When: 7pm on Saturday 18 October 2025
Where: Low Four Studio, Deansgate Mews, Great Northern, Manchester M3 4EN

Gratis – our series of free entry shows – continues with Severe Girls’ debut EP launch!

Emergent power punk melodists Severe Girls bring their frenetic energy to Low Four for a free show to celebrate the release of their debut EP Another Night.

Led by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Richardson (former drummer with Thurston Moore, Infinite Bisous, Aldous RH, Francis Lung and Temple Songs to name a few), Severe Girls follows Richardson’s storied musical past with his fresh take on straight up pop songs that channel the spirit of Buzzcocks, The Replacements, Guided by Voices and Wipers.

After debut single Ghosts (2022) and follow-up T6 (2024), Fill My Head is the first offering from the six-track EP, cementing Severe Girls as a band who are just revving their engines, blending 80s/90s college rock, power pop, and modern indie with effortless abandon.

A very limited run of cassettes will be available on the night.

Special guests are All Girls Arson Club. All Girls Arson Club are a two-piece indie-pop, garage-rock band that were born in a basement in Sheffield and are based in big city Manchester. AGAC write songs for fans of daytime tv, notes app monologues and long, introspective baths. Once hailed as ‘Manchester’s most honest band’ by a man in a crowd, and deemed as ‘too much comedy, not enough music’ by another man in a crowd, AGAC claim to remember approximately 76% of every song they’ve ever written and promise to serve twee pop rock bops to bob your head to.

This show takes place at Low Four – a recording studio situated on Deansgate Mews in the Great Northern warehouse. This intimate venue features a fully stocked Cloudwater bar.

This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

This is a free entry show! Click here to reserve your place.

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When: 7.30pm on Tuesday 21 October 2025
Where: Hallé at St Michael’s, 36-38 George Leigh Street, Ancoats, Manchester M4 5DG

We’re excited to be working with Vega Trails for the first time.

Inspired by the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains north-west of Madrid, his home since August 2022, Milo Fitzpatrick presents Sierra Tracks  – the new album from his expansive, cinematic, chamber-jazz project Vega Trails.

Having cut 2022’s beautifully resonant debut album Tremors in the Static as a duo, alongside saxophonist Jordan Smart (Mammal Hands and Sunda Arc), Milo now substantially expands upon that blueprint with his follow-up, Sierra Tracks, which, as the title suggests, was conceived at his new home in central Spain and adds piano, vibraphone and strings to the mix. The beautiful Spanish countryside offered inspiration too. “The landscape here has definitely had an impact on my musical writing,” Milo explains. “I’d describe the terrain as ‘rolling to peak-y’, and you get some really beautiful colours. When it’s a blue-sky day, dusk is so cool – the whole light goes purple-pink. It’s a great time to go out for a walk and get inspired. When I write these pieces, often I’m going somewhere – sometimes physically, others it’s dream places.”

However while Sierra Tracks features an expanded line-up including pianist Taz Modi (a colleague alongside Milo in Portico Quartet’s live band) providing “some rhythmic movement behind us, to free up the bass and sax from being so busy” and vibraphone specialist Harriet Riley, multi-reedist Jordan Smart remains a key voice in Vega Trails. “Jordan has a really direct and exciting way that he connects with his instrument, and the audience,” Milo reflects. “He’s into jazz, but also folk of many traditions, and he can play different wind instruments – soprano and tenor sax, bass clarinet, the dadouk, and the Ney flute from Turkey and Armenia. Knowing his phrasing, I wrote very much with him in mind.”

Milo also re-engaged with the cello, an instrument he hadn’t played since school days, adding an extra dimension to his own sound, but it was a conversation with Gondwana Records label mate Hania Rania about recording orchestral arrangements that helped bring Sierra Tracks fully into focus. “I’d been thinking about using strings for a long time, but not just a string quartet – lots of strings! Hania was recording a film score in Warsaw and when she offered to share the session with Milo. “I realised that the palette could go quite big.”

From the epic five-minute opener, ‘Largo’, onwards, there’s a cinematic feel to ‘Sierra Tracks’, as each piece unfolds according to its own sweeping narrative, often wonderfully evocative of the mountains’ wide-open spaces, and also sometimes elaborately arranged with cello, orchestral strings, vibraphone and piano, to evoke their awe-inspiring natural splendour. ‘Reverie’ has a refrain that fades in and out, like a daydream”. ‘Els’ is more firmly rooted in folk melody, while ‘Dream House’ and ‘Sleepwalk Tokyo’ (its title referring to Milo’s Lost In Translation-style jetlag experiences in the Far East) boost a sense of otherworldliness.

A shaping influence on Milo’s vision for the record was David Toop’s seminal book, ‘Oceans of Sound’, and he perceived each track as an aural story. “I wanted to make sounds that felt equal to where I’ve been roaming in the mountains and forests out here, that reflect the incredible scale of the place. You get these huge views and skylines, which it’s hard to find words for.” The curious sounds that open the album, at the beginning of ‘Largo’, are an approximation, by Milo on cello, of a harmonic series that is often heard in the Sierra region: when the local knife-sharpeners travel around the neighbouring villages, plying their trade, they play a similar riff on pan pipes to proclaim their arrival. “You get all these announcements, from people collecting scrap iron and steel, or delivering fruit and bread, and I thought that kind of thing would make a good opening for the record.” With that colourful reference as an overture, ‘Sierra Tracks’ shapes up as a love letter to the rocky landscape within which its creator now resides. It is also, he says, about his mental-health journey out of the pandemic years, which have been so testing for us all.

“I had been thinking about Time, and how history repeats itself, but also how one can become trapped in thoughts, especially on difficult personal subjects, and how these become cyclical in our minds. But I also wanted to talk about how walking or running can help release oneself from these cycles and find clarity and order from tangled emotional thinking patterns. It’s like discovering a new path from your usual running route, and how that can change your perspective and help find a type of peace and acceptance.” Through the album there are motifs and melodies that repeat from one tune to another, which of course resemble cyclical thoughts and memories.

“So, to me,” Milo concludes, “this record is an exploration of the relationship between the complex, tangled world of one’s mental processes and how moving through the tangible world, especially through nature, can help find definition and clarity.”

As such, ‘Sierra Tracks’ really is medicine for the mind, body and soul.

Support comes from Esther Swift. Esther’s performance is at once virtuosic and tender, dramatic and meditative – summoning the old and the new through both familiar and unexpected harmonic shifts, melodies rooted in tradition yet boldly innovative, and vocals that soar with emotional intensity. Esther is currently touring her new EP, Moon Dreams. The EP highlights her captivating solo performance with harp and voice in its first three tracks, followed by remixes from her acclaimed album Expectations of a Lifetime, forming a striking contrast in the EP’s second half. The opening track, Hope, is a heartfelt call for love and connection. The title track, Moon Dreams, evokes the romance of nature’s cycles – its pushes and pulls. The third track is a reimagining of Dream Angus, a traditional Scottish lullaby that reflects both the beauty and hardship of rural life in Scotland.

This concert takes place in Hallé at St Michael’s – a former Roman Catholic church, which was founded in 1859 and became the heart of the Little Italy Community in Ancoats.

This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

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When: 7.30pm on Wednesday 22 October 2025
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

We’re delighted to be working with Gwenifer Raymond again!

Welsh instrumentalist Gwenifer Raymond is set to release her third studio album on 6 September via Canadian label We Are Busy Bodies. Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark is a hybrid of the ancient and the futuristic, where the arcane etchings of occult folk horror fuse with the unfathomable equations of the cosmos. As celestial drones and mutant folk meet a frenetic blues that bends and twists like space-time, on her new album Raymond finds herself evoking the work of pioneering rocket scientists, the words of fictional hobo prophets and the concepts of mathematical infinity.

Raymond – via the circuitous trans-Atlantic journey of her demo – signed to San Francisco’s Tompkins Square Records in 2017, with whom she released her first two albums. Her first proper gig was at the Thousand Incarnations of the Rose Festival in Maryland, where she hung with heroes such as Glenn Jones, Marisa Anderson, Daniel Bachman and Peter Walker and was presented by Henry Kaiser with a 1880s Joseph Bohmann guitar which she feels may be possessed by some fingerpicking demon.

The Guardian has described her as a ‘profound talent’ whilst The Observer praised her ‘awe-inspiring technique and intense musicality’, and Uncut Magazine has championed her ‘fast-developing talents as a composer of eerie menace’. She has since toured Europe, the US and Canada with the likes of Michael Chapman, Michael Hurley, The Handsome Family, Lankum, Charlie Parr, Richard Dawson, Ryley Walker and Squid.

Local support comes from Jon Coley. Jon Coley is an acclaimed folk singer songwriter. He plays an eclectic mix of Blues, soul and folk, mixed with fresh original songwriting. He is renowned for his unique guitar playing passionate vocal performances, reminiscent of Van Morrison and Amos Lee. Jon is influenced by performers such as Nick Drake, Neil Young, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Sam Cooke, Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones, classic blues and especially the music of John Martyn. He has quickly become a legendary figure in his present home of Manchester, and his family’s native Liverpool, where his grandfather worked to book bands for the Cavern Club alongside Bobby Wooler and owner Ray McFall. After years of live touring, Jon released his Mercury nominated album If All I Ever Wanted Was All I Ever Needed to critical acclaim in 2021.

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When: 7.30pm on Thursday 23 October 2025
Where: The Strines Nightingale, 105 Strines Rd, Strines, Marple, Stockport SK6 7GE

PLEASE NOTE: This show has now sold out!

We’re excited to welcoming Kathryn Williams to the Strines Nightingale for an intimate show!

Kathryn Williams is a British, Mercury Prize-nominated singer-songwriter. With 17 albums under her belt in the last 27 years, her last solo album, Night Drives, debuted at #2 in the official folk album charts, while her last album, a collaboration with Withered Hand titled Willson Williams was nominated for the SAY and AMA awards. Label One Little Independent celebrated her career (thus far) with a 20-CD and two-book box set, Anthology, strewn with her artwork.

Her novel The Ormering Tide debuted to critical acclaim, and she also hosts her own popular podcast, Before the Light Goes Out, which appeared in the Top Ten best music podcasts by the Guardian. Kathryn tutors at the Arvon and Moniack Mhor Foundations, and writes with many diverse artists around the world including Paul Weller, Chris Difford, Ed Harcourt, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Michele Stodart. She is the only female included in the Top Ten list of Greatest Liverpool songwriters of all time.

Her new album, Mystery Park, will be released this Autumn.

Tour support comes from Matt Deighton. Are we finally seeing the reemergence of British folk’s most enigmatic lost son? You may recognise Matt Deighton from his time fronting Acid Jazz heroes Mother Earth; you may remember him as Paul Weller’s guitarist in the late 90’s, or Noel Gallagher’s recommendation for who should replace him when he quit the European tour in 2000. Or maybe you don’t. For almost two decades, the man they keep calling the natural successor to Nick Drake, Davey Graham and John Martyn has been himself more of a rumour – a murmur among musicians, songwriters and diehard music lovers who proudly display his rare vinyl releases like trophies. The list of articles in the press and online has continued unabated, forever asking the same question: Where is Matt Deighton? As the Huffington Post discovered in their recent piece ‘The Resurrection of Matt Deighton’: He’s back. He’s been back a couple of times, and you missed him.

Matt Deighton’s stunning discography is an undiscovered island inhabited by a human being everyone wants to love and protect from the world around him. Matt’s is a story of genuinely great musicianship and songwriting; but most of all, of the beauty and fragility of one of Britain’s greatest lost talents and how life around him has sometimes shaped a fate beyond his control; but who has come back with something more beautiful every time the storm abated. Yes, Matt Deighton has returned and you probably never knew it. Well now you do; and as the Sunday Times declared, ‘it’s impossible to imagine fans of Nick Drake of John Martyn not falling in love with him’.

This show takes place at the Strines Nightingale – a lovely country pub, formerly called the Sportsman, which re-opened in autumn 2022. Strines is on the Piccadilly-Sheffield train line, and on the 358 bus route from Stockport to Hayfield. This show will run until 10.30pm at the latest.

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When: 7.30pm on Thursday 23 October 2025
Where: Low Four Studio, Deansgate Mews, Great Northern, Manchester M3 4EN

We’re delighted to helping Marouli launch their new album!

Formed and led by successful musician and composer Graham McCusker (lead vocals/keys), Manchester-based outfit Marouli features Alex Hill (synths/keys), Alex Dineen (guitar), Tom Chapman (bass) and Matt Brown (drums). Marouli has a distinctive, genre-bending sound that sits somewhere between the music of Bon Iver, Steely Dan and David Bowie.

Playing alongside the core members on their forthcoming second album are musicians Oli Rockberger (John Mayer, Chaka Khan, Jordan Rakei) on melodica/keys/vocals, Loz Garrat (Jamie Cullum, Seal, Mark Lockheart) and vocalist Kate Lister (Foo Birds, Flaurese).

The second album, Tall Tales from a Distant Uncle Volume 2, was predominantly recorded at Giant Wafer Studios in Wales, Hope Mill Studios in Manchester and at various studios in London. The record, which has beautiful stories woven throughout, pays homage to Billy Connolly’s storytelling tradition and was created after Graham beat cancer for a second time.

With support from Michael Palmer – celebrating his debut EP release.

This show takes place at Low Four – a recording studio situated on Deansgate Mews in the Great Northern warehouse. This intimate venue features a fully stocked Cloudwater bar.

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When: 7.30pm on Friday 24 October 2025
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

We’re delighted to welcome Lilly Hiatt back to Manchester – with support from St Catherine’s Child!

The last few years have been a little hazy for Lilly Hiatt.

‘I was on the phone with a friend recently who said she wasn’t sure where I’d been,’ Hiatt recalls. ‘I realised I wasn’t really too sure of that either.’

The search for answers – where she’s been, who she’s become, what it all means – lies at the heart of Hiatt’s striking new album, Forever. Written and recorded in Hiatt’s new home just outside Nashville, the collection grapples with growth and change, escape and anxiety, self-loathing and self-love. The songs are intensely vulnerable here, full of diaristic snapshots and deeply personal ruminations, but they’re also broad invitations to find yourself in Hiatt’s unflinching emotional excavations, to see your own humanity reflected back in her pursuit of something larger than herself. Hiatt cut the album with her husband, Coley Hinson, who produced and played most of the instruments on the record, and the result is a raw, unvarnished work of love and trust that walks the line between alt-rock muscle and singer/songwriter sensitivity, a bold, guitar-driven, at times psychedelic exploration of maturity and adulthood from an artist who wants you to know you’re not alone, no matter how lost you may feel.

‘I think of this album like a hand to hold,’ says Hiatt. ‘I wanted to open up the door and let people in on what I’ve been going through, but I also hoped that by telling the truth about the joy and pain and love and grief I’ve experienced, it might strike a chord with somebody else navigating their way through all those things, too.’

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Tennessee, Hiatt first earned buzz with a pair of early solo records before breaking out with 2017’s Trinity Lane. Produced by Shovels & Rope’s Michael Trent, the record helped Hiatt earn dates with the likes of John Prine, Margo Price, Drive-By Truckers and Hiss Golden Messenger in addition to festival slots everywhere from Pilgrimage to Luck Reunion. NPR called the album ‘courageous and affecting,’ while The Independent raved that it showcased Hiatt’s ‘gift for unpicking knotty lyrical themes in a personalised blend of countrified rock music,’ and Rolling Stone hailed it as ‘the most cohesive and declarative statement of the young songwriter’s career.’ Hiatt delivered on the album’s promise with her similarly well-received 2020 follow-up, Walking Proof, and, unable to tour due to the pandemic, quickly returned to the studio again for 2021’s Lately, which The Boston Herald said showcased her ‘knack for plainspoken, poetic lyrics’ and Uncut proclaimed to be ‘captivating.’

When it was finally time to get back on the road, though, Hiatt found herself feeling overwhelmed and bewildered. The world seemed to be changing faster than she could keep up with, and rather than embracing what should have been her triumphant return, Hiatt instead began retreating from everything she’d worked so hard to build.

‘I fell in love, got married, adopted a dog, all the things I’d always dreamed of doing,’ she reflects. ‘But I felt like an outsider watching myself stumble though it all, just constantly critiquing myself to the point where I became so paralysed I could hardly leave home.’

Hiatt tried therapy and antidepressants, talked to friends and family, wrote dozens and dozens of songs about her feelings, all in the hopes of quieting her racing mind.

‘There was this intensity where I felt so jacked up all the time,’ she explains. ‘Eventually I just realised that my life was passing me by, that the love I was living in required presence to accept. So I started doing the little things you have to do to show up for the people in your life: listen, grow, change. I learned to expand my world.’

Hiatt left the bustle of Nashville for a more rural setting outside the city and scrapped all the material she’d been working on, starting from scratch with Hinson in pursuit of something that would resonate more with the new chapter she was embarking upon. The pair worked quickly, tackling the writing and recording of each song one-at-a-time from the ground up and sending the material off to Paul Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies) to mix as they finished it.

‘Paul brought so much enthusiasm and dimension to the project,’ Hiatt explains. ‘Every time we had a song tracked, we’d share it with him and then he’d get really excited about it, which was really affirming and encouraged us to turn right around and get started on the next one.’

That excitement is plain to hear on Forever, which opens with the brawny Hidden Day. ‘I’m gonna find a place where no one needs nothin’ from me,’ Hiatt declares on the electrifying track, which fantasises about a secret 24 hours where the world stops tugging at your sleeve long enough to let you catch your breath. Like much of the album, the song—which was written with Scot Sax and co-mixed by Jon Debaun—is grounded in concrete details from Hiatt’s personal life, but it’s also a conversational tune rooted in intimacy between the singer and her audience: ‘I stumbled upon a day I wanna tell you about,’ she declares. ‘It’s our little secret, you better keep it to yourself.’ The breezy, lo-fi Ghost Ship reminds us of the common ground we share no matter our superficial differences (‘I’m looking for something, and you are, too’), while the driving Shouldn’t Be meditates on the universal need to stand in your beliefs without requiring the validation of others, and the dreamy Somewhere longs to escape from the weight of judgment, both internal and external.

‘I’ve always been fascinated with escape in my writing,’ Hiatt reflects. ‘A lot of these songs like to imagine a moment or a place where you can become untethered from reality, from the mundane, from yourself. Sometimes just being with the person you love is all it takes.’

Indeed, the power of real and lasting love—how it can change you for the better and sustain you at your lowest—is woven into the very fabric of Forever. The twangy Man revels in the security of knowing where you stand in a committed relationship; the playful Kwik-E-Mart celebrates the ordinary moments that take on new meaning when shared with a partner; and the blistering title track takes stock of what matters once you’ve found what you’ve been looking for. ‘I can be anyone out here, but I can’t be in love / With a restaurant or a new haircut,’ Hiatt sings over a wall of fuzzed out guitars. ‘Nice to be a loner, no one knows you’re hurt / But I wanna be by your side, I wanna be by your side forever.’

‘I wrote Forever on tour in San Francisco after playing this festival where they put me and the band up in this amazing hotel,’ Hiatt recalls. ‘I couldn’t have been happier to be there, and there was a time in my life when I would have wanted nothing more than to stay forever. But in that moment, I realised the thing I was most excited about was getting back to my house and my dog and telling my husband all about it.’

Ultimately, that revelation is what Forever is all about. If you can slow down enough to live in the moment, if you can quiet the outside world enough to hear to your own heart, if you can blow away the haze and learn to see what’s right in front of you, you just might find that reality is more beautiful than any dream.

Support comes from St Catherine’s Child. Transatlantic singer-songwriter Ilana Zsigmond AKA St. Catherine’s Child, is one of the rising stars of the Indie Folk/Americana scene. She has played to entranced audiences both in the USA and UK. Having had interest from labels and publishers from both the UK and USA, she signed to TRO Essex Music and Shamus Records in New York. She was excited to sign to a company which holds the publishing for the Woody Guthrie archive, original David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and T Rex catalogue, along with breakthrough artists such as Flamy Grant and The Pairs.

Born in England to musical parents, Ilana spent the majority of her childhood in New Haven, Connecticut, bouncing back and forth between continents as her parents toured. After settling back in the UK in 2015, she has formed a band that reflects the Americana aesthetic that surrounded her throughout her childhood with the articulation and dry wit of her British sensibilities. Named after the patron saint of eloquent women, her vocal strength and poetic songwriting shines at the heart of St. Catherine’s Child.

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When: 7.30pm on Wednesday 29 October 2025
Where: Kamera at Lloyd & Platt, 617 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton, Manchester, M219AN

We’re delighted to welcome H!M favourite Withered Hand to Kamera!

Withered Hand is the pseudonym of Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter Dan Willson. Since the release of his debut album Good News in 2009, Dan has become a celebrated figure in the Scottish music scene and further afield. A well-travelled touring singer-songwriter, he has quietly amassed a devoted cult fanbase while staying true to a singular artistic vision.

A strident second album, New Gods, in 2014 propelled Withered Hand into the charts, featuring appearances by friends, luminaries and supporters from the Scottish music scene, from Belle & Sebastian to Frightened Rabbit to The Vaselines and beyond. A long-awaited third Withered Hand album, How To Love, was released in 2023, again to widespread critical acclaim.

Dan’s subsequent collaboration with Mercury Prize nominated English singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams resulted in last year’s album Willson Williams – shortlisted for both Scottish Album of the Year and UK Americana Album of the Year 2024.

Dan is currently working on a fourth Withered Hand LP with his friend and mentor King Creosote, due for release in late 2025.

Dan has been guest tutor on Songwriting Workshops at Moniack Mhor – Scotland’s Centre of Creative Writing, Arvon Writing Foundation at Totleigh Barton and Arvon Lumb Bank and is an advocate of the power of music and creativity in recovery, healing and growth.

‘Beautifully constructed lyrical frameworks … Caledonian gospel’ – MOJO

‘As life-affirming as music gets’ – The Herald

Local support comes from Run Remedy. Run Remedy is the brainchild of violinist and evangelical escapee Robin Koob. Raised by two church leaders in American east coast suburbia, Robin’s particular flavour of experimental folk is laced with equal parts grief and goof, playfully exploring themes of transatlantic struggle, familial rejection, gay panic, and forbidden first kisses. Singer and string’est by trade, Koob has hustled her way across East Asia, Germany, and the UK with her ever expanding pedal board, playing everything from post-rock to psych pop, indie, and jazz with all the while building her own creative voice. Her attention to detail and arrangement can be seen throughout every song, making for an intricate audio experience for those who enjoy a good laugh, or cry.

Kamera is the brand new venue upstairs at Lloyd & Platt (formerly The Lloyd’s) in Chorlton – by the team behind the Castle Hotel and Gullivers.

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When: 7.30pm on Wednesday 29 October 2025
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

We’re delighted to be working with Constant Follower for the first time!

Constant Follower, the band formed around Scottish songwriter Stephen McAll, first emerged with the acclaimed debut Neither Is, Nor Ever Was on Shimmy Disc.

The album was shortlisted for the 2022 Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award, followed in 2023 by a second SAY nomination for McAll’s collaboration with Scott William Urquhart, Even Days Dissolve.

Known for their atmospheric, meditative sound, Constant Follower have captivated audiences at SxSW and received airplay on KEXP, WFMU, BBC Scotland, and BBC 6 Music. Their second album, The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, released in February 2025 via Last Night From Glasgow, was met with critical acclaim and charted across the UK: No. 1 on the Official Independent Breakers Chart, No. 2 on the Scottish Albums Chart, No. 3 on the Folk Albums Chart, and No. 14 on the UK Album Sales Chart.

McAll is now back in his Stirling studio, working with a close group of collaborators on Constant Follower’s third album.

Local support comes from Creepy Crawly. Creepy Crawly is the project of Bristol-born and Manchester-based musician Rachel Cawley, weaving bittersweet narratives through shimmering, multilayered songwriting. Her distinctive crystalline vocals guide listeners through ethereal dreamscapes, moments of eerie unease, and the satisfying crunch of ’90s alt-rock melancholy.

Growing up in the rural West of England, her music is, in part, inspired by a childhood soundtracked by folk revival artists and traditional British folk music. But the pull of the city was huge and, aged 18, she moved to London and submerged herself in the many worlds of music available to her there – working at venues, writing for music magazines, temping at record labels – and going to a lot of gigs. But, as it so often does, London spat her back out. And so, during a period of self-reckoning with the question of ‘how the hell did I get here?’, living a life that seemed frighteningly ordinary, she returned to writing songs – tracing out the path of how she found herself in a place she didn’t want to be – and armed with newfound hope and resilience, plotting a route back out of it.

The result of this reflective work is her debut album Like a Real Thing, which will be self-released on 30 May 2025 and draws from a diverse palette of influences including Scott Walker, Big Thief, Laura Marling, Anne Briggs, Cat Power, Breeders and Heatmiser.

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When: 7.30pm on Thursday 30 October 2025
Where: Manchester Academy 2, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PR

We’re delighted to be helping The Lovely Eggs celebrate 20 years – plus very special guests Frank Skinner and Polite Bureaux!

For the last 20 years, for The Lovely Eggs being in a band is a way of life. It’s about art. It’s about creativity and expression. It’s about following your own path and doing things your own way.

To celebrate two decades of operating on their own terms – spewing out music, records, art and television shows – the cult band will mark their 20th anniversary with a very special show at Academy 2 in Manchester.

‘You’ve got to hand it to The Lovely Eggs over 20 years and still making, distributing and promoting their music completely independently. In today’s climate, that’s no mean feat. It’s something to be fucking applauded – Rough Trade

‘Manchester is like a second home to us,’ says Holly. ‘It’s where we played some of our earliest gigs and the people who have come to our shows throughout the years have always brought the party.’

‘We’ve got great memories over the years from playing everywhere from Fuel and Gulliver’s to the New Century Hall and The Ritz. It’s always been great and we love coming back,’ says David. ‘We’ve had so many sold out shows in Manchester and there’s not many places we haven’t played but Academy 2 is one of them.’

Operating in a world when true authenticity is hard to find, The Lovely Eggs are one of the most exciting, innovative and genuine bands around. Welcome to their world. Welcome to Eggland.

Don’t miss the chance to celebrate 20 years with the Eggs plus very special guests at Academy 2 on Thursday 30 October.

Main support in Manchester will be Frank Skinner. Frank Skinner’s live career began in 1987 when he spent £400 of his last £435 booking a room at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Four years later in 1991 he returned to the city and took home comedy’s most prestigious prize, The Perrier Award.

Frank created The Frank Skinner Show (ITV), which is widely credited as setting the tone for the modern comedic chat show. With David Baddiel, he created and presented both Fantasy Football and Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned, and, alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. Frank has also created and hosted three series of Frank Skinner’s Opinionated for BBC2, hosted seven series of BBC1’s Room 101 and seven series of Portrait/Landscape Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. He has presented documentaries covering passions including Muhammad Ali (BBC1), Elvis (BBC4) and investigating the life of George Formby (BBC4). As well as this, Frank has also co-presented three series of Sky Arts Road Trips with Denise Mina ; Boswell and Johnson’s Scottish Road Trip (2020), Wordsworth and Coleridge Road Trip (2021), and Pope and Swift (2022).

His 2019 stand-up show, Showbiz, has enjoyed a sold out national tour and subsequent sold out residency at the West End’s Garrick Theatre. His latest tour, 30 Years of Dirt, had two West End runs in 2024.

Opening the show are Polite Bureaux. Polite Bureaux recently released their second DIY studio album, EXCEPT YOUR SKiNT — poems and stories written by their dad about run-ins and daily life in Bradford. Songs trace the ups and downs of everyday life: buying scratchcards to pay for petrol, a cycling proficiency gone wrong, meeting a work coach called Colin, losing teeth, buying a van that crumbles to dust, and even using the dog’s shampoo when the Head & Shoulders ran out.

The project was started by Joseph Smith — a broken beat-maker and sharp-tongued lyricist — joined on stage by his sister Maya Lili and rave enthusiast Viv Maher. Together they deliver an intoxicating mix of spoken word, electronic beats, and punk energy.

This is a 14+ show.

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When: 3pm onwards on Saturday 1 November 2025
Where: Kamera at Lloyd & Platt, 617 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton, Manchester, M219AN

We welcome Tulpa to Kamera for this all-dayer in collaboration with Alphaville – featuring seven bands!

Tulpa are very new: nothing has been released up until now, not even a digital single. Despite this, they attracted the attention of Marc Riley & Gideon Coe, who invited the band to record a live BBC 6 Music session this summer. Around the same time, Skep Wax Records were sent the finished album, Monster Of The Week, and knew they had to release it. Meanwhile, in the creative hotbeds of the UK’s DIY festivals and indie venues Tulpa are quickly gathering a loyal following. They have recently supported Throwing Muses, Pale Blue Eyes and Bug Club and will be playing a series of headline gigs in October and November 2025.

This album has some of the same qualities. A whole set of loud, catchy, perfectly-crafted pop songs have been conjured into existence – and want to be part of your life. Josie’s hyper-melodic lead vocals are cool and crystalline – but the lyrics are warm and human. The twin guitars create a sonic mesh, a web of textures that traps you, whether you like it or not. And yes, something scarier does lie below the surface. Occasionally the guitars force their way to the front, furious and intense. And sometimes those lyrics aren’t as innocent as they first appear. The danger, just below the surface of the songs, is maybe that’s what makes this album so arresting…

First single Let’s Make A Tulpa! is an upbeat crunchy pop song that explodes into a huge chorus, somewhat in a Breeders vein, that will encourage sober people to throw themselves around their living rooms. Psyops is gentler, but spooky and equally compelling, with echoes of Yo La Tengo: hypnotic in the extreme. Amateur Hour is a lilting, gentle confessional. By contrast, Raw Nerve is all frenzied guitars, and may remind seasoned listeners of the spiky excitement of Josef K.

Tulpa consist of Josie Kirk (vocals, bass), Daniel Hyndman (guitar), Myles Kirk (guitar) and Mike Ainsley (Drums), and are based in Leeds. Daniel was lead guitarist and songwriter in esteemed post-punk band Mush. Tulpa are nothing like Mush, and yet… all the energy, ambition and inventiveness of that earlier group are still here: it’s just that the creative power has been diverted into the service of a set of pop songs: songs that are in love with melody. Josie Kirk’s irresistible vocal delivery seals the deal. This is a very exciting new band.

Joining Tulpa are Big Other. Big Other are an alternative indie rock band from Manchester who take inspiration from Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Veruca Salt and Fugazi. Their sound has been described by reviewers as ‘screeching and sprawling … with compelling and quick-witted lyrics’ and ‘a gripping wall of sound’.

Also on the bill are Oh Hippo. Oh Hippo invites you to sit down, sway a little, and have a couple of beers babe, you deserve it. They are a five-piece indie pop number made up of members of Precious Metals, Ether Mech, Flesh Couch, Blue Screen and Guys Eyes, full of soaring vocal harmonies, smooth basslines, and a subtle undercurrent of anxious dissonance. Come have a beautiful time.

They will be joined by Tigers & Flies, who make ‘incompetent pop for competent people’, Captain Starlet, who released their eponymous debut album earlier this year, Manchester-based alt-rock group Rollups and brand new band DDHP (FFO The Replacements, Pixies and The Rentals) for this all-day event, running from 3pm until 11pm.

You can listen to all seven bands below:

Kamera is the brand new venue upstairs at Lloyd & Platt (formerly The Lloyd’s) in Chorlton – by the team behind the Castle Hotel and Gullivers.

Book tickets now.

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