Let's Eat Grandma

LIVE: LET’S EAT GRANDMA – 07/10/2022

-YES, MANCHESTER- Last time I saw Let’s Eat Grandma (LEG for simplicity and word count for the rest of this piece) I was in pain. It was a Monday night in April 2018 at the Deaf Institute, and I’d just cycled over from playing 5-a-side where I’d fallen awkwardly on my wrist. It was throbbing […]
– 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

Laura Veirs

LIVE: LAURA VEIRS – 19/06/2022

– Deaf Institute, Manchester – Sunday nights were made for watching Laura Veirs. But this is not the same Laura Veirs who has played this stage before. On her first UK tour since navigating a divorce from her husband and long-time producer, this is a new, quietly confident and tentatively upbeat Veirs reaching to pick […]
– Stoller Hall, Manchester – In an interview in the excellent ‘Loud & Quiet’ magazine, Tirzah took her interviewer to an exhibition. Afterwards, when asked what she thought of it, Tirzah replies: “Maybe I’m a bit too traditional, but I found all the extras a bit too distracting. I’d rather see something stripped back so […]
Tirzah

LIVE: TIRZAH – 22/06/2022

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. […]
Every so often a band comes along that has everything your ears want in an album  and for me the two records released by Amyl And The Sniffers have all that in abundance. In front if a packed Albert Hall they take to the stage and blast through ‘Go F**k Yourself’ and ‘Freaks To The […]

LIVE REVIEW: AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS – ALBERT HALL

Indigo De Souza

LIVE: INDIGO DE SOUZA – 15/05/2022

– Soup, Manchester – Imagine one of those coming of age dramas beloved of streaming services delivering endless content to the kids. You know the ones, featuring an eclectic cast of misfits who over the course of eight episodes manage to steal your heart and really make you care about their trivial day to day […]
– Gorilla, Manchester – I know a grand total of one Mattiel song, yet here am. At Gorilla, watching Mattiel. It’s exactly 15 minutes until the doors open and there’s one, two, three. Three of us in the queue. This initial lack of people makes me nervous but hey, at least I’ll be able to […]
Mattiel

LIVE: MATTIEL / LE REN – 13/05/2022

Tomberlin

LIVE: TOMBERLIN – 02/05/2022

– Yes Basement, Manchester – “Does anyone have any questions or concerns?” Tomberlin, or Sarah Beth Tomberlin, to give her full name, asks us as she re-tunes her guitar for the umpteenth time this evening. A shy Monday night crowd in the Yes basement make some non-committal murmurs; “No? Ok, well I guess I should […]
– Manchester Cathedral – Are Low a noise band now? Based on this astonishing showing tonight, they’re not too far off the label, which has seen them evolve over a wonderful 25-year career from slowcore beauty to fractured, disintegrating noise, with just enough of the aforementioned beauty still around to connect them to their past. […]
Low

LIVE: LOW – 27/04/2022