VOYEURS – 21/05/2013

LIVE: THE POSTAL SERVICE – 18/05/2013

 – ACADEMY 1, MANCHESTER – This year, electronic pop gods, The Postal Service celebrate the 10th Anniversary of their 2003 release Give Up, the band’s only album. Tonight’s gig at Manchester Academy is the first of only 3 UK gigs on this special tour to mark a decade’s hiatus from the much revered state-side duo. […]
Early reports of The National’s long-awaited follow-up to 2010’s acclaimed High Violet talk of new directions, fresh diversions. Indeed, singer Matt Berninger himself talks of these songs as more “immediate and visceral” than those of previous albums. I have to say, I don’t see it, nor I do it hear it. For me, the songs that start […]

Album Review: The National – Trouble Will Find Me