People in the music biz say that there are two gigging seasons they can rely on.
The first is from February to June, when festival season pulls acts away to dusty fields and muddy farms across England. The second is September to November.
It means therefore, February 2023 was quite important for Manchester: It was the first month of gigging in the cost-of-living crisis.
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Venues, as you'd expect are taking a battering in energy bills. Acts cannot make money from streaming, so going on tour is more economically important than it used to be - and that's also at a time when it's more and more difficult to tour for extended periods in the EU.
It's therefore remarkable in many ways, that the MEN gang were able to see a show of real quality in Manchester every two-and-a-half days this February. There was the big kick off with Independent Venue Week, then more established names rolled in, with some brand new artists also getting in on the act.
So, it's a difficult task to try and assess the health of Manchester's music scene - venues, artists, and promoters don't know what's around the corner in the outside world. But, for the moment, it's an array of colour.
Temples - YES - February 2 (IVW Show)
The Pink Room was crowded when Temples took to the stage, but something about the size of the setting felt strange. Independent Venue Week is important, they told the crowd, and perhaps that is why they agreed to play such a small stage.
The neo-psychedelic band have long mastered writing anthemic melodies with Eastern-sounding riffs and catchy choruses. The curly-haired frontman and his Syd Barrett-styled sidekick certainly look the part too.
Still, the audience was in fine singing form, especially during songs from the group's first album Sun Structures which is by far their best. The two albums that followed still featured some bangers, but if their latest single Gamma Rays is anything to go by, their fourth album will fade even further into irrelevance.
Mandy, Indiana - YES - February 3 (IVW Show)
Mandy, Indiana walked on stage smiling, and sipping drinks. Any idea that we were going to have a run-of-the-mill night was shattered by the third line of whisper-quiet French lyrics and fourth round of maniacal laughter from Valentine Caulfield.
That was exactly to be expected. The four-piece, shrouded in dry ice, specialises in emotional, gothic, and mechanical-sounding music.
And their YES show, part of Independent Venue Week, demonstrated that at its most accessible.
Drums were crisp, lyrics were unintelligible to the MEN reviewer but delivered superbly, and they generated a sense of atmosphere few are able to in a basement. At times, one could slip into feeling like this was a normal post-punk gig, but only to be reminded it’s something very different.
Mandy, Indiana are not for everyone - and almost certainly, they won’t care they’re not - but for those they are for, they’re really going places.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Ritz - February 4
The Brian Jonestown Massacre is doing the rounds again with their ever-expanding back catalogue of some 18 albums - that’s a mountain of material that could easily lend itself to a dreadfully long show full of B-sides. The show was indeed almost two hours long, but this reviewer at least could have stood there for a little while longer.
This San Franciscan collective have perfected a swirling show that can hypnotise with their circular psychedelic sounds. You might have called it repetitive as the band started yet another jangly riff, this reviewer would call it meditative - and found it utterly enchanting.
Inescapable at any BJM gig is the risk of some interruption from the notoriously ill-tempered frontman Anton Necombe, the Ritz show was no exception. The crowd might have loved to stir the pot when he reminded the band they had done a soundcheck so the time for error was over… before taking the opportunity to tune up himself.
Personally, it’s a rather cringeworthy hallmark of a largely bygone era of musicians who confuse being surly at work as an excusable product of being an ‘artist’.
But when the group kicked off with their transcendent hit Anemone, the crowd chanting in unison and the Ritz spring-loaded floor swaying, it was undeniably intoxicating. And there was more tambourine than even LG could shake, well, a tambourine at.
Togo All Stars - Band on the Wall - February 5 (IVW Show)
The voodoo vibes of Togo All Stars were a perfect pick-me-up for a Sunday night. It was impossible not to lose yourself in the pure joy radiating from the stage as the West African collective of nine demonstrated their 'distinctive Togolese' sound.
This was among the afrobeat alliance's first appearances in the UK, bringing with them a wealth of experience and influences that extend beyond the borders of their hometown of Lomé. Half way through the performance, the band's leader took a back seat, allowing younger talent to take centre stage.
All nine musicians shone, with their impressive togetherness and intriguing time signatures. But the female backing vocalist overshadows their musical talent at times with her ever-present smile and expressive dance moves.
The spiritual influence is felt most viscerally during the chants at the end of the performance - as the first of the frontmen explained, voodoo runs through everything they do.
Mogwai - Albert Hall - February 9
Glasgow’s titans of post-rock arrived in Manchester for the first show of a two-night stand in a peculiar position. On Friday (February 10) the day of the second show, their first two records - Mogwai Young Team and Come On Die Young, both seminal nineties moments in the instrumental rock canon - were finally reissued on vinyl after being long out of print, and as if to reflect how long their cult fanbase have been waiting for that moment, the former record landed inside the top 20 on that week’s album chart.
But Mogwai are hardly trading on past glories; their most recent album, 2021’s As the Love Continues, became their first number one record in the UK, so it was to be expected that these two gigs would celebrate the old and the new of a remarkable back catalogue. That’s how it went, too; there were classics, like the shimmering and beautiful ‘Cody’, and the heart-stopping emotional swell of ‘New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 1’.
There were pulse-racing, epic takes on the pick of their newest material, such as ‘Drive the Nail’ and a searing ‘Ritchie Sacramento’, plus some deep cuts were dusted off as well, with the scintillating skyward guitars of ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’ making a welcome return to the setlist after a decade’s absence.
Now, though, it’s certainly more of a greatest hits affair than when Mogwai became one of the first bands to play at the reopened Albert Hall in 2013; that time, they dusted off their soundtrack to Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait in its entirety. In the decade since, they’ve remained true to their eccentricities, and now they’re reaping the rewards - this is a band at the very top of their game.
Weyes Blood - The Ritz - February 13
"Monday night in Manchester, huh - we'll see if we can turn things up a notch," says Natalie Mering, aka Weyes Blood, greeting a long-sold-out Ritz with a dash of dry wit. It's no surprise the place was packed - the Californian's fifth album, 2022's And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow, topped critics' year-end lists, mirroring the success of its acclaimed 2019 predecessor, Titanic Rising.
Her melancholy, stately songs are usually compared to The Carpenters - Mering's vocals do closely resemble the honeyed voice of their late singer Karen, and like the easy-listening titans she favours arrangements that are the aural equivalent of double cream - but there's more going on than a tribute to 70s AOR. Imagine that duo if they threw caution to the wind and began writing unsettling hymns for a world threatened by climate change and pandemics.
Backed by a four-piece band, Mering delivers a set drawn from the last two Weyes Blood records, intended as parts of a trilogy. Opener 'It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody' reflects on modern isolation. "We've all become strangers, even to ourselves," Mering observed - while 'God Turn Me Into A Flower' is accompanied by a special film created by documentarian Adam Curtis.
She recreates her album artwork by lighting up an alien-like glowing red heart - "Cirque du Soleil levels of earnestness," Mering quipped - underneath her floor-length white caped dress and uses the stage to leap and twirl, throwing flowers into the crowd at one point. Next stop the Apollo, perhaps?
Jockstrap — Gorilla— February 17
Georgia Ellery cut a striking figure in front of a packed Friday night at Gorilla, beginning with the fluttering strings and pop beats of the track ‘Jennifer B’. Illuminated in ultraviolet and siren red lights, she assumed an enchanting nightclub singer persona, almost as if she had leapt off the screen of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
One half of Jockstrap, vocalist-violinist Ellery and bandmate Taylor Skye took their sold-out show on a magical mystery tour of their secret garden of a set. Over an hour, the musical duo navigated the bittersweet and absolutely banging twists and turns of their critically acclaimed 2022 album, I Love Your Jennifer B.
The pair soared through guttural guitar solos of ‘Neon’ before the crushing, deeply intimate lyrics of ‘Angst’ - the venue was small, but their sound is so expansive it might as well have been a cathedral. To end, Jockstrap allowed their crowd the release of an all-too mini rave with a combination of Skye’s remix of ‘I Want Another Affair’ and ‘50/50’ - I didn’t see one person not letting it all go that night.
Ellery’s vocals are angelic and brave, Skye’s beats are filthy and heavy. Together, they beckoned us through the Jockstrap kaleidoscope to a surreal place with youthful, sharp synths tempered by fresh, soothing strings. Jockstrap clearly has a vast glossary of influences, but they have deftly managed to command them into a style that's entirely their own- and it's wonderful.
Kelsea Ballerini and Georgia Webster - The Ritz - February 22
It's no secret it's been a rough year for country superstar Kelsea Ballerini. On the first date of her UK tour at The Ritz, she took fans on a musical trip through the highs - and lows - of her life. Those very public lows on the back of a split from ex-husband Morgan Evans were felt hardest in emotional performances of 'Penthouse and Peter Pan' - where the quiver of her voice reflected just how raw those wounds still are.
It also resulted in the biggest audience reaction of the night with cheers and applause acting as a metaphorical hug from fans for someone exposing their deepest and darkest inner thoughts. That seemed to be recognised and reciprocatded by Ballerini, who before her final song of the evening, 'I'm Doing My Best', Ballerini said how she would be ending each show of this Heartfirst tour as an anthem to everyone who questions what they are doing, and how their life is unfolding, amid a torrent of emotion people feel now being judging or self judged - largely down to perceptions on social media.
A sugar-rush energy from the Mass native was Georgia Webster- the perfect prelude to Ballerini. Enjoying first trip to these shores, her demeanour was infectious as she treated the crowd to a whistle-stop tour of her new EP Chapter 1: Things We’re Not Saying with Xs and tattoos being particular pleasers. A duet with Ballerini on Homecoming Queen was a highlight of the night as she was able to more than hang alongside one of her idols. Webster may hit the headlines thanks to a TikTok video blowing up - but on this showing the stage is a far better arena to showcase her talents.
Ezra Collective - Albert Hall - February 23
The voice of Ezra Collective's bassist erupted from the speakers before spotlights shine on the upper tier of Albert Hall, revealing the band's saxophonist and trumpeter. The UK jazz sensations appear on stage with style, ready for a party.
Ahead of the show, drummer Femi Koleoso told Twitter that the group has entered 'a deeper level of communication on stage'. And it seems that that communication is not just between the band members - their connection with the crowd is incredible.
With no support act, the two-hour all-instrumental show exhibits the exceptional talent of each member of the five-piece which first formed at a London youth club 10 years ago. Since then, the group have come a long way - but they take nothing for granted, recounting every gig they have played in Manchester during their incredible journey to the forefront of UK jazz.
Each section of the set - a medley of songs from the band's back catalogue - was bookended by stories of past performances in the city and sermons about the importance of independent venues, the difficulties of touring today and the inspiration behind the music. "This is not music to say everything is perfect," Femi says. But one common thread runs throughout, he explains - joy.
Dry Cleaning — Albert Hall — February 24
Dry Cleaning have carved out a niche for setting bizarre but meaningful lyrics to dramatic and crisp post-punk melodies in the opening three years of the 2020s. That’s worked out for them, because the busy Albert Hall showed they’ve bridged the gap in appealing to not just fanatics, but to the dungarees-wearing masses, too.
Beginning with the closest thing to a hit sophomore album Stumpwork produced, ‘Kwenchy Kups’, this show really revealed how much confidence the group has now. Their numbers were on-point, playful, and punctual.
Special mention must go to ‘Hot Penny Day’ and ‘Gary Ashby’ — the two songs were transformed from whimsy to wonderfully powerful. Dry Cleaning, it seems, are just getting going.
James Marriott - Gorilla - February 27
Many in the crowd would be used to seeing James Marriott, who is also a YouTube personality with millions of subscribers, through a computer screen. So, as a chronically online person myself, witnessing him on stage for the first time was somewhat surreal.
But the singer was an absolute natural, just as confident and charismatic in front of an audience as he is in front of a camera. Opening the set with high-energy anthem ‘Grapes,’ he instantly had everyone jumping. A feeling of pure joy swept the room as fans chanted the song’s middle eight back to him.
James, who was joined by his band for the show, played a mix of new and early music, including the moving 'Car Lights' from his latest EP Bitter Tongues, as well as fan favourite ‘Him’. A surprise rendition of SZA’s ‘Kill Bill' also featured. He prefaced the performance by quipping: “People on TikTok have been asking ‘why the f**k are you covering this?’ That’s the whole point!”
As the night came to an end, the crowd booed and chanted for more. James admitted that he hadn’t prepared any other songs to play. But not one to disappoint, he closed the set in the same way he started it, with ‘Grapes’. It’s clear that James has a dedicated, cult following - and it’s rightly deserved. You wouldn't believe this tour was his first time gigging north of London. And one thing is for certain: it won't be his last.
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