Rowan & Friends
Autocamper + Victory Samosa
The Crescent, York
Saturday 23rd September, 7.30pm
Rowan Evans has been a breath of fresh air since landing in York a couple of years ago. He hosts a fabulous monthly session at The Golden Ball and has roped in a bunch of the finest musicians in our scene to be his '& Friends', a slappin' backing band - currently consisting of bass, guitar, drums and...well you never really know what else!
Listen / Listen
Rowan's songs, at times heart-felt, witty and dry, are really top drawer, one moment poignant or self-deprecating and a moment later a euphoric singalong chorus.
A true champ.
The new Rowan & Friends EP, suitable titled '5 Golden Greats' is released on September 22nd and we're throwing a big party the following night.
Tickets for this show are £5 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Rachel Sermanni
Lewis McLaughlin
Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds
Tuesday 26th September, 7.30pm
It's always a plasure to host Rachel Sermanni, there is a new record on the horizon so we're popping to the gorgeous Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds to listen to it in person.
Hailing from the Scottish highlands, Rachel Sermanni is an enchanting singer-songwriter, whose performance and lyrics draw from a deep well of mysticism, dreams, nature and the simple-complex experience of being human. A contemporary folk musician influenced by a wealth of genres including jazz, rock, old-time and traditional, she is announcing today her newest foray into her sonic subconscious, Dreamer Awake.
Inspired by the works of Nan Shepherd, and the parallel experience of the Heroine’s journey as one of descent, as opposed to the glorified heights of the archetypal Hero, Dreamer Awake is, as Sermanni tells us, about “...the journey of someone skimming the surface of their experience, resisting the pull of the earth initially then slowly descending into the dark and the unknown with fear, willingness and curiosity. Becoming pregnant, giving birth and crossing the threshold into motherhood is exactly this.” Channelling the metamorphic experience of becoming a mother, and processing the demise of a long-term relationship, Sermanni dove deep into her psyche and returned with songs that have a sharpness, an acuity of feeling, and that capture the fluidity of our mind and the depth of our emotional experience.
To realise Dreamer Awake, Sermanni decamped to Middle Farm Studios, Devon with co-producer Peter Miles. Recording live to tape with people that, “most of the time, are jazz improvisers,” the sessions were conducted with an almost Lynchian approach, with Sermanni choosing “to flow through [the experience] like a dream”. The result is an album that captures the intimacy of the room, and the immediacy of these songs that transform thought, memory and emotion into such wondrous light. Shared with us today, the first glimpse of this experience, ‘Jacob’, explores the break-up that preceded the album, the complex realisations that followed, and the important step of practising, or regaining, self-love. In Rachel’s own words,
“This is a song that reflects on an ended relationship and the growing I'm doing thanks to therapy, a lovely therapist called Jacob and the VERY simple & clear tools he is offering me to help me see & understand old habits. Again, a kind of coming into power. A simple act of recognising that I'm loved, and worthy of love.”
Sermanni is bringing Dreamer Awake to the stage at festivals this summer and on a UK tour in late September that includes dates across England and Scotland. You can find the full list of shows on her website.
Rightly described by critics as a “Folk noir gem” (MOJO), “Stately, poetic” (CLASH) and “Folk of the Highest Order” (Time Out), Rachel Sermanni has been making music for over a decade and has developed her artistic voice over her many releases, each time pushing boundaries and experimenting with different musical textures while maintaining the raw emotional connection, to herself and others, that defines her music. Her previous work includes the albums Under Mountains (2012), Tied to the Moon (2015) and So It Turns (2019), which was inspired by her time studying & volunteering at a buddhist monastery in the borders of Scotland and was recorded in Berlin. Rachel Sermanni has toured the globe, played alongside artists such as Mumford & Sons, Fink, Ron Sexsmith, John Grant, The Staves, Karine Polwart, The Maes and many more at venues and festivals all over, most recently playing with Charlie Cunningham. She also runs a songwriting workshop called Cultivating A Creative Life and her podcast, Rachel Sermanni’s Finger That Points To The Moon, similarly explores her relationship to creativity and inspiration, with the hope that it will help point in the direction of truth for herself and those listening.
Inspired by the works of Nan Shepherd, and the parallel experience of the Heroine’s journey as one of descent, as opposed to the glorified heights of the archetypal Hero, Dreamer Awake is, as Sermanni tells us, about “...the journey of someone skimming the surface of their experience, resisting the pull of the earth initially then slowly descending into the dark and the unknown with fear, willingness and curiosity. Becoming pregnant, giving birth and crossing the threshold into motherhood is exactly this.” Channelling the metamorphic experience of becoming a mother, and processing the demise of a long-term relationship, Sermanni dove deep into her psyche and returned with songs that have a sharpness, an acuity of feeling, and that capture the fluidity of our mind and the depth of our emotional experience.
To realise Dreamer Awake, Sermanni decamped to Middle Farm Studios, Devon with co-producer Peter Miles. Recording live to tape with people that, “most of the time, are jazz improvisers,” the sessions were conducted with an almost Lynchian approach, with Sermanni choosing “to flow through [the experience] like a dream”. The result is an album that captures the intimacy of the room, and the immediacy of these songs that transform thought, memory and emotion into such wondrous light. Shared with us today, the first glimpse of this experience, ‘Jacob’, explores the break-up that preceded the album, the complex realisations that followed, and the important step of practising, or regaining, self-love. In Rachel’s own words,
“This is a song that reflects on an ended relationship and the growing I'm doing thanks to therapy, a lovely therapist called Jacob and the VERY simple & clear tools he is offering me to help me see & understand old habits. Again, a kind of coming into power. A simple act of recognising that I'm loved, and worthy of love.”
Sermanni is bringing Dreamer Awake to the stage at festivals this summer and on a UK tour in late September that includes dates across England and Scotland. You can find the full list of shows on her website.
Rightly described by critics as a “Folk noir gem” (MOJO), “Stately, poetic” (CLASH) and “Folk of the Highest Order” (Time Out), Rachel Sermanni has been making music for over a decade and has developed her artistic voice over her many releases, each time pushing boundaries and experimenting with different musical textures while maintaining the raw emotional connection, to herself and others, that defines her music. Her previous work includes the albums Under Mountains (2012), Tied to the Moon (2015) and So It Turns (2019), which was inspired by her time studying & volunteering at a buddhist monastery in the borders of Scotland and was recorded in Berlin. Rachel Sermanni has toured the globe, played alongside artists such as Mumford & Sons, Fink, Ron Sexsmith, John Grant, The Staves, Karine Polwart, The Maes and many more at venues and festivals all over, most recently playing with Charlie Cunningham. She also runs a songwriting workshop called Cultivating A Creative Life and her podcast, Rachel Sermanni’s Finger That Points To The Moon, similarly explores her relationship to creativity and inspiration, with the hope that it will help point in the direction of truth for herself and those listening.
Lewis McLaughlin
Lewis McLaughlin is a 22-year-old indie singer-songwriter hailing from Leith. Since winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Award in 2022 he has been captivating audiences from Hebcelt to Latitude Festival with his powerful performances. Inspired by artists like John Martyn, Bon Iver, and Villagers, Lewis creates soul-stirring melodies and thought-provoking lyrics that resonate with listeners.
His accomplished debut album ‘Feel The Ground You Walk Upon’ is a life-arming listen, one moment will have you misty-eyed, wishing you could hold a pint aloft with your dearest pals and in the next, have you contemplating your most intense personal struggles. All the while Mclaughlin’s warm timbre blazes perpetually, unifying and comforting the lost souls that gather in its glow.
His accomplished debut album ‘Feel The Ground You Walk Upon’ is a life-arming listen, one moment will have you misty-eyed, wishing you could hold a pint aloft with your dearest pals and in the next, have you contemplating your most intense personal struggles. All the while Mclaughlin’s warm timbre blazes perpetually, unifying and comforting the lost souls that gather in its glow.
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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The Psychotic Monks
The Black Lagoons
The Crescent, York
Wednesday 4th October, 7.30pm
The Psychotic Monks
After two fiery albums, Silence Slowly And Madly Shines in 2017 (Alter K) and Private Meaning First in 2019 (Vicious Circle / FatCat Records), the members of The Psychotic Monks have never ceased to impress us with their maturity and determination to offer a singular stage and discographic presence.
Their 3rd album, Pink Colour Surgery, has been released on February 3rd 2023 on Vicious Circle / FatCat Records.
The album is produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band and composed in part by improvisations, and arrives as an act of resistance to the ambient violence. Disconcerting at first sight, this new opus operates in the dark a surgery of the ethics which is fleshed out of pink for a staggering metamorphosis. Its very structure embarks us entirely in an initiatory trip full of secret corners, provided that we accept to dive into it, to plunge into it.
Watch / Watch / Watch
Yet radical, Pink Colour Surgery work is truly accessible to those who immerse themselves in it in depth. One is unceasingly hypnotized, shaken, because its soul flirts dangerously with a furious and oppressive trance. How then the journey becomes addictive, letting yourself slide from one track to another, sometimes struck, sometimes set ablaze with an unexpected epiphany, because its light irradiates us. Live their music is an intimate, sensory experience, whose deflagration is still received long after.
Pink Colour Surgery is like a hidden room in a house that we have never entered before, and the possibility of feeling good there is not excluded.
The Black Lagoons
Supported by York's own sludge-garage-rock quartet The Black Lagoons, a massive pleasure to have them back in The Crescent after too long.
Their 3rd album, Pink Colour Surgery, has been released on February 3rd 2023 on Vicious Circle / FatCat Records.
The album is produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band and composed in part by improvisations, and arrives as an act of resistance to the ambient violence. Disconcerting at first sight, this new opus operates in the dark a surgery of the ethics which is fleshed out of pink for a staggering metamorphosis. Its very structure embarks us entirely in an initiatory trip full of secret corners, provided that we accept to dive into it, to plunge into it.
Watch / Watch / Watch
Yet radical, Pink Colour Surgery work is truly accessible to those who immerse themselves in it in depth. One is unceasingly hypnotized, shaken, because its soul flirts dangerously with a furious and oppressive trance. How then the journey becomes addictive, letting yourself slide from one track to another, sometimes struck, sometimes set ablaze with an unexpected epiphany, because its light irradiates us. Live their music is an intimate, sensory experience, whose deflagration is still received long after.
Pink Colour Surgery is like a hidden room in a house that we have never entered before, and the possibility of feeling good there is not excluded.
The Black Lagoons
Supported by York's own sludge-garage-rock quartet The Black Lagoons, a massive pleasure to have them back in The Crescent after too long.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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KEG
The Crescent, York
Thursday 5th October, 7.30pm
Landing somewhere between Dexys Midnight Runners and a jumper ready to be unravelled, Keg take pleasure in creating music which straddles chaos and knitwear. Preferring to delve into a diverse well of influences, the 7 instrumentalists that make up KEG have created, in new EP ‘Girders’, a world within a world. However, despite the feracious songs on offer, the band insist didn’t intend to “make consistently unrelenting and abrasives songs, they just ended up sounding that way.” The EP, as they say, really does go.
Keg have toured the UK extensively, bringing their enthralling live show to the masses while sharing stages with the likes of Squid and Yard Act. ‘Girders’, set for release 2nd September via Alcopop Records/BMG, was recorded and produced with Daniel Fox of Gilla Band. First single ‘Kids’ has earned the support of DIY, NME, BBC 6Music and BBC Radio 1 among others. This summer they will play Latitude, Green Man, End of The Road and a host of other festival dates.
On KEG’s debut EP ‘Assembly’ (Alcopop: 2021) the band were finding their niche amongst each other, on ‘Girders’ they’ve settled into their sound, managing to capture the live feel of the recordings while experimenting sonically in every direction.
‘Girders’ doesn’t try to hide behind anything: whether it's the death of a loved one, the feeling of not really knowing yourself, your body slowly crumbling around your brain or a mass cull, sonically and lyrically ‘Girders’ pushes and pulls the listener all the way through.
The themes of the EP “came about quite naturally on reflection, unconsciously they all seemed to line up, perhaps with the exception of Kids which is just a nice radio friendly song about hating your offspring”
KEG are: Albert Haddenham – (vocals), Will Wiffen – (synths), Joel Whitaker - (bass)
Jules Gibbons – (guitar), Frank Lindsay – (guitar), Charlie Keen – (trombone), Jonny Pyke – (drums)
“Leave all of your clothes on and ride your stead through Golgotha with us.” – KEG
Keg have toured the UK extensively, bringing their enthralling live show to the masses while sharing stages with the likes of Squid and Yard Act. ‘Girders’, set for release 2nd September via Alcopop Records/BMG, was recorded and produced with Daniel Fox of Gilla Band. First single ‘Kids’ has earned the support of DIY, NME, BBC 6Music and BBC Radio 1 among others. This summer they will play Latitude, Green Man, End of The Road and a host of other festival dates.
On KEG’s debut EP ‘Assembly’ (Alcopop: 2021) the band were finding their niche amongst each other, on ‘Girders’ they’ve settled into their sound, managing to capture the live feel of the recordings while experimenting sonically in every direction.
‘Girders’ doesn’t try to hide behind anything: whether it's the death of a loved one, the feeling of not really knowing yourself, your body slowly crumbling around your brain or a mass cull, sonically and lyrically ‘Girders’ pushes and pulls the listener all the way through.
The themes of the EP “came about quite naturally on reflection, unconsciously they all seemed to line up, perhaps with the exception of Kids which is just a nice radio friendly song about hating your offspring”
KEG are: Albert Haddenham – (vocals), Will Wiffen – (synths), Joel Whitaker - (bass)
Jules Gibbons – (guitar), Frank Lindsay – (guitar), Charlie Keen – (trombone), Jonny Pyke – (drums)
“Leave all of your clothes on and ride your stead through Golgotha with us.” – KEG
You can get tickets online from here.
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Mayshe-Mayshe
The Silver Reserve + Epilogues
Wharf Chambers, Leeds
Sunday 8th October, 7.30pm
Mayshe-Mayshe is the solo project of UK artist Alice Rowan. Her music blends dreamy art-pop with rich storytelling, skittering percussion and infectious melodies. Her deceptively simple songwriting - at once universal and deeply personal - incorporates choral vocals, vintage synths and the occasional hairdryer.
Mayshe-Mayshe writes, records and produces her work from her home studio in Yorkshire.
Watch
Mayshe-Mayshe writes, records and produces her work from her home studio in Yorkshire.
Watch
'Immaculately minimal DIY gems'
Narc Magazine
'Like a solo Cocteau Twins floating in the ether'
Louder Than War
'A one-woman pop machine'
Under The Radar
Narc Magazine
'Like a solo Cocteau Twins floating in the ether'
Louder Than War
'A one-woman pop machine'
Under The Radar
You can get tickets online from here.
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Jesca Hoop
Marnie Glum
Wednesday 11th October, 7pm
*This show is now sold out*
California-born but now based in Manchester, UK, Jesca Hoop is what you’d call a musician’s musician. Discovered by Tom Waits, and brought on tour by Peter Gabriel to sing in his band, it was a phone call from Elbow’s Guy Garvey that saw her move to the UK.
Her most recent album “Stonechild”, produced by John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, This is the Kit), received huge acclaim from fans and critics alike, and it’s easy to see why: her beautiful songs, rooted in the folk tradition are intricately detailed, acoustic-led pieces that teem with ideas.
Tickets for this show are £17.50 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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An Evening With Kristin Hersh
Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds
Tuesday 10th October, 7.30pm
Tuesday 10th October, 7.30pm
From Throwing Muses to 50 Foot Wave and a prolific and powerful solo career, Kristin Hersh releases her latest record. A drive through personal anecdotes and musings, the new album is a page gently teared away from her diary that only she, as a musician, author and mother, can write about. Musically the record begs to be played on a road trip, soundtracked by strings and mellotron and a well defined ambience.
Listen / Watch
Over the last three decades, Kristin Hersh’s prolific career has seen her heralded queen of the alternative release.
“One of indie rock’s most fascinating figures” (The Guardian) Hersh has released over 20 records solo, with Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE to date. The author of an acclaimed memoir — based on her teenage diary — about a particularly eventful year, titled “Rat Girl” (“Paradoxical Undressing” in the UK). It saw Rolling Stone name it one of their “25 Greatest Rock Memoirs Of All Time”. A publishing first, she later released her ‘Crooked’ (2010) as a ground-breaking book that included the album, artwork, lyrics and an exclusive essay, something that was further explored with Throwing Muses album ‘Purgatory/Paradise’(2013). Her latest book “Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt” chronicles the pairs deep friendship and their time touring together.
In 2018 Hersh announced a new partnership with Fire Records that made possible the release of her tenth studio album, ‘Possible Dust Clouds’.
“I’m thrilled to find some like-minded teammates in the shifting paradigm of the recording industry. Together, we can do a lot more damage than we could ever pull off alone, and damage is what’s called for when an old guard is falling. This is gonna be a swell party.” Kristin Hersh
‘Possible Dust Clouds’ is a highly personalised gem delivered as a futuristic rewriting of how music works, a melodious breeze with a tail wind of venomous din. Enveloping the juxtaposition of the concept of ‘dark sunshine’, a brooding solo record created with friends to expand her off-kilter sonic vision; a squally, squeaky mix of discordant beauty. Feedback and phasing gyrate from simply strummed normality, imagine Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine cranking up a Dylan couplet.
“Sometimes the most subversive thing I can do musically is adhere to standard song structure, sometimes the creepiest chords are the ones we’ve heard before, twisted into different shapes, and sometimes a story is lived a thousand times before we can ride it like a roller coaster. Nothing wholly unfamiliar is gonna make you look twice. When you can describe a record as being “deceptively” anything, you are hinting at the sociopathic nature of music. Something I love.
Imagine truly buying your own sunshine and charm, but also your darkness and violence; the two sides of your psychology showing each other off in relief. Songs can do that…we can’t, really. Darkness we’ve seen. Dark sunshine? Still cool. I usually play all the instruments on my solo records – essentially the sound of having no friends – but sociopaths can’t realise their potential without people to work out their grievances on and this record is a freakin’ sociopath.” Kristin Hersh, July 2018
Listen / Watch
Over the last three decades, Kristin Hersh’s prolific career has seen her heralded queen of the alternative release.
“One of indie rock’s most fascinating figures” (The Guardian) Hersh has released over 20 records solo, with Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE to date. The author of an acclaimed memoir — based on her teenage diary — about a particularly eventful year, titled “Rat Girl” (“Paradoxical Undressing” in the UK). It saw Rolling Stone name it one of their “25 Greatest Rock Memoirs Of All Time”. A publishing first, she later released her ‘Crooked’ (2010) as a ground-breaking book that included the album, artwork, lyrics and an exclusive essay, something that was further explored with Throwing Muses album ‘Purgatory/Paradise’(2013). Her latest book “Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt” chronicles the pairs deep friendship and their time touring together.
In 2018 Hersh announced a new partnership with Fire Records that made possible the release of her tenth studio album, ‘Possible Dust Clouds’.
“I’m thrilled to find some like-minded teammates in the shifting paradigm of the recording industry. Together, we can do a lot more damage than we could ever pull off alone, and damage is what’s called for when an old guard is falling. This is gonna be a swell party.” Kristin Hersh
‘Possible Dust Clouds’ is a highly personalised gem delivered as a futuristic rewriting of how music works, a melodious breeze with a tail wind of venomous din. Enveloping the juxtaposition of the concept of ‘dark sunshine’, a brooding solo record created with friends to expand her off-kilter sonic vision; a squally, squeaky mix of discordant beauty. Feedback and phasing gyrate from simply strummed normality, imagine Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine cranking up a Dylan couplet.
“Sometimes the most subversive thing I can do musically is adhere to standard song structure, sometimes the creepiest chords are the ones we’ve heard before, twisted into different shapes, and sometimes a story is lived a thousand times before we can ride it like a roller coaster. Nothing wholly unfamiliar is gonna make you look twice. When you can describe a record as being “deceptively” anything, you are hinting at the sociopathic nature of music. Something I love.
Imagine truly buying your own sunshine and charm, but also your darkness and violence; the two sides of your psychology showing each other off in relief. Songs can do that…we can’t, really. Darkness we’ve seen. Dark sunshine? Still cool. I usually play all the instruments on my solo records – essentially the sound of having no friends – but sociopaths can’t realise their potential without people to work out their grievances on and this record is a freakin’ sociopath.” Kristin Hersh, July 2018
Tickets for this show are £25 in advance.
You can get tickets for Leeds here and Manchester here.
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You can get tickets for Leeds here and Manchester here.
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The David Tattersall Group
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Wednesday 11th October, 7.30pm
The David Tattersall Group is a new project from David Tattersall of The Wave Pictures and The Surfing Magazines. Their self titled album will be released on October 6th on Bella Union Records.
Who’s the blond headed stranger in town? Hang on, that ain’t no stranger… it’s David… David Tattersall! He likes to Drive All Night, Bright Moon shining in the sky, Mellow Magic on the radio, playing new old time classics… country style!
And he’s back, back in town, back in the groove, laying down his shit. That’s right, that’s what I’m saying... he’s got some brand new songs to play you with his group… The David Tattersall Group! Lonesome number one? Blue boy? Not a bit of it! Sure, it’s a little bit country, a little bit Western, but it ain’t lonesome and it sure as hell ain’t blue. Think Willie Nelson on the road again with his friends, think Michael Hurley armchair boogieing with Banana and Joe Bauer, and then think David Tattersall grooving down with his group… The David Tattersall Group. Night Owls, smoking and drinking, layin’ down some Midnight Lightning country style somewhere in some doggone dusty part of East London. Good times together. Yeah, this band, this album, The David Tattersall Group… it's a country and western kinda thing, except David don’t put on no fake American accent. As always, David’s the real deal, his real self, and if you want to make real country and western with that real country feeling, the real deal’s what you gotta be. And there ain’t no doubt, DON’T YOU DARE DOUBT IT, DT is the real deal. To use the bullshit parlance of our times… he’s authentic. Oh yeah he is, he’s his real authentic self, living his best f****n’ authentic life. And that’s what this record is, The David Tattersall Group record. It’s a slice, no, it’s a whole collection of slices, NO, it’s a whole goddamn pie of real authentic David Tattersall!
And check out his group. You got ‘Wailin’ Dom Brider (The Surfing Magazines) laying down his soulful sounds on his harmonica. You got fiddlin’ Dan Mayfield (Darren Hayman), bona fide countrified. You got honky-tonkin’ Paul Rains (Allo' Darlin') on the piano. But you know all that ain’t worth diddly squat if you ain’t got that country groove… that’s where Bo-Diddlin’ David Beauchamp (Jeffrey Lewis) comes in, super cool like on the drums. Yeah, it’s a hell of a band, The David Tattersall Group, on their new self-titled genuine vinyl lp.
Who’s the blond headed stranger in town? Hang on, that ain’t no stranger… it’s David… David Tattersall! He likes to Drive All Night, Bright Moon shining in the sky, Mellow Magic on the radio, playing new old time classics… country style!
And he’s back, back in town, back in the groove, laying down his shit. That’s right, that’s what I’m saying... he’s got some brand new songs to play you with his group… The David Tattersall Group! Lonesome number one? Blue boy? Not a bit of it! Sure, it’s a little bit country, a little bit Western, but it ain’t lonesome and it sure as hell ain’t blue. Think Willie Nelson on the road again with his friends, think Michael Hurley armchair boogieing with Banana and Joe Bauer, and then think David Tattersall grooving down with his group… The David Tattersall Group. Night Owls, smoking and drinking, layin’ down some Midnight Lightning country style somewhere in some doggone dusty part of East London. Good times together. Yeah, this band, this album, The David Tattersall Group… it's a country and western kinda thing, except David don’t put on no fake American accent. As always, David’s the real deal, his real self, and if you want to make real country and western with that real country feeling, the real deal’s what you gotta be. And there ain’t no doubt, DON’T YOU DARE DOUBT IT, DT is the real deal. To use the bullshit parlance of our times… he’s authentic. Oh yeah he is, he’s his real authentic self, living his best f****n’ authentic life. And that’s what this record is, The David Tattersall Group record. It’s a slice, no, it’s a whole collection of slices, NO, it’s a whole goddamn pie of real authentic David Tattersall!
And check out his group. You got ‘Wailin’ Dom Brider (The Surfing Magazines) laying down his soulful sounds on his harmonica. You got fiddlin’ Dan Mayfield (Darren Hayman), bona fide countrified. You got honky-tonkin’ Paul Rains (Allo' Darlin') on the piano. But you know all that ain’t worth diddly squat if you ain’t got that country groove… that’s where Bo-Diddlin’ David Beauchamp (Jeffrey Lewis) comes in, super cool like on the drums. Yeah, it’s a hell of a band, The David Tattersall Group, on their new self-titled genuine vinyl lp.
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Bull
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Thursday 12th October, 7.30pm
Bull are a band from York England who have been active since 2011. They self released music like ‘She Looks Like Kim’ in 2014 and DIY toured through Europe and America.
In 2020 with the help of York’s ‘Young Thugs’ they were signed to EMI records after recording higher quality music with Remko Schouten, live sound engineer for Pavement the rock band. Bull released debut EMI album ‘Discover Effortless Living’ in 2021 which was warmly if not cultly received and vinyl and CD was distributed by EMI records far and wide.
The band continued to tour and in the last year played across Europe, rocking a handful of festivals plus shows with close personal friends Personal Trainer, Pip Blom, Sports Team, The Klittens, Perspex, Langkamer, Cowgirl and Pavement (the rock band).
They released a wacky follow up EP ‘Stuck Between The Virtual and Physical World’ introducing new ‘live favourites’ such as ‘Stuck!” and ‘Tired of Being Treated Like a Twit’.
Watch / Watch
In 2020 with the help of York’s ‘Young Thugs’ they were signed to EMI records after recording higher quality music with Remko Schouten, live sound engineer for Pavement the rock band. Bull released debut EMI album ‘Discover Effortless Living’ in 2021 which was warmly if not cultly received and vinyl and CD was distributed by EMI records far and wide.
The band continued to tour and in the last year played across Europe, rocking a handful of festivals plus shows with close personal friends Personal Trainer, Pip Blom, Sports Team, The Klittens, Perspex, Langkamer, Cowgirl and Pavement (the rock band).
They released a wacky follow up EP ‘Stuck Between The Virtual and Physical World’ introducing new ‘live favourites’ such as ‘Stuck!” and ‘Tired of Being Treated Like a Twit’.
Watch / Watch
In 2023 they plan to release new singles ‘Start A New’ and ‘Red Rooves’, taken from their forthcoming album ‘Engines of Honey’, set to be released early 2024. The album is their most adventurous/difficult work to date but also marks a return to some rock and roll roots.
The band plan to tour the album with only a handful of shows, so to hear your old favourites and hear the new sound, go and see Bull in 2023/2024. Playing at The Brudenell Social Club and The Moth Club only in 2023, get out to see Bull and remember the good times.
The band plan to tour the album with only a handful of shows, so to hear your old favourites and hear the new sound, go and see Bull in 2023/2024. Playing at The Brudenell Social Club and The Moth Club only in 2023, get out to see Bull and remember the good times.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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Mayshe-Mayshe
Who better to join us for our first show in Acomb than local DIY pop-star Mayshe-Mayshe. An inspiration to us here at PPY and hopefully the whole city.
Mayshe-Mayshe is the solo project of UK artist Alice Rowan. Her music blends dreamy art-pop with rich storytelling, skittering percussion and infectious melodies. Her deceptively simple songwriting - at once universal and deeply personal - incorporates choral vocals, vintage synths and the occasional hairdryer.
Mayshe-Mayshe writes, records and produces her work from her home studio in Yorkshire.
Watch
Press for I Am Not There Anymore:
'Through his efforts to convey a profound experience of loss in a long-gone summer, these songs offer an uncommonly generous wealth of grace and beauty.'
9/10, Uncut Magazine
'Ninth from Indie romantics body expands palette. A both radical and reliable from Britain's most underrated.'
5/5, Record Collector
You can get tickets online from here.
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Me Lost Me
Mayshe-Mayshe
rise @ Bluebird, York
Sunday 15th October, 7.30pm
A new venue for us!
We go to Bluebird Bakery in Acomb weekly to buy their yummy bread, it's just down the road and lovely.
When we heard it was going to be open as rise @ Bluebird in the evening, a bar which would also host some events, we were super keen to use it for some shows. A 60-70 max seated show on chairs and benches, round long tables and such. A relaxed and intimate affair.
Me Lost Me
Me Lost Me delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully push the boundaries of genre. Led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent who takes influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music, the project has transformed since 2017 from a solo endeavor to an expanded group; regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope. Me Lost Me's music has been described in The Guardian as "stripping folk back to its bones while letting its future echoes bleed out", and by BBC Radio 6's Tom Robinson as a "brilliant peculiar noise".
A prolific writer, Me Lost Me has released two crowdfunded albums: 'Arcana' (2018) and 'The Good Noise' (2020), which was included in Electronic Sound Magazine's Album of the Year list. These in addition to her latest EP 'The Circle Dance' (2021), which was described as "her most textural and sonically adventurous music to date" by NARC Magazine, and an extensive touring schedule around the UK DIY scene, has won her unique sound much support across the musical spectrum. Dent has notably performed live for BBC Radio 3's After Dark Festival and as part of the 2022 BBC Proms alongside Spell Songs, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Voices of the Rivers Edge Choir. She recently received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers and was 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at Sage Gateshead.
'Stripping folk back to its bones while letting its future echoes bleed out.'
The Guardian
'Incomprehensible/Irresistible'
★★★★ Folk Album of the Month, MOJO Magazine
'A celebration of the essentially human playfulness of gaming, storytelling and songs.'
The Quietus
'An intoxicating mix of folk and electronics, like coming across a bank of Moogs in a forest clearing where wood nymphs and faeries are operating patch bays and tweaking oscillators.'
Joyzine
Watch / Watch
We go to Bluebird Bakery in Acomb weekly to buy their yummy bread, it's just down the road and lovely.
When we heard it was going to be open as rise @ Bluebird in the evening, a bar which would also host some events, we were super keen to use it for some shows. A 60-70 max seated show on chairs and benches, round long tables and such. A relaxed and intimate affair.
Me Lost Me
Me Lost Me delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully push the boundaries of genre. Led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent who takes influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music, the project has transformed since 2017 from a solo endeavor to an expanded group; regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope. Me Lost Me's music has been described in The Guardian as "stripping folk back to its bones while letting its future echoes bleed out", and by BBC Radio 6's Tom Robinson as a "brilliant peculiar noise".
A prolific writer, Me Lost Me has released two crowdfunded albums: 'Arcana' (2018) and 'The Good Noise' (2020), which was included in Electronic Sound Magazine's Album of the Year list. These in addition to her latest EP 'The Circle Dance' (2021), which was described as "her most textural and sonically adventurous music to date" by NARC Magazine, and an extensive touring schedule around the UK DIY scene, has won her unique sound much support across the musical spectrum. Dent has notably performed live for BBC Radio 3's After Dark Festival and as part of the 2022 BBC Proms alongside Spell Songs, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Voices of the Rivers Edge Choir. She recently received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers and was 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at Sage Gateshead.
'Stripping folk back to its bones while letting its future echoes bleed out.'
The Guardian
'Incomprehensible/Irresistible'
★★★★ Folk Album of the Month, MOJO Magazine
'A celebration of the essentially human playfulness of gaming, storytelling and songs.'
The Quietus
'An intoxicating mix of folk and electronics, like coming across a bank of Moogs in a forest clearing where wood nymphs and faeries are operating patch bays and tweaking oscillators.'
Joyzine
Watch / Watch
Mayshe-Mayshe
Who better to join us for our first show in Acomb than local DIY pop-star Mayshe-Mayshe. An inspiration to us here at PPY and hopefully the whole city.
Mayshe-Mayshe is the solo project of UK artist Alice Rowan. Her music blends dreamy art-pop with rich storytelling, skittering percussion and infectious melodies. Her deceptively simple songwriting - at once universal and deeply personal - incorporates choral vocals, vintage synths and the occasional hairdryer.
Mayshe-Mayshe writes, records and produces her work from her home studio in Yorkshire.
Watch
'Immaculately minimal DIY gems'
Narc Magazine
'Like a solo Cocteau Twins floating in the ether'
Louder Than War
'A one-woman pop machine'
Under The Radar
This is a co-headline show.
Narc Magazine
'Like a solo Cocteau Twins floating in the ether'
Louder Than War
'A one-woman pop machine'
Under The Radar
This is a co-headline show.
Tickets for this show are £8 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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The Clientele
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Sunday 15th October, 7.30pm
Cherished UK trio The Clientele release their new album 'I Am Not There Anymore' on July 28th via Merge Records.
This time out, The Clientele — vocalist/lyricist/guitarist Alasdair MacLean, bassist James Hornsey and drummer Mark Keen — incorporated elements of post-bop jazz, contemporary classical and electronic music to their classic chamber-pop sound.
They'll be touring the UK this Autumn and Winter playing tracks from the new album alongside hits from their classic albums such as 'Suburban Light', 'Strange Geometry' and 'God Save The Clientele'.
This time out, The Clientele — vocalist/lyricist/guitarist Alasdair MacLean, bassist James Hornsey and drummer Mark Keen — incorporated elements of post-bop jazz, contemporary classical and electronic music to their classic chamber-pop sound.
They'll be touring the UK this Autumn and Winter playing tracks from the new album alongside hits from their classic albums such as 'Suburban Light', 'Strange Geometry' and 'God Save The Clientele'.
Press for I Am Not There Anymore:
'Through his efforts to convey a profound experience of loss in a long-gone summer, these songs offer an uncommonly generous wealth of grace and beauty.'
9/10, Uncut Magazine
'Ninth from Indie romantics body expands palette. A both radical and reliable from Britain's most underrated.'
5/5, Record Collector
Tickets for this show are £18 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Holiday Ghosts
The Fulford Arms, York
Wednesday 18th October, 7.30pm
Holiday Ghosts, quit your corporate job, put laptop in shredder, walk away, go outside, remember what the Clean, the Go Betweens and the Modern Lovers once promised you: a life cracked open with fresh new possibilities. Three songwriters revel in lyrics descended down from Ray Davies’ 3rd person tales of landlords, bathing suits, shopping malls, the northstreet air. Based in Brighton via Falmouth on the south coast of England, Holiday Ghosts conjur the airy fun of Richard Brautigan if he had a band and was from England and wasn’t a hippie or a beatnick and he didn’t wear those big hats or have that mustache and his name wasn’t Richard, or Brautigan, and he wasn’t a writer or an artist of any kind.
Their brand new album Absolute Reality is here, get it in your ears.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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Tickets for this show are £17 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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The Sadies
The Crescent, York
Friday 20th October, 7.30pm
Wonderful Canadian country-garage-rock band The Sadies return to York after far too long!
The Sadies released their long awaited new album Colder Streams' in July 2022. It was their 11th album and produced by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Recorded between 2019 and 2021 at Skybarn in Montreal, Canada, Colder Streams features 11 original compositions engineered and mixed by Pietro Amato except for "You Should Be Worried,” which was engineered and mixed by Michael Dubue and mastered by Peter J. Moore.
With guest appearances by Jon Spencer (“No One’s Listening”), Michael Dubue (“End Credits”), Richard Reed Parry (“Message for Belial,” “No One’s Listening” and “Ginger Moon”), and the parents Good, Margaret on backing vocals for “So Far for So Few” and “All the Good,” with Bruce on autoharp on the latter, the cover art is original artwork by The Sadies’ bassist Sean Dean.
The release of Colder Streams will mark the quartet's final studio recording with founding member Dallas Good, who unexpectedly passed away in February. In preparation for the release, in October of 2021, Dallas penned what he coined the band’s “anti-bio” and seemingly said all there is to say about the new album, first noting, “Colder Streams is, by far, the best record that has ever been made by anyone. Ever.” Read the entire bio here.
“The Sadies' world has been shaken,” said the band in a joint statement. “While we struggle with the loss of Dallas - our brother, friend, and bandmate - music has been our source of comfort and coping. We are honoured to announce the release of our new album, Colder Streams. We are so proud of Dallas and the work that went into this album and look forward to sharing it with you.”
“I was utterly thrilled the Sadies asked me to produce this record,” said Richard Reed Parry, “which mostly meant I just hung around listening to the greatest live band in the country playing their asses off, and then occasionally I’d get off the couch and sing backing vocals. That said, this is The Sadies’ finest album, the one I always hoped they’d make one day and I’m stoked to have been there helping them do it. What an incredible band. “
With a deep fondness and reverence for the best of CBGB—country, bluegrass, and blues—The Sadies are equally informed and influenced by everything from ‘60s garage and psychedelic rock to surf instrumentals and punk rock. Since they first arrived on the North American scene 28 years ago, the Toronto-based roots-rockers have developed, even perfected, a style of music uniquely their own.
In support of the album, the band–Travis Good, Sean Dean, and Mike Belitsky–will embark on a North American and European tour beginning June 17 at Atwood’s Tavern in Cambridge, MA. A complete list of dates is below.
Watch / Watch
Press:
'A flurry of emotion — joyful and pointed — and clattering noise blending into haunting sparseness, this is the record The Sadies have been working on capturing for their entire existence. Thankfully, and with bittersweet timing, they got it done when we most needed them to, making the best record that has ever been made by anyone. Ever.'
10/10 - Exclaim
'This is far and away the best the band has ever sounded on record. ... Then there’s the songs, which are perhaps the strongest collection both Dallas and Travis have assembled since their 2010 masterpiece Darker Circles. The majority of the material here finds the band playing in their muscular, gothic mod-garage mode, with the two brothers singing in perfect, spectral harmony.'
8.4/10 – Paste Magazine
'Its sure-footed '60 psych, garage and country is potently rendered.'
Mojo Magazine
'The Sadies’ nebulous country-rock moves through glistening psychedelia (“Message To Belial”), gorgeous string ballads (“All The Good”) and fierce garage fuzz (“Ginger Moon”)''
Uncut Magazine
With guest appearances by Jon Spencer (“No One’s Listening”), Michael Dubue (“End Credits”), Richard Reed Parry (“Message for Belial,” “No One’s Listening” and “Ginger Moon”), and the parents Good, Margaret on backing vocals for “So Far for So Few” and “All the Good,” with Bruce on autoharp on the latter, the cover art is original artwork by The Sadies’ bassist Sean Dean.
The release of Colder Streams will mark the quartet's final studio recording with founding member Dallas Good, who unexpectedly passed away in February. In preparation for the release, in October of 2021, Dallas penned what he coined the band’s “anti-bio” and seemingly said all there is to say about the new album, first noting, “Colder Streams is, by far, the best record that has ever been made by anyone. Ever.” Read the entire bio here.
“The Sadies' world has been shaken,” said the band in a joint statement. “While we struggle with the loss of Dallas - our brother, friend, and bandmate - music has been our source of comfort and coping. We are honoured to announce the release of our new album, Colder Streams. We are so proud of Dallas and the work that went into this album and look forward to sharing it with you.”
“I was utterly thrilled the Sadies asked me to produce this record,” said Richard Reed Parry, “which mostly meant I just hung around listening to the greatest live band in the country playing their asses off, and then occasionally I’d get off the couch and sing backing vocals. That said, this is The Sadies’ finest album, the one I always hoped they’d make one day and I’m stoked to have been there helping them do it. What an incredible band. “
With a deep fondness and reverence for the best of CBGB—country, bluegrass, and blues—The Sadies are equally informed and influenced by everything from ‘60s garage and psychedelic rock to surf instrumentals and punk rock. Since they first arrived on the North American scene 28 years ago, the Toronto-based roots-rockers have developed, even perfected, a style of music uniquely their own.
In support of the album, the band–Travis Good, Sean Dean, and Mike Belitsky–will embark on a North American and European tour beginning June 17 at Atwood’s Tavern in Cambridge, MA. A complete list of dates is below.
Watch / Watch
Press:
'A flurry of emotion — joyful and pointed — and clattering noise blending into haunting sparseness, this is the record The Sadies have been working on capturing for their entire existence. Thankfully, and with bittersweet timing, they got it done when we most needed them to, making the best record that has ever been made by anyone. Ever.'
10/10 - Exclaim
'This is far and away the best the band has ever sounded on record. ... Then there’s the songs, which are perhaps the strongest collection both Dallas and Travis have assembled since their 2010 masterpiece Darker Circles. The majority of the material here finds the band playing in their muscular, gothic mod-garage mode, with the two brothers singing in perfect, spectral harmony.'
8.4/10 – Paste Magazine
'Its sure-footed '60 psych, garage and country is potently rendered.'
Mojo Magazine
'The Sadies’ nebulous country-rock moves through glistening psychedelia (“Message To Belial”), gorgeous string ballads (“All The Good”) and fierce garage fuzz (“Ginger Moon”)''
Uncut Magazine
You can get tickets online from here.
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Ye Vagabonds
The Lending Room, Leeds
Thursday 26th October, 7.30pm
Deaf Institute Music Hall, Manchester
Friday 27th October, 7pm
Brothers BrÃan and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn grew up playing music together around their hometown of Carlow, a small town in the southeast of Ireland. After moving to Dublin in 2012, they quickly became a staple of the live music and session scene in Ireland, playing their own original songs as well as folk songs from Ireland, Scotland, England and America.
Watch / Watch / Watch / Listen
Watch / Watch / Watch / Listen
In 2014 they came to the attention of Arbutus Yarns’ music filmmaker Myles O’Reilly, whose videos gained international attention for the brothers for the first time.
After a chance meeting at Electric Picnic in September 2015, the brothers performed onstage with Glen Hansard, who invited them to open for him on his European tour the following October.
Their debut EP Rose & Briar was released on October 7th 2015.
Following that, they were busy touring Ireland, the UK and Europe, opening for acts such as Villagers, Roy Harper and Lisa Hannigan (whose band they played in for her Irish tour, June 2016). They have played sold out headline shows in Ireland, France, Switzerland and the UK.
They have made numerous television and live radio appearances in Ireland, and were also part of ‘Imagining Home’, a live broadcast concert in the National Concert Hall of Ireland, 2016, curated by Glen Hansard, Philip King and Gary Sheehan.
In October 2017 they launched their debut, self-titled album to great acclaim. “Ye Vagabonds” comprised of harmony rich folk music, influenced by Irish traditional music, Appalachian singing, and the 1960's folk revival. It included ten mellow tracks weaved with thoughtful lyrics, thickly layered with strings and droning harmonium.
After a chance meeting at Electric Picnic in September 2015, the brothers performed onstage with Glen Hansard, who invited them to open for him on his European tour the following October.
Their debut EP Rose & Briar was released on October 7th 2015.
Following that, they were busy touring Ireland, the UK and Europe, opening for acts such as Villagers, Roy Harper and Lisa Hannigan (whose band they played in for her Irish tour, June 2016). They have played sold out headline shows in Ireland, France, Switzerland and the UK.
They have made numerous television and live radio appearances in Ireland, and were also part of ‘Imagining Home’, a live broadcast concert in the National Concert Hall of Ireland, 2016, curated by Glen Hansard, Philip King and Gary Sheehan.
In October 2017 they launched their debut, self-titled album to great acclaim. “Ye Vagabonds” comprised of harmony rich folk music, influenced by Irish traditional music, Appalachian singing, and the 1960's folk revival. It included ten mellow tracks weaved with thoughtful lyrics, thickly layered with strings and droning harmonium.
Their second album ‘The Hare’s Lament’ was released on 22nd March 2019 to huge critical acclaim. In 2019 they won the BBC Radio Two Folk Award for Best Traditional Track, and they swept the boards at the RTÉ Radio One Folk Awards where they won Best Traditional Track, Best Group, and Best Album.
A long-awaited EP came out on January 22nd 2020 featuring two tracks, ‘I’m A Rover’ and ‘The Bothy Boys’, again released on Rough Trade Records’ imprint River Lea, and once again they swept the boards at the RTÉ Radio One Folk Awards where they now hold the record for most awarded artists, winning Best Traditional Track and Best Group.
Their new album Nine Waves was released on Rough Trade’s River Lea label on May 13th.
Nine Waves was recorded in the Dublin Mountains at Hellfire Studios, produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy (whose previous work includes records by black midi, Lankum and caroline). The album features 11 tracks of both traditional and original songs and tunes. The brotherly harmonies and multi-instrumental abilities of Dairmuid and BrÃan Mac Gloinn were joined on ‘Nine Waves’ by Kate Ellis (cello) and Caimin Gilmore (double bass), both members of the Irish contemporary classical group Crash Ensemble, and Ryan Hargadon (Anna Mieke, Rachael Lavelle, Kojaque) on piano and saxophone. The record also features concertina from Cormac Begley and harmonium from regular touring member of Ye Vagabonds, Alain McFadden.
'A remarkable album'
Songlines
'Joyous'
Uncut Magazine
'Reflective and reverent, with Nine Waves Ye Vagabonds prove once again to be at the forefront of an ever- evolving, flourishing Irish folk scene and have done so in the most understated and inspired fashion imaginable.'
Folk Radio
'A cavern of delights... A labyrinthine treasure trove'
The Irish Times
'They remind me of my first days at ‘Les Cousins’ in Soho in 1965... Ye Vagabonds are a modern expression of a tradition that is truly robust and important to these islands.'
Roy Harper
'Going backwards to go forwards, [Ye Vagabonds] look not to modern day influence to inspire their sound, but prefer to absorb and reflect the most genuine leanings of deep tradition, playing folk music that resonates as pure and honest as it has since time immemorial. In an age where styles have a limited shelf life, and musicians so often live by definition of their sell-by date, Ye Vagabonds make music that honours timeless sincerity with acoustic fireside story telling that will sound as current a hundred years from now as it has a hundred generations past.'
Myles O'Reilly (Arbutus Yarns)
2019 BBC Folk Awards - Best Traditional Track - WINNERS
2019 RTÉ Folk Awards - Best Traditional Track, Best Group, Best Album - WINNERS
2021 RTÉ Folk Awards - Best Traditional Track, Best Group - WINNERS
You can get tickets for Leeds here and Manchester here.
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A long-awaited EP came out on January 22nd 2020 featuring two tracks, ‘I’m A Rover’ and ‘The Bothy Boys’, again released on Rough Trade Records’ imprint River Lea, and once again they swept the boards at the RTÉ Radio One Folk Awards where they now hold the record for most awarded artists, winning Best Traditional Track and Best Group.
Their new album Nine Waves was released on Rough Trade’s River Lea label on May 13th.
Nine Waves was recorded in the Dublin Mountains at Hellfire Studios, produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy (whose previous work includes records by black midi, Lankum and caroline). The album features 11 tracks of both traditional and original songs and tunes. The brotherly harmonies and multi-instrumental abilities of Dairmuid and BrÃan Mac Gloinn were joined on ‘Nine Waves’ by Kate Ellis (cello) and Caimin Gilmore (double bass), both members of the Irish contemporary classical group Crash Ensemble, and Ryan Hargadon (Anna Mieke, Rachael Lavelle, Kojaque) on piano and saxophone. The record also features concertina from Cormac Begley and harmonium from regular touring member of Ye Vagabonds, Alain McFadden.
'A remarkable album'
Songlines
'Joyous'
Uncut Magazine
'Reflective and reverent, with Nine Waves Ye Vagabonds prove once again to be at the forefront of an ever- evolving, flourishing Irish folk scene and have done so in the most understated and inspired fashion imaginable.'
Folk Radio
'A cavern of delights... A labyrinthine treasure trove'
The Irish Times
'They remind me of my first days at ‘Les Cousins’ in Soho in 1965... Ye Vagabonds are a modern expression of a tradition that is truly robust and important to these islands.'
Roy Harper
'Going backwards to go forwards, [Ye Vagabonds] look not to modern day influence to inspire their sound, but prefer to absorb and reflect the most genuine leanings of deep tradition, playing folk music that resonates as pure and honest as it has since time immemorial. In an age where styles have a limited shelf life, and musicians so often live by definition of their sell-by date, Ye Vagabonds make music that honours timeless sincerity with acoustic fireside story telling that will sound as current a hundred years from now as it has a hundred generations past.'
Myles O'Reilly (Arbutus Yarns)
2019 BBC Folk Awards - Best Traditional Track - WINNERS
2019 RTÉ Folk Awards - Best Traditional Track, Best Group, Best Album - WINNERS
2021 RTÉ Folk Awards - Best Traditional Track, Best Group - WINNERS
You can get tickets for Leeds here and Manchester here.
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The Tubs
The Fulford Arms, York
Tuesday 31st October, 7.30pm
More info to follow.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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The Vaselines
The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge
Wednesday 1st November, 8pm
The Vaselines were formed in Glasgow in 1987 by singers/guitarists Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, soon signing to Pastels frontman Stephen Pastel's newly formed 53rd & 3rd label.
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain regularly cited the Vaseline’s influence in interviews with the music press and Nirvana would go on to cover the Vaselines' ‘Molly's Lips’ and ‘Son of a Gun’ (both later compiled on their Incesticide collection) as well as perform ‘Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam’ on their legendary MTV Unplugged appearance.
Cobain's gospel-spreading no doubt accelerated their rise to cult sainthood, but the Vaselines would have gotten there sooner or later on their own accord. Lewd but naïve and abrasive yet tender, the band's shambling, primitivist squall remains a perfect distillation of pop at its most guileless and euphoric.
Eugene Kelly later went on to front Captain America / Eugenius, while McKee spent the better part of the decade out of sight, resurfaced in Suckle, and released a solo album in 2006. The Vaselines reunited proper in 2010 to record their second full album Sex With An X which was released on the Seattle label Sub Pop.
This was followed by V for Vaselines in 2014. The Ramones inspired album featured many of the same players who helped make 'Sex.....', including Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, the 1990's Michael McGaughrin and Teenage Fanclub's Francis Macdonald.
'Even those too young-or not yet born-for the Vaselines' heyday can appreciate the earnest fun of Sex With an X'
Billboard
'A welcome return, then – let's hope they stick around for a bit longer this time.'
BBC Music
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain regularly cited the Vaseline’s influence in interviews with the music press and Nirvana would go on to cover the Vaselines' ‘Molly's Lips’ and ‘Son of a Gun’ (both later compiled on their Incesticide collection) as well as perform ‘Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam’ on their legendary MTV Unplugged appearance.
Cobain's gospel-spreading no doubt accelerated their rise to cult sainthood, but the Vaselines would have gotten there sooner or later on their own accord. Lewd but naïve and abrasive yet tender, the band's shambling, primitivist squall remains a perfect distillation of pop at its most guileless and euphoric.
Eugene Kelly later went on to front Captain America / Eugenius, while McKee spent the better part of the decade out of sight, resurfaced in Suckle, and released a solo album in 2006. The Vaselines reunited proper in 2010 to record their second full album Sex With An X which was released on the Seattle label Sub Pop.
This was followed by V for Vaselines in 2014. The Ramones inspired album featured many of the same players who helped make 'Sex.....', including Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, the 1990's Michael McGaughrin and Teenage Fanclub's Francis Macdonald.
'Even those too young-or not yet born-for the Vaselines' heyday can appreciate the earnest fun of Sex With an X'
Billboard
'A welcome return, then – let's hope they stick around for a bit longer this time.'
BBC Music
Tickets for this show are £20 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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The Bug Club
Bug Teeth
The Crescent, York
Wednesday 1st November, 7.30pm
The Bug Club’s name does a good job of introducing the band and their music: a tight-knit, collaborative effort focussed on telling tales of the everyday that we often take for granted, shot through with humour and riffs-a-plenty. Comprising the creative trio of Sam Willmett (guitar/vocals), Tilly Harris (bass/vocals) & Dan Matthew (drums), The Bug Club formed in 2016 in the little-known rock n' roll hotbed that is Caldicot, Monmouthshire.
The band were signed by Bingo Records in Autumn 2020, and released their first single 'We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’ in Feb 2021. EPs ‘Launching Moondream One’ and ‘Pure Particles’ followed, along with standalone releases ‘Intelectuals’ and ‘Two Beauties’, building up to the release of debut album ‘Green Dream in F#’ by October 2022.
Initially championed by BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley, along with Adam Walton and Huw Stephens on Radio Cymru, The Bug Club have since earned the support of DJs, fellow artists and press worldwide. Sold-out tours across the UK and in Europe paved the way for a 2023 which will see the band play further afield to an ever-growing loyal fanbase, who can look forward to a number of new releases from the trio this year.
Three groovy peas in a far out pod!
Watch / Watch
After a live album (of new, one-off tracks) and an EP to get the year started at a leisurely pace, The Bug Club cap off 2023 with their second full-length album - an hour-and-a-bit long double LP called Rare Birds: Hour of Song. The first single, ‘Short And Round’, is released today (July 21).
Now then, what could you possibly have to say that takes two records to spit out? Pay attention to this and learn. It's The Bug Club's Hex Enduction Hour. South Wales' Double Nickels On The Dime. It's The Faust Cycle for people with shorter attention spans. Listen to me, why don't you. I'm from the label. I'm relevant. I have a huuuuge record collection, I love name-dropping, and I don't have many friends.
Their eighth release since joining forces with Bingo Records in summer 2020, 'Rare Birds...' is a culmination of a year spent relentlessly touring. But it's not one of those hackneyed road records. It's about birds, to an extent. Well, it is, and it isn't. And it is 47-songs long, featuring 23 Cutler-esque spoken-word tracks that weave through the music telling a surreal story to accompany the band’s usual witty, taut garage rock. Oh, and it comes with a fully illustrated, 32-page book.
Vocalist and guitarist Sam Willmett kind of attempts to explain: “All the songs were written in our summer holiday lull before we went away to tour (debut album) Green Dream in F♯ last year. Then we picked the lucky winners to go on the album when we got home around Christmas.
“We just wrote every day we were home, mostly in the garden. That’s probably why it's vaguely about birds. All the songs are in the order they were written apart from the last two which we swapped around.
“I only actually remember writing one song. ‘Passionflower, Paperbacks and Woodlice’ which came about as I was sat by a passionflower when a woodlouse crawled over my paperback. I thought it looked and sounded nice.
“We wrote the wordy bits in one hit around the songs once the record was nearly done. One big story. We think the record is like a fall asleep relaxation tape with the cartoon ‘burd’ narrating and guiding you.”
‘Short and Round’ is The Bug Club at their most playful. Recalling The Soft Boys and The Kinks as much as their usual touchstones of The Moldy Peaches and The Modern Lovers, the track sees the band admiring an unnamed person’s barnet. And why not? They’re often worth admiring. It builds to a repetitive chorus before swaggering off with a solo they’ve chosen to fade out, just like they did on their debut single ‘We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’.
Need to know more? Spare us an hour and four minutes. That's what we're asking of you here. It's a big ask, these days.
The band were signed by Bingo Records in Autumn 2020, and released their first single 'We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’ in Feb 2021. EPs ‘Launching Moondream One’ and ‘Pure Particles’ followed, along with standalone releases ‘Intelectuals’ and ‘Two Beauties’, building up to the release of debut album ‘Green Dream in F#’ by October 2022.
Initially championed by BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley, along with Adam Walton and Huw Stephens on Radio Cymru, The Bug Club have since earned the support of DJs, fellow artists and press worldwide. Sold-out tours across the UK and in Europe paved the way for a 2023 which will see the band play further afield to an ever-growing loyal fanbase, who can look forward to a number of new releases from the trio this year.
Three groovy peas in a far out pod!
Watch / Watch
After a live album (of new, one-off tracks) and an EP to get the year started at a leisurely pace, The Bug Club cap off 2023 with their second full-length album - an hour-and-a-bit long double LP called Rare Birds: Hour of Song. The first single, ‘Short And Round’, is released today (July 21).
Now then, what could you possibly have to say that takes two records to spit out? Pay attention to this and learn. It's The Bug Club's Hex Enduction Hour. South Wales' Double Nickels On The Dime. It's The Faust Cycle for people with shorter attention spans. Listen to me, why don't you. I'm from the label. I'm relevant. I have a huuuuge record collection, I love name-dropping, and I don't have many friends.
Their eighth release since joining forces with Bingo Records in summer 2020, 'Rare Birds...' is a culmination of a year spent relentlessly touring. But it's not one of those hackneyed road records. It's about birds, to an extent. Well, it is, and it isn't. And it is 47-songs long, featuring 23 Cutler-esque spoken-word tracks that weave through the music telling a surreal story to accompany the band’s usual witty, taut garage rock. Oh, and it comes with a fully illustrated, 32-page book.
Vocalist and guitarist Sam Willmett kind of attempts to explain: “All the songs were written in our summer holiday lull before we went away to tour (debut album) Green Dream in F♯ last year. Then we picked the lucky winners to go on the album when we got home around Christmas.
“We just wrote every day we were home, mostly in the garden. That’s probably why it's vaguely about birds. All the songs are in the order they were written apart from the last two which we swapped around.
“I only actually remember writing one song. ‘Passionflower, Paperbacks and Woodlice’ which came about as I was sat by a passionflower when a woodlouse crawled over my paperback. I thought it looked and sounded nice.
“We wrote the wordy bits in one hit around the songs once the record was nearly done. One big story. We think the record is like a fall asleep relaxation tape with the cartoon ‘burd’ narrating and guiding you.”
‘Short and Round’ is The Bug Club at their most playful. Recalling The Soft Boys and The Kinks as much as their usual touchstones of The Moldy Peaches and The Modern Lovers, the track sees the band admiring an unnamed person’s barnet. And why not? They’re often worth admiring. It builds to a repetitive chorus before swaggering off with a solo they’ve chosen to fade out, just like they did on their debut single ‘We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’.
Need to know more? Spare us an hour and four minutes. That's what we're asking of you here. It's a big ask, these days.
But if you do, you'll find yourself entrenched in an immersive world of The Bug Club. The other records - with the sardonic and surreal, the riffs and the obsession with outer space - were a run up. With Rare Birds... Sam, Tilly and Dan have created an expansive environment in which we can all bask in a cocktail of garage rock, poetry, nonsense, wordplay, sentimentality and fuck-offs. Ivor Cutler's come round to play with Gordon Gano and Kimya Dawson in a semi-detached in Caldicot. They've made something you're going to really like.
Bug Teeth
Bug Teeth
Tickets for this show are £13.50 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Bar Italia
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Friday 3rd November, 7.30pm
Bar Italia, the London trio of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton, have announced details of their new album ‘Tracey Denim’, which will be released on May 19th via Matador.
‘Tracey Denim’ was recorded and produced by Bar Italia with mixing from Marta Salogni. It features the single “Nurse!” which was released in March to acclaim, and described as “a hypnotic post-punk ballad” (The Guardian) and “narcotically arresting” (Pitchfork).
The band will also make its US debut in June with dates scheduled in New York and Los Angeles.
They appear at festivals this summer including Primavera Sound Barcelona & Madrid, Latitude, Midi Festival and End Of The Road. Additionally, the band have announced UK tour dates for November, and will perform a headline show at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on November 3rd.
‘Tracey Denim’ was recorded and produced by Bar Italia with mixing from Marta Salogni. It features the single “Nurse!” which was released in March to acclaim, and described as “a hypnotic post-punk ballad” (The Guardian) and “narcotically arresting” (Pitchfork).
The band will also make its US debut in June with dates scheduled in New York and Los Angeles.
They appear at festivals this summer including Primavera Sound Barcelona & Madrid, Latitude, Midi Festival and End Of The Road. Additionally, the band have announced UK tour dates for November, and will perform a headline show at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on November 3rd.
Tickets for this show are £12.50 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Alabaster DePlume
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Tuesday 7th November, 7.30pm
Gus Fairbairn, aka Alabaster DePlume, has a pocketful of phrases that he uses all the time whether he’s walking down the street or holding court with musicians and an audience. For a long time the Mancunian would tell anyone who’d listen that they were doing very well. More recently, it’s another phrase which has a similar effect and which belies his unwavering commitment to personal vulnerability and collective politics: “Don’t forget you’re precious.”
A process that is people-first not product-first ensures that the music is unique; often gem-like. Alabaster DePlume’s songs are built on sonorous circular melodies and luminous tones that transmit calmness and generosity in warm waves – unless they’re raging against complacency and the everyday inhumanity of end times capitalism. Most importantly, he brings a valuable transparency to his work. “This is what I’m really doing,” he says. “I want to talk about why I’m doing this, and how I’m doing this.
Listen / Listen / Watch
A process that is people-first not product-first ensures that the music is unique; often gem-like. Alabaster DePlume’s songs are built on sonorous circular melodies and luminous tones that transmit calmness and generosity in warm waves – unless they’re raging against complacency and the everyday inhumanity of end times capitalism. Most importantly, he brings a valuable transparency to his work. “This is what I’m really doing,” he says. “I want to talk about why I’m doing this, and how I’m doing this.
Listen / Listen / Watch
The Manchester-born, London-based songwriter, saxophonist, poet and orator Alabaster DePlume, prepares the release of a brand new record, Come With Fierce Grace is drawn from the same sessions as Alabaster’s much-lauded double LP GOLD (which was a Pitchfork ‘Best New Music’ in April of 2022, and included in ‘Best Albums of 2022’ lists by NPR Music, Pitchfork, The Guardian and MOJO). Rather than a collection of B-sides, it's a continuation of the organic collaborative and improvisational process that he established... almost as if GOLD has grown a new limb or aged into a new phase.
On the album’s lead single “Did You Know,” singer and drummer Momoko Gill takes the key poem from GOLD and translates it into her own lyrics. Gill had already delivered the message of the poem and sang it across tons of shows with Alabaster - but with her performance on “Did You Know” she lays out her own meaning for the words. In the background of “Did You Know,” you hear Alabaster playing the key melody that accompanied the original poem on GOLD; but here the feeling is re-established by the improvisers who were recreating the arrangement in the moment, purely for the sake of enjoying each other at the time.
In order to record the compositions in his critically-acclaimed 2022 release GOLD, Alabaster DePlume instilled a culture of creativity by leading his ensembles in spontaneous composition and development. To allow them to be present, he kept the musicians constantly creating across several weeks of sessions at London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre. This process resulted in an abundance of material, much more than he could fit onto the initial double LP. After spending most of 2022 touring in support of GOLD, Alabaster spent much of early 2023 revisiting the additional material from those Total Refreshment Centre sessions – adding, subtracting, producing and arranging – resulting in an entirely new album, Come With Fierce Grace.
Come With Fierce Grace is an album made of authentic and unstipulated – yet welcomed – human interaction. It is for the most part an album of instrumentals, with exception of a few vocal features by Momoko Gill (MettaShiba), Falle Nioke, and Donna Thompson. However the instrumentals on this album are much more embryonic and unfiltered than the lush orchestrations heard on Alabaster’s breakout 2020 album To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1. Come With Fierce Grace is perhaps the most raw and candid portrait of Alabaster’s creative compositional process we’ve yet to hear, as he’s captured vividly in the room with his collaborators – stretching, exploring, working to deepen and expand the emotions underlying his melodic and poetic frameworks. Regarding the process, Alabaster cites a similarity to how elements in nature contribute to shared work and beauty without a collective motive – a bee’s own motives result in the delivery of pollen. As he says: “The great thing wants to happen, let us allow it to happen.”
Regarding the origin of the album’s name: On his first trip to perform in the US in March 2022, Alabaster collected messages from individuals, as he asked them if there is anything they would like him to share with his audiences. One message (from a person who preferred to remain anonymous) asked Alabaster to encourage people to “come with fierce grace.”
Press for Gold:
'upbeat and tentatively triumphant'
Stereogum
'Alabaster has done it again'
Giles Peterson
'[DePlume] delivers a serene reminder of what matters most'
Pitchfork
'DePlume is a fixture on the London avant-jazz scene whose greatest value is openness'
NPR
'He’s a garrulous, heart-on-sleeve rabble-rouser, an anti-cynic keen to reduce the fourth wall to rubble.'
The Observer
On the album’s lead single “Did You Know,” singer and drummer Momoko Gill takes the key poem from GOLD and translates it into her own lyrics. Gill had already delivered the message of the poem and sang it across tons of shows with Alabaster - but with her performance on “Did You Know” she lays out her own meaning for the words. In the background of “Did You Know,” you hear Alabaster playing the key melody that accompanied the original poem on GOLD; but here the feeling is re-established by the improvisers who were recreating the arrangement in the moment, purely for the sake of enjoying each other at the time.
In order to record the compositions in his critically-acclaimed 2022 release GOLD, Alabaster DePlume instilled a culture of creativity by leading his ensembles in spontaneous composition and development. To allow them to be present, he kept the musicians constantly creating across several weeks of sessions at London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre. This process resulted in an abundance of material, much more than he could fit onto the initial double LP. After spending most of 2022 touring in support of GOLD, Alabaster spent much of early 2023 revisiting the additional material from those Total Refreshment Centre sessions – adding, subtracting, producing and arranging – resulting in an entirely new album, Come With Fierce Grace.
Come With Fierce Grace is an album made of authentic and unstipulated – yet welcomed – human interaction. It is for the most part an album of instrumentals, with exception of a few vocal features by Momoko Gill (MettaShiba), Falle Nioke, and Donna Thompson. However the instrumentals on this album are much more embryonic and unfiltered than the lush orchestrations heard on Alabaster’s breakout 2020 album To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1. Come With Fierce Grace is perhaps the most raw and candid portrait of Alabaster’s creative compositional process we’ve yet to hear, as he’s captured vividly in the room with his collaborators – stretching, exploring, working to deepen and expand the emotions underlying his melodic and poetic frameworks. Regarding the process, Alabaster cites a similarity to how elements in nature contribute to shared work and beauty without a collective motive – a bee’s own motives result in the delivery of pollen. As he says: “The great thing wants to happen, let us allow it to happen.”
Regarding the origin of the album’s name: On his first trip to perform in the US in March 2022, Alabaster collected messages from individuals, as he asked them if there is anything they would like him to share with his audiences. One message (from a person who preferred to remain anonymous) asked Alabaster to encourage people to “come with fierce grace.”
Press for Gold:
'upbeat and tentatively triumphant'
Stereogum
'Alabaster has done it again'
Giles Peterson
'[DePlume] delivers a serene reminder of what matters most'
Pitchfork
'DePlume is a fixture on the London avant-jazz scene whose greatest value is openness'
NPR
'He’s a garrulous, heart-on-sleeve rabble-rouser, an anti-cynic keen to reduce the fourth wall to rubble.'
The Observer
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Japanese Television
Soma Crew
The Fulford Arms, York
Tuesday 7th November, 7.30pm
UK’s number 2 Space Surf band return with an EP recorded live for Marc Riley’s BBC6 Music show. Featuring singles ‘Snake Shake’ and ‘Bumble Rumble’.
A full throttle blend of psych, surf, sci-fi and garage rock, this EP captures the wild and ramshackle JTV live show previously seen on tour with the likes of The Wytches and GOAT. The band are currently working on their 2nd album to be released in Spring 2024 via Tip Top Recordings.
*Only Japanese Television are 100% Space Surf*
Press:
A full throttle blend of psych, surf, sci-fi and garage rock, this EP captures the wild and ramshackle JTV live show previously seen on tour with the likes of The Wytches and GOAT. The band are currently working on their 2nd album to be released in Spring 2024 via Tip Top Recordings.
*Only Japanese Television are 100% Space Surf*
Press:
'On a different orbit from everything else'
Steve Lamacq
'Absolutely brilliant'
Marc Riley
'An off-piste dream...a wild phenomenon'
Clash
Steve Lamacq
'Absolutely brilliant'
Marc Riley
'An off-piste dream...a wild phenomenon'
Clash
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Bas Jan
The Fulford Arms, York
Friday 10th November, 7.30pm
Bas Jan features Serafina Steer, Emma Smith on violin, bass and electronics, Rachel Horwood on drums and Charlie Stock on electric violin.
Bas Jan is the vehicle for well-established musicians Serafina Steer (Jarv IS…), Emma Smith (Jarv IS…, Meilyr Jones, Seamus Fogarty, Elysian Quartet) and Charlie Stock (The Irrepressibles) and percussionist, Rachel Horwood (Trash Kit, Bamboo).
Their debut album Yes I Jan was followed in 2018 with the release of the Instant Nostalgia EP also in, shows around the UK and Europe, and dates at festivals including Green Man and End Of The Road.
Watch / Listen
Bas Jan is the vehicle for well-established musicians Serafina Steer (Jarv IS…), Emma Smith (Jarv IS…, Meilyr Jones, Seamus Fogarty, Elysian Quartet) and Charlie Stock (The Irrepressibles) and percussionist, Rachel Horwood (Trash Kit, Bamboo).
Their debut album Yes I Jan was followed in 2018 with the release of the Instant Nostalgia EP also in, shows around the UK and Europe, and dates at festivals including Green Man and End Of The Road.
Watch / Listen
The newly expanded, London-based ensemble released their second album ‘Baby U Know’ in early 2022 on Lost Map Records to critical acclaim; combining “internal monologues, workings-out of philosophical positions, political despair and myth making. It demands & deserves undivided attention” MOJO
"Baby U Know marks a consolidation of Bas Jan as a four piece," says Serafina. "It was recorded at Cafe OTO in London over three days. Getting Arts Council funding and making the album represented a coming together out of the solitudes of 2020, carving out the possibility of a future for the band at a time when Brexit and Everything cast all those things very much into doubt or, at best, made them a very low priority. The time constraints of having to finish the record before one of the band entered their third trimester of pregnancy, and with a winter lockdown pending, probably added a rawness to these recordings. It's kind of a pragmatically hopeful record."
Named after the Dutch conceptual artist Ban Jan Ader, their deadpan, satirical, post-punk sound reawakens the spirit of The Slits and The Raincoats.
'Bas Jan do high-art pop on a low budget.'
9/10, Uncut Magazine
'Full of emotional U-turns, musical detours and conversational leaps, Baby U Know demands and deserves undivided attention.'
4/5, MOJO Magazine
"Baby U Know marks a consolidation of Bas Jan as a four piece," says Serafina. "It was recorded at Cafe OTO in London over three days. Getting Arts Council funding and making the album represented a coming together out of the solitudes of 2020, carving out the possibility of a future for the band at a time when Brexit and Everything cast all those things very much into doubt or, at best, made them a very low priority. The time constraints of having to finish the record before one of the band entered their third trimester of pregnancy, and with a winter lockdown pending, probably added a rawness to these recordings. It's kind of a pragmatically hopeful record."
Named after the Dutch conceptual artist Ban Jan Ader, their deadpan, satirical, post-punk sound reawakens the spirit of The Slits and The Raincoats.
'Bas Jan do high-art pop on a low budget.'
9/10, Uncut Magazine
'Full of emotional U-turns, musical detours and conversational leaps, Baby U Know demands and deserves undivided attention.'
4/5, MOJO Magazine
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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OFF!
Teen Mortgage
The Crescent, York
Friday 10th November, 7.30pm
‘Some things in punk rock are eternal, like the raw and snarling sound of the original SoCal hardcore scene that birthed Black Flag and the Circle Jerks. Singer Keith Morris was a founding member of both uncompromising acts, but his most unexpected feat has been his latest chapter, operating at peak rage and inspiration for a new millennium as frontman to the hardcore supergroup OFF!
Beginning in 2010, the explosive quartet released three highly acclaimed albums on Vice Records and delivered a modern take on the original blueprint of first-wave hardcore to fans around the world. Songs written by Morris and guitarist-producer Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides) are blunt and brutal takes on modern life, fueled on wild downstroke guitar riffs and a dreadlocked singer permanently pissed.
Now, in 2022, OFF! is back for another round of frantic beats and nervous breakdowns, with a full schedule of projects in motion, including the release of the band’s first new studio album in eight years and a long-planned sci-fi feature film. Joining OFF! on that mission is a powerful new rhythm section: bassist Autry Fulbright II (…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead) and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Herbie Hancock).
Beginning in 2010, the explosive quartet released three highly acclaimed albums on Vice Records and delivered a modern take on the original blueprint of first-wave hardcore to fans around the world. Songs written by Morris and guitarist-producer Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides) are blunt and brutal takes on modern life, fueled on wild downstroke guitar riffs and a dreadlocked singer permanently pissed.
Now, in 2022, OFF! is back for another round of frantic beats and nervous breakdowns, with a full schedule of projects in motion, including the release of the band’s first new studio album in eight years and a long-planned sci-fi feature film. Joining OFF! on that mission is a powerful new rhythm section: bassist Autry Fulbright II (…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead) and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Herbie Hancock).
Tickets for this show are £18 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Personal Trainer
The Adelphi Club, Hull
Saturday 11th November, 8pm
Most bands should be familiar with the honeymoon phase, those lofty formative stages where creativity blooms as the purest of fruits. The fingers itch, the eyes wander off to rapturous highs, the body trembles electric with creative energy waiting to be unleashed upon unsuspecting onlookers. Unfortunately, the honeymoon phase is usually just that: a phase.
Thank heavens, nobody told indie rock crusaders Personal Trainer this was all supposed to be temporary. The Amsterdam-based collective seek out sharp-witted ways to prolong the innate joy of being a band just plugging in and playing. Willem Smit, the group’s conductor and cheerleader, started the band as an ultimate love letter to the vibrant scene he himself inhabits. The ten tracks of their rapturously received debut album "Big Love Blanket", released late in 2022, arrived fully-formed, displaying a playful, almost hyperactive diversity of sounds and influences, landing on one all of their own.
Co-produced with Casper van de Lans, Willem Smit, the group’s conductor and cheerleader, rummaged knee-deep into the strongholds that conceived many of the past decade’s quintessential Dutch alternative records. The quest to squeeze out the most potential out of each song might seem somewhat at odds with Personal Trainer’s tumultuous modus operandi (which included a 24-hour concert streamed live at Amsterdam’s legendary Paradiso in 2021). The conditions Smit and Van de Lans set aren’t all that different: create that feeling of being a little bit out of your depth, a little foolish, and allow some of that silliness to guide the musical direction forward. “Whenever I catch myself doing something premeditated, I wouldn't like it if I just pretended to know it all. I think I would find that incredibly lame.”
Known for their rousing and electric live shows, 2023 will see Personal Trainer take to the stages at some of the finest festivals, SXSW, Eurosonic, End of the Road Festival and more and play their biggest headline to date at a sold out Paradiso in Amsterdam.
Thank heavens, nobody told indie rock crusaders Personal Trainer this was all supposed to be temporary. The Amsterdam-based collective seek out sharp-witted ways to prolong the innate joy of being a band just plugging in and playing. Willem Smit, the group’s conductor and cheerleader, started the band as an ultimate love letter to the vibrant scene he himself inhabits. The ten tracks of their rapturously received debut album "Big Love Blanket", released late in 2022, arrived fully-formed, displaying a playful, almost hyperactive diversity of sounds and influences, landing on one all of their own.
Co-produced with Casper van de Lans, Willem Smit, the group’s conductor and cheerleader, rummaged knee-deep into the strongholds that conceived many of the past decade’s quintessential Dutch alternative records. The quest to squeeze out the most potential out of each song might seem somewhat at odds with Personal Trainer’s tumultuous modus operandi (which included a 24-hour concert streamed live at Amsterdam’s legendary Paradiso in 2021). The conditions Smit and Van de Lans set aren’t all that different: create that feeling of being a little bit out of your depth, a little foolish, and allow some of that silliness to guide the musical direction forward. “Whenever I catch myself doing something premeditated, I wouldn't like it if I just pretended to know it all. I think I would find that incredibly lame.”
Known for their rousing and electric live shows, 2023 will see Personal Trainer take to the stages at some of the finest festivals, SXSW, Eurosonic, End of the Road Festival and more and play their biggest headline to date at a sold out Paradiso in Amsterdam.
Press:
Dutch indie-rockers expertly juggle with pathos, clatter and Malkmus-esque deadpan.'
MOJO
'An understated and slow burning joy – full of subtlety that you can’t help but return to'
So Young Magazine
'Equally loose and tight in the right places, flicking through musical genres as if it’s all one big pick and mix, ‘Big Love Blanket’ sees Personal Trainer arrive in perfect health.'
Dork
MOJO
'An understated and slow burning joy – full of subtlety that you can’t help but return to'
So Young Magazine
'Equally loose and tight in the right places, flicking through musical genres as if it’s all one big pick and mix, ‘Big Love Blanket’ sees Personal Trainer arrive in perfect health.'
Dork
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Holy Moly & The Crackers
The Crescent, York
Sunday 12th November, 7.30pm
Band On The Wall, Manchester
Thursday 30th November, 7.30pm
Holy
Moly & The Crackers are the innovative and fiery folk-rockers from
Newcastle-Upon Tyne (UK), who bombastically mash together unique
flavours of americana, rock and indie with a circus-punk edge, and have
become renowned for their blazing live shows.
Watch / Watch
Holy Moly & The Crackers are the innovative and fiery folk-rockers from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the North-East UK, who bombastically mash together unique flavours of americana, rock and indie with a circus-punk edge, and have become renowned for their blazing live shows.
Building a loyal and enthusiastic fan base over the years, the six-piece first tasted success with the release of their album Salem on their own Pink Lane Records, when lead single ‘Cold Comfort Lane’ was picked up by Hollywood and used in the vibrant, stick-it-to-the-man blockbuster Oceans 8 in 2018. Since then, they have sold out shows across the UK and Europe and graced the stages of innumerable festivals, including Glastonbury and Colours Of Ostrava in Czech Republic.
Working again with Salem producer Matt Terry, they recorded and released their follow up album Take a Bite in 2019, described as a “swaggering album that showcases a riotous blend of styles” by Louder Than War. Once again Holy Moly & The Crackers hit the road in full throttle, joining ‘shanty punks’ Skinny Lister on tour around Europe, before appearing at over 30 festivals, and finally undertaking a victorious headline lap of the UK, culminating in selling out their biggest show to date at Sage Gateshead on the banks of the Tyne.
2020 saw the band blasting out of the blocks with their new single ‘Road to You’, “a shot of espresso, that comes loaded and ready to work in a short, sharp shock”. They were set to play 27 dates across 10 countries on their biggest European tour to date, as well as support Frank Turner across France and Germany, and return to Glastonbury for its 50th anniversary. But, well, you know what happened next.
Across the pandemic the band built their own studio where they self-produced and recorded the most recent single ‘Cry Wolf’, which found its way onto the prestigious Blues & Roots Rock Spotify playlist. In late 2021 the band managed, among the chaos, to head on tour, performing to capacity crowds across the UK.
2022 sees Holy Moly & The Crackers retreat into their crazy chocolate factory to record their new album, working with Netherlands producer Wessel Oltheten (Dewolff) and six times Grammy award-winning mix engineer, Vance Powell (Jack White, Chris Stapleton), with releases and tours across UK and Europe planned for next year and beyond.
Press:
'a riotous blend of styles'
Louder Than War UK
'One of Newcastle’s finest'
Crack Magazine UK
'Deliciously gravel-throated'
Rockshot UK
Smoky vocals over precise, versatile percussion, mesmeric rhythms, electrifying guitars and violin, vaudeville accordion and outrageous trumpet intermezzos'
American Blues Scene UK
'Unique flavours of rock, indie and gypsy folk'
Blues Matters UK
'Turn it on and turn it up. This one’s a rager'
No Depression USA
You can get tickets online from York here and from Manchester here.
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Lankum
Leeds Irish Centre
Watch / Watch
Holy Moly & The Crackers are the innovative and fiery folk-rockers from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the North-East UK, who bombastically mash together unique flavours of americana, rock and indie with a circus-punk edge, and have become renowned for their blazing live shows.
Building a loyal and enthusiastic fan base over the years, the six-piece first tasted success with the release of their album Salem on their own Pink Lane Records, when lead single ‘Cold Comfort Lane’ was picked up by Hollywood and used in the vibrant, stick-it-to-the-man blockbuster Oceans 8 in 2018. Since then, they have sold out shows across the UK and Europe and graced the stages of innumerable festivals, including Glastonbury and Colours Of Ostrava in Czech Republic.
Working again with Salem producer Matt Terry, they recorded and released their follow up album Take a Bite in 2019, described as a “swaggering album that showcases a riotous blend of styles” by Louder Than War. Once again Holy Moly & The Crackers hit the road in full throttle, joining ‘shanty punks’ Skinny Lister on tour around Europe, before appearing at over 30 festivals, and finally undertaking a victorious headline lap of the UK, culminating in selling out their biggest show to date at Sage Gateshead on the banks of the Tyne.
2020 saw the band blasting out of the blocks with their new single ‘Road to You’, “a shot of espresso, that comes loaded and ready to work in a short, sharp shock”. They were set to play 27 dates across 10 countries on their biggest European tour to date, as well as support Frank Turner across France and Germany, and return to Glastonbury for its 50th anniversary. But, well, you know what happened next.
Across the pandemic the band built their own studio where they self-produced and recorded the most recent single ‘Cry Wolf’, which found its way onto the prestigious Blues & Roots Rock Spotify playlist. In late 2021 the band managed, among the chaos, to head on tour, performing to capacity crowds across the UK.
2022 sees Holy Moly & The Crackers retreat into their crazy chocolate factory to record their new album, working with Netherlands producer Wessel Oltheten (Dewolff) and six times Grammy award-winning mix engineer, Vance Powell (Jack White, Chris Stapleton), with releases and tours across UK and Europe planned for next year and beyond.
Press:
'a riotous blend of styles'
Louder Than War UK
'One of Newcastle’s finest'
Crack Magazine UK
'Deliciously gravel-throated'
Rockshot UK
Smoky vocals over precise, versatile percussion, mesmeric rhythms, electrifying guitars and violin, vaudeville accordion and outrageous trumpet intermezzos'
American Blues Scene UK
'Unique flavours of rock, indie and gypsy folk'
Blues Matters UK
'Turn it on and turn it up. This one’s a rager'
No Depression USA
You can get tickets online from York here and from Manchester here.
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Pillow Queens
The Crescent, York
Wednesday 15th November, 7.30pm
Pillow Queens are a four piece based in Dublin, Ireland. Formed in 2016, their State of the State EP caught the ear of Steve Lamacq who called the band’s songs “deceptively infectious, with sharp hooks and sharp nails”. That EP’s lead single, Favourite, with its accompanying dog-filled video, received airplay on BBC Radio 1, BBC Introducing, Radio X, and Amazing Radio as well as across Irish national radio stations. Two UK tours followed, along with a brace of sellout hometown shows in Dublin.
Watch / Watch / Watch
But even bigger stages beckoned, when they supported Pussy Riot, and opened for Idles and Future Islands massive open air shows in Dublin in the summer of 2018.
Working with Mercury Prize nominated producer Tommy McLaughlin (Becoming A Jackal/Awayland, Villagers), they launched the track and video Gay Girls, an instant queer anthem, which was nominated for the RTE Choice Music Prize song of the year, and embraced by NPR’s World Cafe and KEXP.
Building a following of amazing fans from their tracks, festival shows, sold out gigs around Dublin and Ireland, on the road in Europe, the band played Eurosonic, supported Soak on their European tour, were cited as a highlight at Iceland Airwaves, played Other Voices, a bajillion festivals, and hit the US for the first time with shows in New York City and Los Angeles, leading to SXSW.
January 2021 saw the four piece take on their US television debut, performing and interviewing on the CBS late night talk show The Late Late Show with James Corden.
The band’s debut album In Waiting has been praised by critics both home and abroad and has been nominated for an RTE Choice Prize for Album of the Year. They have just announced a record deal with North American label Royal Mountain Records.
But even bigger stages beckoned, when they supported Pussy Riot, and opened for Idles and Future Islands massive open air shows in Dublin in the summer of 2018.
Working with Mercury Prize nominated producer Tommy McLaughlin (Becoming A Jackal/Awayland, Villagers), they launched the track and video Gay Girls, an instant queer anthem, which was nominated for the RTE Choice Music Prize song of the year, and embraced by NPR’s World Cafe and KEXP.
Building a following of amazing fans from their tracks, festival shows, sold out gigs around Dublin and Ireland, on the road in Europe, the band played Eurosonic, supported Soak on their European tour, were cited as a highlight at Iceland Airwaves, played Other Voices, a bajillion festivals, and hit the US for the first time with shows in New York City and Los Angeles, leading to SXSW.
January 2021 saw the four piece take on their US television debut, performing and interviewing on the CBS late night talk show The Late Late Show with James Corden.
The band’s debut album In Waiting has been praised by critics both home and abroad and has been nominated for an RTE Choice Prize for Album of the Year. They have just announced a record deal with North American label Royal Mountain Records.
Tickets for this show are £14 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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A Certain Ratio
The Crescent, York
Saturday 18th November, 7.30pm
ACR cordially invited you to celebrate 45 years of music, a hand-picked run of shows in limited capacity venues. 2 sets in chronological order - no support.
'A Certain Ratio’s blend of knife-edge tension and funkateer abandon is a style that’s theirs and theirs only.'
Uncut Magazine
'A Certain Ratio’s latest heads down a new trajectory, revamping their signature percussive style with glossy vocals and sharp production.'
The Guardian
'…a fireball of up-to-the minute energy'
Record Collector
A Certain Ratio have announced a unique tour that celebrates 45 years of the band’s incredible career. The dates will see A Certain Ratio perform two separate sets each night: the first set will represent the early years of their career from their Factory releases, including ‘All Night Party’ Sextet and Force, through to the next stage of their journey when they joined A&M in the late ‘80s, with songs such as ‘Won’t Stop Loving You’. The band will then reconvene for a set representing ACR from the early to mid-‘90s period, with songs like ’27 Forever’ leading into their most recent releases with tracks from ACR Loco and 1982 and beyond to unreleased forthcoming material.
Watch / Watch / Watch
These very special dates, across intimate venues in the UK and beyond, kick off at London’s Moth Club on 10 November and finish at Band on the Wall in Manchester, the venue that hosted their 33 1/3 anniversary celebrations, which is also the site of The Musicians Collective where the band honed their craft at their earliest performances alongside artists such as Warsaw, The Fall, The Passage, Joy Division and many more – full details below.
Since they emerged from the hallowed grounds of the late 70s punk scene, A Certain Ratio have moved with gleeful disregard for boundaries of style and genre, their eye fixed firmly on constant progression. It’s an ethos that’s open-minded over all else, and that’s seen them take everything from experimental electronica to vintage funk, filtered through their own Mancunian lens. From their first release, ‘All Night Party’ (1979, Factory Records) to the present day with their recent album, 1982 (2023, Mute) – home to recent singles ‘Holy Smoke’, the BBC 6Music playlisted ‘SAMO’ and ‘Afro Dizzy’ plus ‘Waiting on a Train’ - they defy expectation.
Don’t miss the ACR 45 tour, a chance to see this most singular of bands performing tracks from across their 45-year career – all in chronological order, so expect classic finale tracks like ‘Shack Up’, ‘Knife Slits Water’ and ‘Si Fimir O Grido’ to hit much earlier in the set – in intimate venues across the UK.
'A Certain Ratio’s blend of knife-edge tension and funkateer abandon is a style that’s theirs and theirs only.'
Uncut Magazine
'A Certain Ratio’s latest heads down a new trajectory, revamping their signature percussive style with glossy vocals and sharp production.'
The Guardian
'…a fireball of up-to-the minute energy'
Record Collector
A Certain Ratio have announced a unique tour that celebrates 45 years of the band’s incredible career. The dates will see A Certain Ratio perform two separate sets each night: the first set will represent the early years of their career from their Factory releases, including ‘All Night Party’ Sextet and Force, through to the next stage of their journey when they joined A&M in the late ‘80s, with songs such as ‘Won’t Stop Loving You’. The band will then reconvene for a set representing ACR from the early to mid-‘90s period, with songs like ’27 Forever’ leading into their most recent releases with tracks from ACR Loco and 1982 and beyond to unreleased forthcoming material.
Watch / Watch / Watch
These very special dates, across intimate venues in the UK and beyond, kick off at London’s Moth Club on 10 November and finish at Band on the Wall in Manchester, the venue that hosted their 33 1/3 anniversary celebrations, which is also the site of The Musicians Collective where the band honed their craft at their earliest performances alongside artists such as Warsaw, The Fall, The Passage, Joy Division and many more – full details below.
Since they emerged from the hallowed grounds of the late 70s punk scene, A Certain Ratio have moved with gleeful disregard for boundaries of style and genre, their eye fixed firmly on constant progression. It’s an ethos that’s open-minded over all else, and that’s seen them take everything from experimental electronica to vintage funk, filtered through their own Mancunian lens. From their first release, ‘All Night Party’ (1979, Factory Records) to the present day with their recent album, 1982 (2023, Mute) – home to recent singles ‘Holy Smoke’, the BBC 6Music playlisted ‘SAMO’ and ‘Afro Dizzy’ plus ‘Waiting on a Train’ - they defy expectation.
Don’t miss the ACR 45 tour, a chance to see this most singular of bands performing tracks from across their 45-year career – all in chronological order, so expect classic finale tracks like ‘Shack Up’, ‘Knife Slits Water’ and ‘Si Fimir O Grido’ to hit much earlier in the set – in intimate venues across the UK.
Tickets for this show are £20 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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Lankum
Leeds Irish Centre
Sunday 10th December, 7.30pm
Dublin quartet Lankum return in March 2023 with their 4th LP 'False Lankum' released via Rough Trade.
The record heralds a new stage in the metamorphosis of the band into a modern day powerhouse, drawing on traditional and primitive methods to create bold and singular music that transcends its folk roots: an entrancing, widescreen sound incorporating experimental overtones and rumbling drones wedded with classic songwriting, close vocal harmonies and timeless narratives.
Their live show has evolved into a deeply moving collective experience, with the band performing together as though they are a single lung: sounds expand and collapse from indistinguishable mouths, lungs, fingers, keys and feet, while a wall of amp stacks push the intensity of the show to new levels.
Listen / Watch / Watch
The record heralds a new stage in the metamorphosis of the band into a modern day powerhouse, drawing on traditional and primitive methods to create bold and singular music that transcends its folk roots: an entrancing, widescreen sound incorporating experimental overtones and rumbling drones wedded with classic songwriting, close vocal harmonies and timeless narratives.
Their live show has evolved into a deeply moving collective experience, with the band performing together as though they are a single lung: sounds expand and collapse from indistinguishable mouths, lungs, fingers, keys and feet, while a wall of amp stacks push the intensity of the show to new levels.
Listen / Watch / Watch
False Lankum
False Lankum follows their 2019 breakthrough album The Livelong Day, which paved the way for critical and commercial success, earning them that year’s RTE Choice Music Prize (the Irish equivalent of the Album of the Year Grammy) and the #8 spot on NPR Music’s Best Albums of the Year list. Drawing on traditional folk songs, Lankum put their own dark, distinctive mark onto each, leaning into heavy drones and sonic distortion that imparts new intensity and beauty into each track. This record sees the band cement their breakout from the folk genre, creating bold, contemporary music that may be fashioned from traditional elements but is firmly new, sitting comfortably alongside Rough Trade labelmates like black midi and Gilla Band. False Lankum also features two original tracks, ‘Netta Perseus’ and ‘The Turn’, both penned by the group’s Daragh Lynch.
‘Go Dig My Grave’ was discovered by Lankum’s Radie Peat who learned the particular version on the album from the singing of Jean Ritchie, who recorded it in 1963 on the album Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City. It is a member of a family of songs which seem to be largely made up of what are known as ‘floating verses’, originally composed as stanzas of various different ballads, some of which date back as far as the 17th century.
“'Our interpretation of the traditional song Go Dig My Grave is one that centres around the emotion of grief – all-consuming, unbearable and absolute” explain Lankum, “A visceral physical reaction to something that the body and mind are almost incapable of processing. The second part of the song is inspired by the Irish tradition of keening (from the Irish caoineadh) – a traditional form of lament for the deceased. Regarded by some as opening up ‘perilous channels of communication with the dead’, the practice came under severe censure from the catholic church in Ireland from the 17th century on.”
From the start, Dublin’s Lankum planned for False Lankum, their fourth record and third for Rough Trade, to feel like a complete piece – a progression and a journey for the listener. “We wanted to create more contrast on the record so the light parts would be almost spiritual and the dark parts would be incredibly dark, even horror inducing,” they explain. The album’s 12 tracks, composed of 10 traditional songs and two originals, show the four-piece using a new palate to colour their sound in an increasingly experimental way, alongside longtime producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy.
Following on from their much anticipated sell out show at The Barbican on 4th May 2023, Lankum will return to London in December 2023 to play The Roundhouse - their biggest headline gig to date. With their April/May tour almost completely sold out, the band will return to Amsterdam and Berlin in November 2023 and have announced their first German tour.
Lankum are Ian Lynch, Daragh Lynch, Radie Peat and Cormac MacDiarmada
Press:
'Modern folk music’s own OK computer'
4/5 Album Of The Month - Mojo Magazine
'False Lankum teems with...moments of iridescent bliss.'
5/5 Folk Album Of The Month - The Guardian
Tickets for this show are £18.50 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
__________________________________________________
False Lankum follows their 2019 breakthrough album The Livelong Day, which paved the way for critical and commercial success, earning them that year’s RTE Choice Music Prize (the Irish equivalent of the Album of the Year Grammy) and the #8 spot on NPR Music’s Best Albums of the Year list. Drawing on traditional folk songs, Lankum put their own dark, distinctive mark onto each, leaning into heavy drones and sonic distortion that imparts new intensity and beauty into each track. This record sees the band cement their breakout from the folk genre, creating bold, contemporary music that may be fashioned from traditional elements but is firmly new, sitting comfortably alongside Rough Trade labelmates like black midi and Gilla Band. False Lankum also features two original tracks, ‘Netta Perseus’ and ‘The Turn’, both penned by the group’s Daragh Lynch.
‘Go Dig My Grave’ was discovered by Lankum’s Radie Peat who learned the particular version on the album from the singing of Jean Ritchie, who recorded it in 1963 on the album Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City. It is a member of a family of songs which seem to be largely made up of what are known as ‘floating verses’, originally composed as stanzas of various different ballads, some of which date back as far as the 17th century.
“'Our interpretation of the traditional song Go Dig My Grave is one that centres around the emotion of grief – all-consuming, unbearable and absolute” explain Lankum, “A visceral physical reaction to something that the body and mind are almost incapable of processing. The second part of the song is inspired by the Irish tradition of keening (from the Irish caoineadh) – a traditional form of lament for the deceased. Regarded by some as opening up ‘perilous channels of communication with the dead’, the practice came under severe censure from the catholic church in Ireland from the 17th century on.”
From the start, Dublin’s Lankum planned for False Lankum, their fourth record and third for Rough Trade, to feel like a complete piece – a progression and a journey for the listener. “We wanted to create more contrast on the record so the light parts would be almost spiritual and the dark parts would be incredibly dark, even horror inducing,” they explain. The album’s 12 tracks, composed of 10 traditional songs and two originals, show the four-piece using a new palate to colour their sound in an increasingly experimental way, alongside longtime producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy.
Following on from their much anticipated sell out show at The Barbican on 4th May 2023, Lankum will return to London in December 2023 to play The Roundhouse - their biggest headline gig to date. With their April/May tour almost completely sold out, the band will return to Amsterdam and Berlin in November 2023 and have announced their first German tour.
Lankum are Ian Lynch, Daragh Lynch, Radie Peat and Cormac MacDiarmada
Press:
'Modern folk music’s own OK computer'
4/5 Album Of The Month - Mojo Magazine
'False Lankum teems with...moments of iridescent bliss.'
5/5 Folk Album Of The Month - The Guardian
Tickets for this show are £18.50 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
__________________________________________________
The Vaselines
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Saturday 6th January, 7.30pm
The
Vaselines were formed in Glasgow in 1987 by singers/guitarists Eugene
Kelly and Frances McKee, soon signing to Pastels frontman Stephen
Pastel's newly formed 53rd & 3rd label.
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain regularly cited the Vaseline’s influence in interviews with the music press and Nirvana would go on to cover the Vaselines' ‘Molly's Lips’ and ‘Son of a Gun’ (both later compiled on their Incesticide collection) as well as perform ‘Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam’ on their legendary MTV Unplugged appearance.
Cobain's gospel-spreading no doubt accelerated their rise to cult sainthood, but the Vaselines would have gotten there sooner or later on their own accord. Lewd but naïve and abrasive yet tender, the band's shambling, primitivist squall remains a perfect distillation of pop at its most guileless and euphoric.
Eugene Kelly later went on to front Captain America / Eugenius, while McKee spent the better part of the decade out of sight, resurfaced in Suckle, and released a solo album in 2006. The Vaselines reunited proper in 2010 to record their second full album Sex With An X which was released on the Seattle label Sub Pop.
This was followed by V for Vaselines in 2014. The Ramones inspired album featured many of the same players who helped make 'Sex.....', including Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, the 1990's Michael McGaughrin and Teenage Fanclub's Francis Macdonald.
'Even those too young-or not yet born-for the Vaselines' heyday can appreciate the earnest fun of Sex With an X'
Billboard
'A welcome return, then – let's hope they stick around for a bit longer this time.'
BBC Music
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain regularly cited the Vaseline’s influence in interviews with the music press and Nirvana would go on to cover the Vaselines' ‘Molly's Lips’ and ‘Son of a Gun’ (both later compiled on their Incesticide collection) as well as perform ‘Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam’ on their legendary MTV Unplugged appearance.
Cobain's gospel-spreading no doubt accelerated their rise to cult sainthood, but the Vaselines would have gotten there sooner or later on their own accord. Lewd but naïve and abrasive yet tender, the band's shambling, primitivist squall remains a perfect distillation of pop at its most guileless and euphoric.
Eugene Kelly later went on to front Captain America / Eugenius, while McKee spent the better part of the decade out of sight, resurfaced in Suckle, and released a solo album in 2006. The Vaselines reunited proper in 2010 to record their second full album Sex With An X which was released on the Seattle label Sub Pop.
This was followed by V for Vaselines in 2014. The Ramones inspired album featured many of the same players who helped make 'Sex.....', including Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, the 1990's Michael McGaughrin and Teenage Fanclub's Francis Macdonald.
'Even those too young-or not yet born-for the Vaselines' heyday can appreciate the earnest fun of Sex With an X'
Billboard
'A welcome return, then – let's hope they stick around for a bit longer this time.'
BBC Music
Tickets for this show are £20 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
__________________________________________________ 
You can get tickets online from here.
__________________________________________________
John Francis Flynn
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Friday 19th January, 7.30pm
Award
winning singer and multi-instrumentalist John Francis Flynn's new
single ‘Mole In The Ground’ has just landed alongside news of his new
album Look Over The Wall, See The Sky, to be released via River Lea
Recordings on November 10th 2023.
Watch / Listen
Watch / Listen
A
founding member of the band, Skipper’s Alley, with whom he has toured
extensively throughout Europe and America. While supporting Lankum on
their 2019 UK tour he caught the eye of Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee
who quickly signed John to Rough Trade imprint label, River Lea. His
debut album I Would Not Live Always subsequently won over critics across
the board, including being MOJO magazine’s ‘Folk Album Of The Year’ and
it led to him being crowned "Best Singer" and "Best Emerging Artist" at
the 2021 RTE Folk Awards.
John Francis Flynn’s music evolves around traditional and folk material from Ireland, but that is only the starting point. On the first single from the album ‘Mole In The Ground’, a cover of an American anti-establishment folk song recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928, John evokes the rebellious energy he felt in his home of Dublin during a time when it was being “torn to shreds by property developers and vulture funds.”
As John explains, “I was drawn to this song for its almost hallucinatory, anti-authoritian spirit at a time when Dublin was being torn to shreds by property developers and vulture funds. Nothing much has changed there if I'm honest, but there's always hope when people are willing to fight for their communities. I wanted to get to grips with the rebellious energy I felt in the city through the jagged arrangement and to highlight the visceral language used in the song by speaking the lyrics as opposed to singing them.”
Often, to imagine Ireland is to fantasise about rolling hills, giants, saints and snakes. As John Francis Flynn says, it involves “a fair bit of paddywhackery and I hate paddywhackery.” The psyche-celtic album artwork for John’s second album Look Over The Wall, See The Sky, hints at this too though: a crystal goblet of luminous green Crème de Menthe resting upon a mossy ledge, perfectly encapsulating this imagined idea of Ireland in a way that is both funny and poignant. But, if you have to imagine Ireland in the first place, then you’re probably not too familiar with its reality: the towering glass giants of Google and Facebook, the unaffordable luxury hotels lining the Liffey amidst a homelessness epidemic and the highest rents in Europe.
John Francis Flynn’s music evolves around traditional and folk material from Ireland, but that is only the starting point. On the first single from the album ‘Mole In The Ground’, a cover of an American anti-establishment folk song recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928, John evokes the rebellious energy he felt in his home of Dublin during a time when it was being “torn to shreds by property developers and vulture funds.”
As John explains, “I was drawn to this song for its almost hallucinatory, anti-authoritian spirit at a time when Dublin was being torn to shreds by property developers and vulture funds. Nothing much has changed there if I'm honest, but there's always hope when people are willing to fight for their communities. I wanted to get to grips with the rebellious energy I felt in the city through the jagged arrangement and to highlight the visceral language used in the song by speaking the lyrics as opposed to singing them.”
Often, to imagine Ireland is to fantasise about rolling hills, giants, saints and snakes. As John Francis Flynn says, it involves “a fair bit of paddywhackery and I hate paddywhackery.” The psyche-celtic album artwork for John’s second album Look Over The Wall, See The Sky, hints at this too though: a crystal goblet of luminous green Crème de Menthe resting upon a mossy ledge, perfectly encapsulating this imagined idea of Ireland in a way that is both funny and poignant. But, if you have to imagine Ireland in the first place, then you’re probably not too familiar with its reality: the towering glass giants of Google and Facebook, the unaffordable luxury hotels lining the Liffey amidst a homelessness epidemic and the highest rents in Europe.
To
listen to Look Over The Wall, See The Sky is to witness history through
a modern lens in a trance-like state. As expected, Flynn’s contemporary
influences are sufficiently esoteric, from ‘The Heart Pumps Kool Aid’
by —__–___ to ‘The invention of the Human’ by Dylan Henner (a concept
album about an AI learning to sing). However, he was also inspired by
his contemporaries in the traditional music scene in Ireland, many of
whom contributed to the album, as well as those outside of it, such as
noise-rockers Gilla Band and Rising Damp.
Traditional music of course is not one-size-fits-all. Each song has its own story, history and characters which the singer must serve. “You can't sing all the songs. Well some people do. But you can tell if someone doesn’t connect with that song…” On the record’s closer, ‘Dirty Old Town’ by Ewan McColl, John takes a song that’s been “done to death”, strips it back, slows it down and unexpectedly adds brass, harking back to the working-class colliers bands of the early 20th Century. In his reimagining of the song, rather than intensifying it he does the opposite, offering a calm and grounding resolution to an otherwise otherworldly album.
On his last record, I Would Not Live Always, John was much more conscious of bringing acoustic instruments and weird synthesized sounds together as a concept. But now with his unique musical language fully formed, “I feel freer within that language to experiment and take it further without it being too conscious or premeditated”.
Instead, the songs seem to live somewhere in John’s subconscious, as he is often able to visualize exactly how they will sound before putting them down. With ‘Kitty’, (famously recorded by Shane MacGowan on The Pogues’ debut, ‘Red Roses For Me,’) John had already heard a version of this song structured loosely in his head involving a drone, a warped clarinet, and a simple Robert Wyatt-esque beat. The result is a two minute lament after which sudden distortion punctures through a wall of sadness before pulling back completely to just a singular drone.
The sonic landscape created through the unconventional use of instruments jagged arrangements often teeters on the edge of disharmony, but it gives the work a magnetism by drawing you into its curious orbit of experimental folk. John masterfully unpicks traditional songs and rearranges them with an emotional force that sometimes leaves them unanchored. They float in a surreal space between the past and the present, the analog and the digital, between love and tragedy. Look Over The Wall, See The Sky is an album concerned with imagination, but not only with what John calls, “an imagined Ireland,” but also the re-imagining of traditional Irish music and the hopeful fantasy of an Ireland that could exist ‘over the wall’: powerful, hopeful and free.
Traditional music of course is not one-size-fits-all. Each song has its own story, history and characters which the singer must serve. “You can't sing all the songs. Well some people do. But you can tell if someone doesn’t connect with that song…” On the record’s closer, ‘Dirty Old Town’ by Ewan McColl, John takes a song that’s been “done to death”, strips it back, slows it down and unexpectedly adds brass, harking back to the working-class colliers bands of the early 20th Century. In his reimagining of the song, rather than intensifying it he does the opposite, offering a calm and grounding resolution to an otherwise otherworldly album.
On his last record, I Would Not Live Always, John was much more conscious of bringing acoustic instruments and weird synthesized sounds together as a concept. But now with his unique musical language fully formed, “I feel freer within that language to experiment and take it further without it being too conscious or premeditated”.
Instead, the songs seem to live somewhere in John’s subconscious, as he is often able to visualize exactly how they will sound before putting them down. With ‘Kitty’, (famously recorded by Shane MacGowan on The Pogues’ debut, ‘Red Roses For Me,’) John had already heard a version of this song structured loosely in his head involving a drone, a warped clarinet, and a simple Robert Wyatt-esque beat. The result is a two minute lament after which sudden distortion punctures through a wall of sadness before pulling back completely to just a singular drone.
The sonic landscape created through the unconventional use of instruments jagged arrangements often teeters on the edge of disharmony, but it gives the work a magnetism by drawing you into its curious orbit of experimental folk. John masterfully unpicks traditional songs and rearranges them with an emotional force that sometimes leaves them unanchored. They float in a surreal space between the past and the present, the analog and the digital, between love and tragedy. Look Over The Wall, See The Sky is an album concerned with imagination, but not only with what John calls, “an imagined Ireland,” but also the re-imagining of traditional Irish music and the hopeful fantasy of an Ireland that could exist ‘over the wall’: powerful, hopeful and free.
Press Reaction to John’s debut album I Would Not Live Always:
'his solo flight swoops and soars with the confidence'
The Irish Times
'Folk Album of the Year'
Mojo Magazine ****
'Human experience burns ferociously on this extraordinary debut from the uncompromising Irish artist John Francis Flynn. An extraordinary debut.'
The Guardian ****
'Double Tin Whistle and Tape-Loops. Revelatory new takes on English and Irish folk songs in the manner of Sam Amidon. A singular and striking clarity of vision…. An extraordinary debut by any standard.'
Uncut Magazine ****
'A distinct and innovative debut.'
Songlines **** Top Ten Album Of The Year
'Immediately evident that he is deserving of the acclaim.'
RnR ****
'his solo flight swoops and soars with the confidence'
The Irish Times
'Folk Album of the Year'
Mojo Magazine ****
'Human experience burns ferociously on this extraordinary debut from the uncompromising Irish artist John Francis Flynn. An extraordinary debut.'
The Guardian ****
'Double Tin Whistle and Tape-Loops. Revelatory new takes on English and Irish folk songs in the manner of Sam Amidon. A singular and striking clarity of vision…. An extraordinary debut by any standard.'
Uncut Magazine ****
'A distinct and innovative debut.'
Songlines **** Top Ten Album Of The Year
'Immediately evident that he is deserving of the acclaim.'
RnR ****
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
__________________________________________________
You can get tickets online from here.
__________________________________________________
Junior Brother
Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
Sunday 4th February, 7.30pm
Alternative Folk mainstay Junior Brother boldly stakes out new Folk-inflected ground with a fresh and daring single, “The Men Who Eat Ring Forts’. The brand new release follows on from June’s epic “Junior Brother’s Favourite” EP, and 2022's highly acclaimed Double LP The Great Irish Famine, with its 'Wry songs of anxiety and frustration' (The Guardian) described by MOJO Magazine as being 'Truly unforgettable'. Now, this new single boldly signposts an exciting new chapter for Junior Brother’s stunningly distinctive sound.
Watch / Listen
Watch / Listen
Taught yet expansive, the new single sets the tone for Junior Brother’s third album, currently being created with Producer extraordinaire John “Spud” Murphy (black midi, Lankum), set for release next year.
“The song is possessed with the fervour of the dispossessed,” explains Junior Brother, a.k.a. County Kerry’s Ronan Kealy. “‘The Men Who Eat Ring Forts’ is a twitch of frustration, spat into modernity’s hollow wheel before it clears the way. Sacred things unseen to the suits are still there for them willing to look.”
“The song is possessed with the fervour of the dispossessed,” explains Junior Brother, a.k.a. County Kerry’s Ronan Kealy. “‘The Men Who Eat Ring Forts’ is a twitch of frustration, spat into modernity’s hollow wheel before it clears the way. Sacred things unseen to the suits are still there for them willing to look.”
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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You can get tickets online from here.
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