The Slow Readers Club's long-delayed tour continued with a show at Liverpool's O2 Academy on Monday night supported by Sheffield's Sheafs and Wigan's Stanleys.
John Bramwell made the short trip across the Pennines to the historic Leadmill venue in Sheffield for the latest in his series of shows to preview his forthcoming The Light Fantastic album as well as delight the audience with a series of old I Am Kloot classics accompanied by Dave Fidler and Harriet Bradshaw. Support came from Howarth.
A Monday night in Manchester is often a sedate affair, but heading down to the basement of Yes for the Liverpool double-header of Stone and Courting there's no chance of a quiet night watching bands as the audience throw themselves around the room to two bands that trade on their ferocious live shows.
Wainsgate Chapel sits on top of the hills overlooking Hebden Bridge and each year runs a small programme of live music to audiences of up to a hundred and fifty. Due to access being via narrow roads and up steep hills (we know, we walked up), the events take place in daytime with the audience sat in the church pews and on the balcony giving it a really unique feel and creating an intimate space for some very special concerts and Little Sparrow's two-hour two-set performance of tracks from her debut Wishing Tree and forthcoming second album was no exception.
Eighteen months late, Blossoms make their triumphant first headline appearance at a sold out Manchester Arena with a set covering and celebrating their three albums to date and all the crowd favourites that have seen fans of all ages take them to their hearts. Support came from The Lathums and The Magic Gang.
Hey Bulldog today release The People That You Know, their most instant single to date, a song about celebrating the people that you go out with, who make you feel part of a scene and the person that you are. It's accompanied by a video made of Manchester gig footage from the Mancmusic Youtube channel of our mutual friend John Hall. It serves as a perfect reminder of the joy of live music and being in a crowd of like-minded people, an embodiment of what the song is about and as a tribute to our departed friend.
James' summer of festival shows moved on to Newcastle Exhibition Park where they headlined an event For The NHS supported across two stages by Zuzu, Beth Macari, Cruel Hearts Club and The Voluntears.
It's two years since Italian-born Julia Bardo, then of Working Men's Club still, announced herself to the world with the stunning debut single Desire, a world away from the band that had broken into daytime 6 Music with their own debut Bad Blood. By the time the Phase EP had come out the following year, just prior to lockdown, Julia was out on her own, newly-signed record deal in hand and already making her mark. A year and a half on, Bauhaus, L'Appartamento, a brand new set of songs prefaced by a few appetiser singles, is out in the world, is a statement of intent yet also a revealing honest laying bare of all the uncertainties of loving and living far from home.
A wet dreary Sunday night with the promise of a long week at work was brightened up by the presence of SKIES, all the way from Kent, with a seven-song set that felt more appropriate for a big festival stage than it did a dark Manchester basement.
The Slow Readers Club return with Tell No Lies, a brand new single to follow up the top 10 album The Joy Of The Return and 91 Days In Isolation, both released during lockdown ahead of their UK tour that kicks off at Hebden Bridge Trades Club next week. An upbeat stomper of a track, it's accompanied by a video featuring Line Of Duty's Craig Parkinson.
VLURE return with their second single, and their first since signing to So Young Records, with live favourite and call-to-arms Show Me How To Live Again. It's set to the thrilling wall of synth and guitar sounds that the band create and anyone that has witnessed their few live outings to date will well recognise.
Tunbridge Wells Forum witnessed the unforgettable return of The Murder Capital as the band steamrollered through a blistering set of old and new songs on an emotionally charged evening.
Ist Ist have today revealed It Stops Where It Starts, the first track to be taken from their forthcoming second album The Art Of Lying, released on a limited edition 7" single, streaming and download and accompanied by a video that might surprise long-term watchers of the band.
Set in the imposing shadow of the Ashton Memorial in Williamson Park, Lancaster's Highest Point Festival is one of the newer additions to the calendar, but already feels like an established well-organised and well-run festival. James headline the first night of four for 2021 with a set that strikes a fantastic balance between their new material and old favourites with a few surprises and which is full of the spontaneous energy that symbolises their live experience even close to forty years into their career.
Inhaler completed the first week of their rescheduled launch shows with an intimate hour-long show at Colours in Hoxton in London to an excited crowd of hardcore fans ready to throw themselves fully into a celebration of the band's debut album It Won't Always Be Like This that reached number one in the UK charts.
Fresh from their universally acclaimed Record Store Day reissue of their groundbreaking From The Hip album, Section 25 delve deep into their archives to deliver an incredible collection of improvisations and jams, recorded between 1978 and 1981.
Seafever are what used to be called a supergroup, comprised of Iwan Gronow of Haven and Johnny Marr's band, Beth Cassidy from Section 25, New Order's Tom Chapman and Phil Cunningham with Elliot Barlow on drums. This was meant to be a celebration of the launch of their album Folding Lines, but the inevitable pressing plant delays have shifted that to October so this evening takes on the role of an intimate first ever gig preview of nine of the ten songs from the record.
Proletariat made their long-awaited return to the live stage after three years away with an invite-only intimate show at the Eagle Inn in Salford. Cheered on by a partisan crowd they revealed their new line-up to an audience for the first time as well as some exciting new material and reinvigorated old favourites. Support came from poet Leon The Pig Farmer.
Saturday night and we venture out of the city centre to Levenshulme for a three-band bill of Springfield Elementary, Soup! and Salt The Snail, each providing their own take on punk, both complementing yet contrasting in their approaches and impressing each other's sets of fans in the process.
On a wet Manchester Saturday afternoon the rain clouds cleared for forty-five minutes as if in time for Katherine Priddy's long-awaited return to the city to perform at Manchester Folk Festival's takeover of Homeground. The set featured tracks from her early EP Wolf, her critically acclaimed debut album The Eternal Rocks Beneath as well as a number of new songs with delightful explanations of each song between them.
The first of a new series of BBC Introducing showcases at Manchester's Night And Day Cafe saw headliners and hometown heroes Ist Ist play their first non-distanced show in the city since June 2019 with an impressive supporting cast of Introducing favourites The Goa Express, Abbie Ozard and Julia Bardo in a sold-out venue of music lovers making their first excited tentative steps back out into the world of gigging again.
Heart Like A Landslide is the second track from Liam Frost's new project Fountain Head, the follow-up to last year's debut In Chrysalis. Accompanied by stunning vocals by Blanid that complement and contrast with Liam's familiar tones, Heart Like A Landslide is a gorgeous extravagant dream pop song that will delight and surprise long-term followers of Liam and appeal to new listeners.
One year and one day after releasing A Hero’s Death we returned to the iconic Brudenell Social Club to witness a blistering eleven song set by Dublin rockers Fontaines D.C.
You'll know John Hall. If you're the type of person who likes to talk while the band are on, he'll have cast you a disbelieving stare across the room. If you're a real dickhead, like one man in Rawtenstall at a Liam Frost gig, I might have stood between the two of you at some point. If you love live music videos on You Tube, you'll have seen his wonderful Manc Music channel of films of songs recorded across Manchester's music venues, you'll probably be in one of them as he loves to show the audience reaction. If you've ever sat in the secret garden at the back of the Castle or the Rose And Monkey you'll definitely have met him. There isn't a bigger champion of new music in Manchester than John Hall. Many people might claim that title, bollocks that it is, as their own. But there's no I in John Hall, just a love of music, an extravagant flounce, a wicked laugh, a bag of pills and the biggest heart.
Keep Me Going (All Night) is the debut single from Manchester four-piece Hates Talking. Fronted by Sam Carson, formerly of Lunar, the band have spent lockdown honing their sound for an assault on the Manchester scene and further afield and announce their presence with this earworm of a first public reveal.
Day two of Bolton's new Right To Roam festival saw an outdoor stage in the town centre as well as at the Octagon, Alma and Vaults. We caught the last two local bands outside - Pageant Mum and Clouds And Errors - before heading to the Octagon for local boy James Holt and Granfalloon revealing tracks from his forthcoming Positive Songs album.
Right To Roam is a new two-day festival around a number of venues in Bolton town centre, part of an ambition plan of local music lovers and venues to inject some life into scene that gets dwarfed by the bright lights of Manchester down the road. We visited the main stage in the town's newly refurbished and impressive Octagon Theatre to catch Ist Ist, Gravediggers Union and locals Clouds And Errors.
John Bramwell concluded his Hebden Bridge Trades Club residency with the third sold-out night of the run of socially-distanced shows accompanied and supported by Harriet Bradshaw on cello. He delighted a rapt audience with a set of I Am Kloot classics stripped down and reinvented as well as tracks from his forthcoming Full Harmonic Band record The Light Fantastic.
A sunny Manchester mid-afternoon felt like a perfect introduction to Julia Bardo's forthcoming Bauhaus L'Appartamento album as she played a seven-song set of tracks taken from the album with her five-piece band on the main stage in Manchester International Festival's Cathedral Square hub.
One of the highlights of the Manchester International Festival for us is the free series of live performances that take place across the city. Moved across from the Town Hall due to the ongoing works there, Cathedral Square is home to this year's hub and on a wet Monday night, Dave Haslam has curated two of the North West's most talked-about young bands in The Lounge Society and Blanketman.
It’s easy to lose yourself in the songs of Dublin four piece Odd Morris. New track The Once Was Enough, a taster from their forthcoming EP Cityscape The Ballet due later this year, follows in the same vein. It’s dreamy and haunting with brooding sonic landscapes full of intent and sentiment that tug at the heartstrings.
The Seahorses, Dodgy and The Bluetones were three of the more recognisable names in the mid 1990s Britpop explosion and these days their front men are out on the solo tour circuit, delivering a dose of old favourites whilst writing new materials. Having struck up friendships, this socially distanced show not only has all three of them performing on their own but one of their first ever live performances of their new MCH (Morriss, Clark, Helme) super-group in the picturesque Bowdon Rooms in Altrincham.
Whilst festivals are being cancelled around our ears, Manchester's After All Festival continued in a socially distanced format on Thursday night - a sold-out event at Manchester's Tribeca combining a range of different styles of music and urban poetry to an appreciative crowd that had been starved of live music for sixteen months.
