LIVE: INTERPOL – 03/09/2017

-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- New York City in 2002 and Interpol released their debut album, Turn on The Bright Lights. I wasn’t there. It’s hardly surprising considering I was eight at the time and over three thousand miles away. Say what you will about anniversary tours, but it gives fans like me a chance to see something we’d […]
Dutch Uncles have unveiled the music video for ‘Streetlight’, the centrepiece of their acclaimed fifth album Big Balloon (out now on Memphis Industries). It was directed by Nick Middleton, who also shot the visuals for singles ‘Big Balloon’ and ‘Oh Yeah’, but, in a departure from the style of these videos, the ‘Streetlight’ film does not feature the band themselves. Duncan […]

DUTCH UNCLES UNVEIL NEW VIDEO FOR ‘BIG BALLOON’ CENTREPIECE ‘STREETLIGHT’

LIVE: SAMPHA / PAULI – 05/07/2017

-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- When you’re a well blogged about, up and coming artist, it’s very easy to get carried away in a whirlwind of hype, but singer/songwriter Sampha hasn’t let any of this consume him. Forever humble and always focused, the South London based musician delivered an outstanding debut at the start of the year […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Nobody’s list of priorities for a great gig is topped by seeing a band starting to tour a new album that won’t be out for a couple of months. When homeboys Everything Everything open with ‘Night of the Long Knives’, a song nobody present could possibly have heard yet, you […]

LIVE: EVERYTHING EVERYTHING – 20/06/2017

LIVE: TYCHO – 07/06/2017

– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Closed-eye hallucinations gift light where there is none. When blood-pressure drops and the visual field darkens, baptismal blackness paints stars across the ceiling of your skull – scars across the sky that surf the seam between reality and illusion. When we shut ourselves to the world, and begin to drift […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – “This is a song about waiting for something to happen in your town,” Paul Smith announces to the hot, heaving crowd before the opening bars of ‘Graffiti’ build and smash over an electrified crowd. After also selling out the Albert Hall in 2015 with their A Certain Trigger tenth anniversary tour, […]

LIVE: MAXIMO PARK – 19/05/2017

LIVE: METRONOMY – 17/05/2017

– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Metronomy are a band that I’ve been slightly offhand with since their fourth album Love Letters; but, they’re in the Albert Hall tonight touring last year’s effort Summer ’08. The new album sees Metronomy take a more rhythmic, danceable, electronic route, a là LCD Soundsystem. Ironically, it’s since then they’ve […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – This is not a shameless plug but a relevant anecdote: on the day of the Michael Kiwanuka gig, I had a show on Reform Radio and a live pianist was playing live. He planned to play a Kiwanuka song but not, as he informed me, ‘I’m a Black Man In […]

LIVE: MICHAEL KIWANUKA – 29/04/2017

INTIMATE COMEBACK SHOWS FOR EVERYTHING EVERYTHING

Everything Everything have announced two low key comeback shows in Manchester and London to premiere new songs from their upcoming album. Boxed In will be the support on both dates. The dates are: Tuesday 20th June 2017 @ Albert Hall, Manchester Wednesday 21st June 2017 @ Heaven, London General sale tickets to these intimate shows […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Let’s get a couple of things out of the way right up front here guys: 1) I am a massive Grandaddy fan-boy who has been waiting to see them for around 15 years, and 2) I cry a lot. I cry at things I find joyous, I cry at things […]

LIVE: GRANDADDY – 28/03/2017