LIVE REVIEW – KEO: MANCHESTER RITZ – 07/03/2026

A little under a year ago, embarking from the quaint city of Chester to the contrastingly eccentric Manchester, I went to see Michael Kiwanuka at the Apollo. It was not only a fantastic gig, but it was the first time I got to write for Silent Radio, the very publication which you find yourself reading […]
                              Metal has a great deal in common with pop – I’d say it’s the flipside of the same coin: the anti-pop. Where pop is meant to appeal, metal intentionally repels. Metal is discordant by design where pop seeks out the […]

LIVE REVIEW – JINJER: MANCHESTER RITZ – 29/01/2026

LIVE REVIEW – SUPERHEAVEN: MANCHESTER RITZ – 17/01/2026

As crowd surfers pop up left right and centre in my eyeline, heads bounce around and the floor rattles in synchronisation… I realise that Superheaven have maybe revived an overall abysmal day. The power of music, eh? Despite preferring their earlier stuff to their most recent album, Superheaven have still taken up a humongous amount […]
– Ritz, Manchester – I usually hate those pretentious types, those fans who believe that the unreleased stuff is better than the released stuff, but for tonight at least I’m my own worst enemy. As someone who only listens to Alex G’s unreleased music I have no idea how I will fare at an Alex […]
Alex G

LIVE: ALEX G – 18/03/2023

Julia Jacklin

LIVE: JULIA JACKLIN – 6/11/2022

– The Ritz, Manchester – ‘Near, far, wherever you are…’, emotional words belted out by a packed crowd as Julia Jacklin takes to the stage at the Ritz, Celine Dion’s immortal Titanic theme blaring unexpectedly from the PA. It’s a fitting opening to what becomes a quietly epic Sunday night out at the Ritz in […]
– Ritz, Manchester – Sophie Allison’s music as Soccer Mommy has always had a cathartic edge (see tonight’s encore closer ‘Your Dog’ from her debut album Clean, with the positively holler-able opening line “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog”), but rarely has it been so goddamn dark as it is on her latest LP […]
Soccer Mommy

LIVE: SOCCER MOMMY – 20/09/2022

Peaches

LIVE: PEACHES – 14/06/2022

– Ritz, Manchester – In 2022, there’s something tiring about describing any kind of art as ‘feminist’. Yes, the word and the movement carried us to places we needed to be. And the battle to demolish damaging barriers, language and stereotypes is far from over. But the term ‘feminist’ has been hijacked, repurposed and distorted. […]
Is black midi performance art now? Halfway through this absolutely ferocious gig, keyboardist ‘Shank’ sneaks up behind the extraordinary saxophonist ‘Cassanova’ with a plastic pirate cutlass, and proceeds to ‘slash’ his neck. But lo! Casanova rises (through ‘the power of love’, we are told by vocalist and guitarist Geordie Greep, who is narrating the pantomime […]
black midi

LIVE: BLACK MIDI – 08/11/2021

Maximo Park

LIVE: MAXIMO PARK / PEANESS – 10/10/2021

– Ritz, Manchester – In support of their seventh studio album ‘Nature Always Wins’, released earlier this year, Maximo Park are tonight playing at Manchester’s Ritz. I seem to have lost track of the band’s album releases somewhere along the way, pretty sure I haven’t heard all of them despite being a fan when they […]
– The Ritz, Manchester – This is being billed as a homecoming gig of sorts for The Orielles. By ‘homecoming’, I think people mean ‘big gig up north’, as the band hail from Halifax on the wrong side of the Pennines to Manchester, but we’ll let that slide; the excitement amongst a near to sellout […]

LIVE: THE ORIELLES – 05/03/2020