An unexpected treat - I booked a ticket for Omnigone and they ended up being added to the Laura Jane Grace show. Omnigone thrashed through 12 songs in about 25 minutes, great stuff. Loving the mini ska punk revival going on atm. Didnāt stay for all of Laura Jane Graceās set (apparently she did like 25 songs!) but I had a good time - Iāve seen Against Me! twice and that was probably the best Iāve seen her perform.
Friday 03/04 - Dead to Me
Best punk band in the world and itās not even close. They have a Bad Religion 3 guitar thing going on atm. Really happy Jack and Nathan are back in the band so we got āproperā versions of Cruel World and Little Brother. Impromptu encore was a joy to see. A new Dead to Me is my 1 most wanted album. Make it happen, lads!
Saturday - 04/04 - Lightyear
More ska punk fun. Last time I saw Lightyear was over 20 year ago and, shockingly, they look and sound exactly the same. A Pack of Dogs might be the most fun set closer ever. Enjoyed the bants and, yeah, Call of the Weasel Clan is about as good as the genre gets.
Monday - 06/04 - Strike Anywhere
Brilliant, as always. Strike Anywhere seem to cut through all the scenes - hardcore, street punk, gruff punk - to be a band everyone loves. Great setlist that was expectantly heavy on Change Is A Sound. Also really enjoyed bumping into some old friends I hadnāt seen in an absolute age.
Tuesday - 06/04 - Unsane
Heavy as shit. Amazing to think of the racket they make as a 3 piece! Nice to see a contingent of zoomers properly going for it near the front.
Always psyched to see these guys, but in a room of this size playing a rarities set? Expectations were high. Loads of songs that I didnāt know tbf, but that didnāt lower my enjoyment one bit.
Surprised by how many slower songs/ballads they included. At times it was almost PSB do MTV Unplugged. Neil took plenty of opportunities for a sit down, whether to sing, play keysā¦or the fucking guitar?!? Special guest star Johnny Marr got a massive cheer. And we finally got to answer the age old question - who is the bigger guitar hero, Neil or Johnny?
Crowd vibe was very positive and everyone seemed to be having a lovely time. A special evening. Hope everyone going to the other nights has as good a time
Brown Horse @ The Larderhouse, Southbourne (Bournemouth)
Put on by The Wight Bear, a local craft beer place/music venue (I believe their license states that they can have drums in the pub??), this was a gig in the covered courtyard of a nearby restaurant. Doors to the room opened at 7.50, band on at 8.15, finished at 9.20 and I got home at 10.30. good evening out. The room was tiny, probably 75 people in there max. This is taken from the back of the room.
This is the first night of a tour that straddles both sides of the Atlantic, and a tour in support of their new album, out tomorrow. Opened with a few tracks from that, then played a couple of All The Right Weaknesses from last year, an couple off of Reservoir from 2024, a couple of new ones and ended on Outtakes off Reservoir. New songs sounded excellent and Watching Something Burn Up, the closer from the new record, might be the best track Iāve heard this year.
Lots of instrument swapping. Bassist played the pedal steel for a while, the second guitarist jumped onto bass and the organ player also played accordion on a couple of tracks. Sound was excellent considering the informal set up of the room. Good twang had all round.
Lighting never changed from the red, so it was like being in a darkroom for the evening and they didnāt have any copies of the new album for sale at the merch desk oddly (missed delivery was to blame).
This night had the following doing 3 songs / 15 mins-ish each.: Ethan P Flynn, Heka, Tommy Barlow, Alice Bradley, May June, Nicholas Hann
Iāve seen Ethan play before at a Leyton festival, but preferred this acoustic setting.
Iāve seen Heka previously at one of these events, and she was great again. Still eagerly waiting for her album.
I first heard Tommy Barlow from a spotify playlist last month, then saw heāll be at Great Escape Festival and then this evening too. Lovely deep voice. Need to listen to his previous album properly, as it sounded nice.
Next was a poet, but not for me. Too much description about what the poems were about, and then the poems. Was just doubling my poem aversion feelings.
Alice Bradley did a couple of intriguing harp tunes (one with singing/speaking) which I liked, and then did a very experimental/definitely work in progress harpsichordy/keyboardy āsongā. Maybe not all works in progress should be shared though.
May June did a couple of guitar songs and then one on piano, nice enough.
and then ending with Nicholas Hann, whoād stepped in at the last moment for one of the previous events. Still enjoyed him this time - nice deep voice, and a couple of songs alternating with sax and piano at the same time, and then bringing out the Scots pipes again for a final one.
Not sure I enjoyed the evening as much as previous ones / still a bit tiring, but nice to come across new artists and new almost-songs.
Not much to add to what @friendofthenight wrote a couple of days ago - but, shit, this was so good!
Spellbinding, hypnotic and heavy as hell.
Yellow Dawn is a monster of a tune.
Absolutely fucking epic.
Iggor Cavalera from Sepultura joined them on stage for one song. I donāt really know what he was doing, though. I thought he was a roadie at first - fiddling around with something at the front of the stage.
My photos are blurry, and shit, but they give a flavour of the evening.
Last night, Idlewild (the first band I ever saw live by virtue of the fact that they opened for R.E.M. in 2005) became the sixth member of my personal three-decade club*. They blasted through 20+ songs and it was great. I loved watching the two guitarists wheel and hurl themselves about the stage. I could have done with Roddyās vocals being a bit higher in the mix, and I was slightly distracted by how much the bassist and keyboardist look like Patrick Stickles and Anthony Fantano respectively. But it was a fantastic show overall.
Last nightās setlist is here. We got a selection of songs from last yearās pretty good self-titled album, and a whole bunch of songs from Hope Is Important, 100 Broken Windows and The Remote Part (surely a candidate for all-time best run of three consecutive releases by any rock band). I Am What I Am Not was a great way to kick things off, Let Me Sleep Next to the Mirror was a major highlight, and Everyone Says Youāre So Fragile was an unexpected treat. I was also very pleased to hear Make Another World, my favourite latter-day Idlewild songā¦although I guess 2007 isnāt really all that ālatterā at this point, hey? Oh and of course there was American English, which Iām realising might be one of my favourite songs full stop.
The main set concluded with In Remote Part / Scottish Fiction, another one I wasnāt really expecting to hear. Roddy sang his part and then walked off to the side of the stage to spectate as the rest of the band enjoyed their big Mogwai moment. Then we were treated to an āOops! All Hope Is Importantā encore. Brilliant stuff.
The support act, Zoe Graham, was also good. Her songs had a vaguely eighties-y vibe that reminded me of that recent Jenny on Holiday album, or maybe Sharon Van Ettenās last few releases. One song was dedicated to TV chef Fanny Cradock; someone in the crowd yelled āhow do you remember her?!ā to which Graham, who looks to be in her twenties, replied āIām actually a hundred and twenty years old, but we get so little sun in Scotland that you canāt tellā.
aw man, exciting stuff ahead! they didnāt put a foot wrong from Captain through to Warnings/Promises for me, then Make Another World is still decent. Patchy after that but god I love em
Friday night in Manchester. Proper party vibes.
The crowd was great, the energy was up and everybody was dancing.
Didnāt know what to expect or how popular it would be tbh, but we had an absolutely joyous night.
Sunspear was an obvious highlight.
The Distant History rarities comp is very good too, particularly because it isnāt comprehensive and therefore filters out the large number of b-sides of them dicking around in the studio. Their frst single rules:
