Live Review
Live Review: Hands Off Gretel – Mine, Leeds 23.04.2015
Fast rising grunge band Hands Off Gretel are in Leeds tonight to play Move, Leeds traffic being what it is I arrive slightly late walking in during their song Be Mine. What is immediately apparent is how they sound exactly the same live as they do on record with Lauren Tate’s fierce vocal like razor …
Live Review: Lower Than Atlantis / We Are The Ocean / PVRIS – Manchester Academy 2, 14.04.2015
Openers Pvris brought a barrage of synth infected pop-rock tracks from their debut album White Noise (2014). Ironically starting out with Smoke, which quite literally was the only thing that clouded over the bands performance. “Can you cut the smoke? We’re not that cool” vocalist Lyndsey Gunnulfsen stated however the intensity of the smoke didn’t …
Live: Tom Brosseau at Wilton’s Music Hall
I knew ‘Perfect Abandon’ would sound at its best live: Tom Brosseau and band did not disappoint. Wilton’s Music Hall played host to a beautiful evening of otherworldly country and folk, blending most of the new record with one or two cuts from preceding release ‘Grass Punks’, and a couple of other, older treats. Everyone was on …
Live Review: Seasick Steve – Sheffield O2 Academy, 16.04.2015
It would have been so easy for Seasick Steve to infiltrate the crowd of his own gig. For one night only, Sheffield 02 Academy was filled with men of a certain age, complete with beards and baseball caps. But that’s not to say it was only the older generation at this gig. The audience spanned …
Live: Sonic Jesus (Album Launch) & The Underground Youth – The Waiting Room, London 16.04.2015
I appreciate that people generally make the pilgrimage TO Ireland, but this was one divine intervention I was not going to miss for anything… Two years in the making and the day finally arrives for the official unveiling of the debut album by Sonic Jesus – ‘Neither Virtue Nor Anger’. (Full LP Review to follow). In a …
Live Review: East India Youth – Rise, Bristol, 10.04.2015
To people of a certain age in Bristol the mention of Imperial Records makes everyone slightly glassy eyed and wistful. It was a place to bump into friends and find new music thanks to a multitude of recommendations chalked on its walls. Its demise felt like another lurch forward in the gentrification of what used …
Live: Champs – Belgrave Music Hall – Leeds – 8th April 2015
We are big fans of Champs here at Backseat Mafia and loved their recent album ‘VAMALA’ which we reviewed here, one of a multitude of rave reviews for the Isle of Wight duo’s album of exquisitely crafted and gorgeously harmonised pop-folk songs. It really is an album of sheer beauty and if you haven’t yet added …
Live review: LoneLady at the Trades Club, Hebden Bridge
I lived in Manchester for the best part of two decades so it was an astonishing experience to be transported by LoneLady right back to Hulme’s crumbling brutalist terraces and forward to the modern Northern powerhouse the city now is. LoneLady – aka Julie Ann Campbell – has created a series of soundscapes that evoke …
Live Review: Pierce The Veil, Sleeping With Sirens, Issues – Leeds O2 Academy, 3.4.15
Both Pierce The Veil and Sleeping With Sirens boast enthusiastic fanbases to say the least, the tour was sold out months in advance, tickets were even being sold for more than four times the amount of their original price in the few weeks leading up to the shows and the queue for the show in …
Live Review: Young Guns, Liverpool Arts Club, 6.4.15
On the final date of this leg of the Young Guns headline tour, Blitz Kids say their goodbyes as the main and only support band. Their set is a well-chosen collaboration of the biggest choruses in their back catalogue- and being a band who know how to write a big chorus, they have A LOT. …