– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER –
It’s fair to say that it’s a pretty miserable night in Manchester tonight. But the few that are brave enough to battle through the wind, rain and snow are to be rewarded by catching two ace up and coming indie bands that we’re hoping will warm up our cockles with their fuzzy guitars and instant melodies in the uber cool surroundings of Soup Kitchen.
First up are local lads Shinies, who I remember seeing just over a year ago up the road at The Castle Hotel. It’s been a pretty swell 12 months for the quartet since then with a couple of single releases, a nice little UK tour and a few thumbs up from some rather well known publications.
Musically, they’re still making simplistic indie pop with effect heavy guitars, hazy vocals and urgent drumming and are still wonderfully dreamy and uplifting as they were when I first saw them all those months ago. A perfect support for tonight’s headliners, London based outfit ‘The History Of Apple Pie’.
Tonight is comes part of a rather large UK tour they’re doing in support of their freshly recently debut album ‘Out Of View’ which celebrates its first week of being released this very evening!
What I’ve been enjoying when listening to ‘Out Of View’ is how, on the surface, the songs are full of pleasant indie pop melodies with catchy hooks and bright, breezy choruses. But thanks to their three guitarists within the band’s line up and the fact that The Horror’s guitar wizard Josh Hayward was involved in the engineering of the record, there’s very much a shoe gaze-esque wall of sound that creeps into some of the songs, adding a wistful, psychedelic dynamic which makes them a sonically solid band and also sets them apart from most other lo-fi alt indie acts floating around at the moment.
On a live level, the band switch up from perfect pop hits such as ‘Mallory’ and ‘See You’ to the wistful and dazed indie rock tones of ‘The Warrior’ and ‘Glitch’. They also know how to riff out as ‘Do It Wrong’ ensures tonight’s head banging moment of the night and ‘I Want More’ acts as the perfect climax in all its hypnotic shoe gaze glory.
As the audience head up stairs to submerse themselves in merch, picture taking and record signings with the band, I can’t help but think that the The History Of Apple Pie’s performance and warm persona’s has helped in warming our hearts before heading home and fighting the all so famous Manchester rain!
I joined the Silent Radio family near the very start of my move to Manchester in 2012 and I'm still having the best time! During my stay here I've been in two noisy bands, had a not so noisy solo project, made a zine, started a blog and started a radio show. It's been productive to say the least and it's all been intersperse with a shit load of gig going and beer drinking. I would love it if you followed me on twitter @dr_brainless for excitable tweets about playing, watching and living new music.
