LIVE: HINDS – 17/04/2018

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- It’s three days since I was last in exactly the same place, and four since I conked my head on, of all places, the floor. On my way in the bouncer also knocks his head, on the less ridiculous place of the brick arch he is standing under at the entrance to Gorilla. […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Disclaimer: yesterday I hit myself on the head embarrassingly forcefully. With that mild concussion in mind, I’ll be keeping this brief. The album sleeve for The Orielles’ Silver Dollar Moment is smears and dabs of bright colours. For myself, and maybe others, the record came along without warning. From nowhere, the chimes of […]

LIVE: THE ORIELLES – 14/04/2018

LIVE: IDLES – 18/04/2018

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Idles have not been an easy band to see in Manchester since they caught fire at the tail end of 2016. Their only appearance last year was at the Neighbourhood Festival in October, their Spring tour curiously skipping Cottonopolis. It all means that the anticipation tonight at Gorilla as they take the stage […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Between Stormzy and J Hus, the UK album chart has a welcome anomaly: Twentytwo in Blue, cruising from the indie backwaters into a position that makes you feel, in a fleeting heartbeat, that young bands are still rewarded for their work. Sunflower Bean’s sophomore LP deserves the status. It is a polished, reptilian […]

LIVE: SUNFLOWER BEAN / SORRY – 30/03/2018

LIVE: FIELD MUSIC – 16/03/2018

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Not an awful lot has come out of Sunderland apart from my Grandpa, the fabulous Andy Dawson from the Athletico Mince podcast and St Bede, the monk. To that list we have now been able to add Field Music. Ostensibly formed of the Brewis brothers – David and Peter – by the time […]
– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – It’s just gone nine, the band are on stage. They launch into ‘Isabel’ from the 2011 album Happy Soup, but there’s someone missing from the stage. Just in time and to a big cheer from the crowd our host for the night Baxter Dury enters stage right looking rather dapper. The […]

LIVE: BAXTER DURY – 21/02/2018

LIVE: THE GO! TEAM – 17/02/2018

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- You must have to be a right arsehole not to like The Go! Team. Like, the type of person who voted for Brexit, then emigrated to America, especially to vote for Trump and followed it up with a really, badly worded comment on a Daily Mail website article about immigration. One of them, […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Perspective is an important thing. I’m at the front of Gorilla with my friend Eve, waiting for the support act to come on for tonight’s GoGo Penguin gig, and am trying to take my notepad out of my bag so I can remember things for this review (which you’re reading now, bloody hell […]

LIVE: GOGO PENGUIN / JENS KUROSS – 10/02/2018

LIVE: GUS DAPPERTON – 02/02/2018

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Hailing from the US, Gus Dapperton – the latest indie dreamboat to land on our British shores – lays the turnup jean loving crowd to waste in the nicest possible way imaginable. Blending 80s inspired indie with garnishes of dream pop and kitsch singer-songwriting, the 20-year-old certainly impresses with songs such as ‘Moodna, […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- What strikes me as I watch Lee Fields strut onto the stage, in his brilliantly blue gold toned brocade jacket, is just how brilliantly bouncy he is. Like a man half his age, his energy is infectious with most of the crowd bouncing along with him as the night goes on. I actually […]

LIVE: LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS – 24/01/2018