LIVE: PAUL DRAPER – 01/03/2018

-THE RITZ, MANCHESTER- I wasn’t sure I’d ever see this to be honest. Paul Draper, former lead singer of britpop heroes Mansun, on stage, not only armed with some solo material but also ready to deploy the entirety of Mansun’s debut album Attack of the Grey Lantern (AOTGL) for the first time after a it […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- It’s an intensely grim evening in Manchester tonight, but despite that fans are out in force, descending on the Albert Hall for Castlemania: a Castle Face Records showcase event offering five live bands. Opening we have Kelley Stoltz, current San Francisco resident who has been releasing music since 1999 and has been […]

LIVE: OH SEES / ONCE & FUTURE BAND / MALE GAZE / FLAT WORMS / KELLEY STOLTZ – 01/03/2018

LIVE: DOUGA / CHEW MAGNA – 23/02/2018

-THE CASTLE HOTEL, MANCHESTER- It’s Friday, it’s cold and I’ve got a last minute gig: Manchester outfit Douga at the warm and old school boozer The Castle; happy days. I love live music in pubs. Before the trendy bars and O2 academies became the staple arenas for every kind of music imaginable, the local watering […]
-NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER- It’s a hell of a wild evening out there, but that hasn’t stopped people from finding their way to Night and Day Café to watch Hey Bulldog and Saint Agnes. Hey Bulldog have been around for a number of years now, quietly building their fan base and strengthening their repertoire. […]

LIVE: SAINT AGNES / HEY BULLDOG – 28/02/2018

LIVE: CARLTON MELTON – 23/02/2018

-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Two promotional entities, The Beauty Witch and Grey Lantern, have joined forces to bring California’s Carlton Melton to Soup Kitchen tonight for a hotly anticipated showing following the release of their latest album, Mind Minerals, which came out last week – the band’s first since 2015. The band Carlton Melton were formed […]
– 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: INDOOR PETS / PEANESS – 20/02/2018

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Indoor Pets, formally known as Get Inuit, put on an energetic and loving display at Manchester’s Deaf Institute proving it doesn’t really matter what your band is called. If the tunes come from a place of sincerity and passion you’re onto a winner. But first, there were two top notch performances from […]
-ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER- Alvvays (actually pronounced ‘always’), are a 5 piece band fronted by singer Molly Rankin, formed back in 2011 in Toronto. Since then they have released two studio albums: their debut Alvvays, released in 2014, saw them compared musically to the likes of The Cranberries and catapulted them into a world of live […]

LIVE: ALVVAYS – 19/02/2018

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, […]
-BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER- The circus is in town tonight. Lancaster’s two best bands, miles apart in style but united in ethos, have come to the end of a ten date sold-out nationwide tour, climaxing at Band on the Wall for what will turn out to be a memorable blow-off. The Lovely Eggs are […]

LIVE: THE LOVELY EGGS / PORKY THE POET / MR. BEN AND THE BENS – 17/02/2018