LIVE: MARK MORRISS – 17/02/2017

– FRED’S ALE HOUSE, MANCHESTER – “You wanna keep your change down your socks on this road. And your notes up your…” Mark Morriss seems to have Stockport Road all worked out during his two-night residency at Levenshulme’s Fred’s Ale House. He should know the score by now, this being his third two-night stint at […]
– ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER – Modern Baseball (MoBo from herein, shamelessly stolen from a Pitchfork review), are a band at the forefront of that oft misunderstood genre ‘emo’. I say misunderstood, because it conjures up images of sad teenagers dressed in various shades of black being sad about how sad their lives are, taking all […]

LIVE: MODERN BASEBALL – 17/02/2017

LIVE: YOUNG LEGIONNAIRE – 14/02/2017

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Back in 2010, Young Legionnaire were quite a promising prospect. They had big support slots booked, a huge sounding debut album in the bag and an ever-growing following that were transfixed by their heartfelt brand of alt rock. Sadly, things didn’t really take off the way in which many initially […]
– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – Tusks is the solo project of Emily Underhill. The Hastings-born singer-songwriter shifts from genre to genre, at one moment making a tense electronic song and at others channeling her inner King Krule as she aggressively strums her guitar whilst delivering a faultless vocal. Tusks is signed to the same label […]

LIVE: TUSKS / ALPINES – 17/02/2017

LIVE: ULRICH SCHNAUSS – 15/02/2017

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Since 2001, German ambient techno master Ulrich Schnauss has been making the kind of music that sounds incredible through headphones; particularly when you’re on a long train journey, when you’re just staring out of the window watching the beautiful/bleak (delete as appropriate) landscapes of England’s sometimes green and pleasant land […]
– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – It’s been a while since the Deaf Institute, with its adapted original features and perfect gig ambience, committed cultural harakiri and was eclipsed by the apparently more original-feature-featuring, more perfectly ambient and notably larger Albert Hall. Once the hottest alt gig venue in town, the good old Deafy could no […]

LIVE: DUKE GARWOOD – 12/02/2017

LIVE: BOXED IN – 09/02/2017

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – When you decide you like a band, you listen to their music and decide, “I like that”. You don’t need their influences listed and what they’ve done previously to decide if you like them. However if that was all I had to go on without listening to Boxed In, I […]
– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – Support slots are a funny thing. Important in the development of any musician’s career, and often arriving with the inherited prestige of the headline artist. When I ask Tom Hickox, London singer-songwriter, about the prospect of supporting former Teardrop Explodes frontman and all-round eccentric Julian Cope, his face lights up. “An […]

LIVE: TOM HICKOX – 10/02/2017

LIVE: L.A. WITCH – 14/02/2017

– NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – I don’t revel in the idea of giving a band a bad review, but in this case I feel it’s necessary to highlight a few negative features of the support band’s performances, in order to emphasise my admiration for our headliners. Locals Witch Fever kick things off in […]
-ACADEMY 3, MANCHESTER – I’ve possibly not listened to Ladyhawke in about 5 years or more, not because I stopped liking her music or because she had stopped releasing music, it was just that it hadn’t appeared on my radar and I’d kind of forgotten about her. But Ladyhawke, or ‘Pip’ Brown, has in fact […]

LIVE: LADYHAWKE / ISLE – 11/02/2017