Live reviews

Focused. Determined. Powerful.

My brain was still with a guy who refused to grow up and I was confronted with a bunch of young men who’d grown up too quickly.

let’s look back with thanks; the place has been a source of genuine musical fun for us

Into the Wilderness with a feather up your arse

"…it won't be all crash-bang will it?"

The Irish bar O’Ceallaigh’s was so packed the only way to tell who was playing was by finding out who was holding an instrument.

I’ve never been all that comfortable with the bands in a living room idea, as it reminds me of all those dreadful parties I went to when I was a teenager.

Joensuu are brilliant at creating a mood, and allowing their songs to grow in stature and intensity...

By the end things get quite giddy; and a cheering circle of similarly manic individuals urge the Loki-like presence to make just a few more ridiculous electronic squeals before bedtime..

Accadians make inspiring music. Actually (if it were possible), they sound better than last year.

The hall is filling up slowly with emaciated types with beards and fringes and hair clips. There’s soup on too.

Later, the spirit of Mrs Gaskell is invoked as well as other more sinister things - such as beards and Chorlton.

Tonight they came, they played and they conquered the flat lands again.

Crowd surfing at a folk concert, surely not?

This engaging young man regaled us with animal noises, and informed us that he would shortly howl – “like a duck”.

This last two years, SUB’s been about only place worth going to, to see something special and out of the ordinary.

Bar en Boos has never been the most salubrious of venues, and with good reason, being a squat bar...

Cobra Killer are a bizarre act, how much is truly artifice and how much is really meant is hard to determine.

...a packed Kleine Zaal, (full of people who had either found pictures of my sixth form class from 1986 and then swore unyielding fealty to the power of our collective dress sense back then, or borrowed Molly Ringwald’s cast offs en masse), testified to the sheer trendiness of the event.

Despite seeming a bunch of bashful, silent types, Joensuu have a mighty powerful vibe, one which is a tad shamanic (yes I’m going to play the Finno-Ugric shaman card sorry)