The Minx - Manchester Soup Kitchen - 1st June 2013

The Minx

Manchester Soup Kitchen

June 1st 2013

The Minx came to my attention on their recent support slot with Inspiral Carpets in March, entertaining the crowd with their short sharp bursts of punk energy, intelligent lyrics and a frontman who grabs your attention and holds it in a vice-like clamp.  On the eve of the release of their second single, an EP entitled Hello Mr Warden, they played a sold-out show at The Soup Kitchen in Manchester.



It's fair going to sell out The Soup Kitchen as an unsigned band with just the one single to your name, but The Minx have managed it.  There's a sense of expectation and a real buzz in the crowd as they take to the stage.  Singer Chris Haddon has his hair in an unmistaken short mohican style and he carries that eccentricity through the set with an enthusiasm that would be annoying if it wasn't so infectious and genuine.

They play all three songs from the EP and they confirm the impression we got from the debut single No Friends that they're a band to be reckoned with.  There's not a duff song in the ten originals that they play and despite the punk ethic coursing through the veins of each of them, there's more than enough variety in the songs to prevent them being labelled a one-trick pony.

The crowd need no encouragement to join in and mosh and there's already a great sense that there's a feeling of community developing between band and their audience. There's much more to them than their enigmatic front man though, they sound very tight and together and they look like they're having a whale of a time whilst they're doing it, no rock-star poses, moody introspection, just full-on balls-out noise.

As if to prove this point, they come back on after the main set for an encore and we get a fabulously mad cover of REM's It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), and, whilst it remains quite faithful to the original, they stamp their own personalities onto it too.

The Minx played: Beat The Bully,  You Can Arrest Me,  Cold Outside,  I Don't Like You,  No Friends,  Out The Other Ear,  Walking On My Grave,  My Head,  I Want A War,  Forest Bank and It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

The Minx are on Facebook (where you can buy the No Friends single), Twitter and Soundcloud.