It’s been amazing to regain all sorts of live music experiences since the lifting of pandemic restrictions. Festivals, all-dayers, sell-out shows by touring artists… But few things compare to a good DIY basement show. And few people on the Manchester scene have a knack for piecing together eclectic line-ups of up-and-coming artists than Matthew Boycott-Garnett, responsible for the much-missed A Carefully Planned Festival, a jamboree of new music that once took place across the Northern Quarter’s DIY venues. After some time away from promoting, MBG is back, putting on Liverpool’s Real Terms and more at The Peer Hat.
First up, we’re treated to the elegant, moody folk of Leonora Hackles. Leonora cuts an unassuming figure on stage, starkly lit and accompanied solely by her own electric guitar. She’s self-deprecating in her between-song words too (‘There’s some awesome bands on tonight, but first, me’). However, her haunting doom-laden folk packs a hypnotic punch. Her drawled vocals and idiosyncratic lyrics make for a trippy, intoxicating start to proceedings.
A Manc band being named after a village near Bristol is a bit of a curveball, and it’s just the first of many in Chew Magna’s set. The four-piece gleefully genre-hop in a way that doesn’t ever sound forced or incoherent. Across their energetic half hour, we’re treated to the power pop of tracks like ‘Listless’, the more shoegazey ‘4232’, and prominent post-punk and psychedelic elements elsewhere. While they’re hard to pin down, frontman Laurie Hulme favours the more simple label ‘indie rocker’ to describe these songs. Those two words don’t quite do their sonic palette justice, but they do convey the band’s understanding of how to write a solid riff, as further evidenced by closer ‘Watching Paint Dry’ with its driving stoner rock vibes.
It was at a Carefully Planned show that Real Terms played their first gig as a three-piece, all the way back in 2014 when they were inconspicuously billed as ‘New Vasco’, having grown out of their previous incarnation as Vasco Da Gama. They’ve made slow but steady progress in the 8 years that have followed, with EP Housework their only release besides singles. However, they’ve had numerous support slots and festival appearances around the UK and have clearly been honing their chops in a live setting.
After all, this evening the band are impressively tight despite playing the sort of music that gives the illusion of being fairly loose. Unlike the often frantic math rock of Vasco, they favour more of a calculated wonky pop sound. While their strange rhythmic shifts and tempo changes challenge you to pick out the right melodies, they still somehow manage to create hooks among the complication. Live, this could make for a messy prospect, but the band’s musicianship holds it all together even when it feels things could easily fall apart at the seams. Pulling heavily from their upcoming debut album, it’s evident that the band are becoming more and more comfortable in their own groove-heavy style, managing to capture the audience’s attention throughout despite the lack of familiarity.
The show comes to a close with a run of songs many do know from their recorded output, starting with a sonic soup of noodling guitars and drums from which they lock into the groove of ‘Lake Trasimene’. Despite this neat trick being a staple of their set over the years, it never fails to impress, and the song still ranks up there with the band’s catchiest. That said, ‘Veil is Thinner’, gives it a run for its money. Opening with its distinctive plinky-plonky synth sample, this serves as a platform to showcase the dexterity and clarity of singer-bassist John Crawford’s voice, before, after the chorus, the song collapses in on itself in trippy staccato guitars and drums. This provides a moment where you can’t help but catch your breath at how the three-piece co-ordinate so well – they’ve truly put a shift in in the practice room. It can only really be matched by the assured stomping chorus of ‘Frantically Wrong’, which has hips moving and heads nodding as the night draws to a close and we’re left shouting out for more. This headline set is a triumph, leaving that eagerly-awaited debut full-length all the more eagerly-awaited.
SOUNDS TASTY 