More Gigs in Leeds

Chubby and The Gang, Proud Mary, Metronomy, Teenage Fanclub and Dream Wife are all heading to Leeds again later in 2021 and in 2022.

Chubby and The Gang

Fast rising London punk 5-piece Chubby and the Gang have shared a new song and accompanying music video. ‘Lightning Don’t Strike Twice’ already premiered by Steve Lamacq on BBC 6Music, and  part of a double A-side 7″ out on May 28th via Partisan that will feature another new track entitled ‘Life’s Lemons’.

Watch the video for ‘Lightning Don’t Strike Twice’ here: https://youtu.be/3pskmu0GsOA

Speaking of the track, frontman Charlie ‘Chubby’ Manning offers: “I wrote this song about social inequality. Not mine but the people I saw around me. I feel like the whole premise of poverty is presented like this game in which if you play your cards right you can escape. In reality it’s more like playing a game of dice when they’re loaded against your favour. Constantly being struck by lightning and being told that it will never happen again. I remember witnessing someone’s telephone voice where they had to change their voice when conducting business or applying for jobs so they don’t come across as if they are from a lower class.

I wrote the last verse about that because it disgusted me that in a system supposedly created on meritocracy a human being has to change their identity to try and shake unemployment. I’ve had very few jobs that required me to go for an interview. No one really cares who you are when you drive a minicab or lay out cables so I’m lucky in that sense. But many people aren’t.”

The band have also announced a bumper 40-date tour of the UK and Ireland through November and December of this year offering a chance for many to finally see just why they’ve become one of the most exciting and talked-about punk bands in the world over the past year. All dates are on sale.

Chubby and The Gang are at Belgrave Music Hall Leeds on 9 December 2021.

Django Django

Following on from the release of their new album “Glowing in the Dark” earlier this year, Django Django continue to cast their art pop spell, this time with an irresistible double whammy – a hilarious and subversive video for new single “Kick Out the Devil”, as well as a radical rework of the track by steel pan legend Fimber Bravo.

“9/10 – excellent…their most distinctive and mature so far” – Loud and Quiet

“4 stars – deft and captivating” – Album of the Week, Metro

“4 stars – Glowing in the Dark is very much for these times” – Mojo

“8/10 – an irresistible lovestruck confection” – UncutDjango Django will also be heading out on tour this autumn, bringing “Glowing in the Dark” to audiences for the very first time on a comprehensive string of dates around the UK and Europe.  They will be in Leeds at the University on 11 October 2021.

Proud Mary

Celebrating 20 years of their classic album ‘The Same Old Blues’, PROUD MARY are very pleased to announce a series of special anniversary gigs this Autumn. They are at Leeds Warehouse on 17 September 2021. 

Playing the album in its entirety, start to finish, the shows will be an opportunity for fans to reacquaint with seminal singles including “All Good Things” and “Very Best Friend”, as well as key album tracks such as the invigorating opener “Give A Little Love”,  their rousing Stones cover “Salt Of The Earth” and more…

Their sensational debut album whose legacy continues to live on, ‘The Same Old Blues’ was released on Noel Gallagher’s Sour Mash records in the summer of 2001. Written in just ten days and produced by Gallagher with assistance of Gem Archer, the album was a hit with press and public alike. Catapulting them into a hectic touring schedule, the Manchester quintet soon found themselves supporting the likes of Oasis, Neil Young, The Stereophonics, Paul Weller and Ocean Colour Scene. 

“A lesson in song writing” (Noel Gallagher)
“When Proud Mary let loose, they really bite” (Q)
“If you like swaggering scarf-waver tunes with vast choruses and singers who sound like they swallow red-hot pokers, you’ve found your Holy Grail” (The Guardian)
“Raw-throated singer Greg Griffin is a star” (The Mirror)
“A classic rock ‘n’ roll band” (Caleb Followill – Kings of Leon)
“Imagine a bastard son of Bob Dylan fronting the Verve (but with a better slide guitarist) and surely you’re already in the shop” (Evening Standard)

Lump

Lump (Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay of Tunng) has shared their first new music of the year, Animal, preceding their second album ‘Animal’, recorded at Lindsay’s home studio, to be released on 30 July..

Lump’s debut was released in the summer of 2018, unveiling a world that was tangibly different to their work apart, sonically “so vivid and sort of psychedelic,” Marling says, “and the lyrics so un-thought through”. 

As with the first album, Marling would arrive in the studio without having heard any of Lindsay’s music, with the hope that it would bring the lyrics an immediacy and a spontaneity. 

‘Animal’ was a word Marling threw into a lyric simply to meet a rhythm. But it seemed to capture the mood of the record, and of the band as a whole. “There’s a little bit of a theme of hedonism on the album, of desires running wild,” she says. “And also it fed into the idea we had from the start of thinking of LUMP as a kind of representation of instincts, and the world turned upside down.” It is something childlike and grotesque and filled with possibility, they say. “We created LUMP as a sort of persona and an idea and a creature,” says Lindsay. “Through LUMP we find our inner animal, and through that animal we travel into a parallel universe.”
Lump is at the Brudenell Leeds on 2 September.

Metronomy (cover image)

They released  the 10th anniversary reissue of their career-changing album The English Riviera on 30 April.

A love letter to the stretch of coast a stone’s throw from where Joe grew up, The English Riviera marked a breakout moment in the band’s history that would lead them to global success and see them constantly developing their sound for a decade to come. The band are currently working on what will be their seventh album, due for release in 2022. Metronomy’s biggest album to date, The English Riviera, was nominated for the Mercury Prize, is certified Gold in the UK and platinum in France, and upon release was met with wide scale critical acclaim: ranked as NME’s #2 album of the year (“a deep sea of ideas and imagination”), NYLON’s #2, Uncut’s #3, Mixmag’s #4, and #7 by The Guardian (“an assured, beguiling album”). The English Riviera’s standout tracks ‘The Look’ and ‘The Bay’ remain Metronomy’s biggest and best recognised songs to date.

About writing ‘The Look’, Joe says that he “came up with the bit that gets stuck in your head; the der-de-der-der bit. I played around with it a little, hit a wall and thought ‘it’s not really Metronomy, is it’. Four months later, we finished recording The Look at the Smokehouse in London. We quite liked it, but that was about it. Then I distinctly remember the journalist Dave Simpson asking me about the song after we performed it for the first time at the Leeds Cockpit in January 2011. That was probably the moment I realised it had something about it. I still don’t know precisely what that something is, but when we perform The Look live and I hear thousands of people chanting the bit that gets stuck in your head back at me, der-de-der-der, it often brings a tear to my eye. It really is amazing what that seaside song and this whole album has done for Metronomy.”

Metronomy’s UK tour includes Saturday 23 April 2022O2 Academy – Leeds, UK (new show)

Clockwise from the top: Proud Mary, Teenage Fanclub, Dream Wife and Chubby and The Gang

Teenage Fanclub

With their new album Endless Arcade released on 30th April, and having previously shared videos for the tracks ‘Home’ and ‘I’m More Inclined’, Teenage Fanclub shared another new track, “The Sun Won’t Shine On Me”, from this much-anticipated LP. 


A wistful gem written by Norman Blake, “The Sun Won’t Shine On Me” comes with a visualiser created by long-time collaborator Donald Milne.  Norman Blake: “This is something of a rarity for Teenage Fanclub – a song in waltz time!”


Endless Arcade is the long-awaited follow-up to the band’s album “Here”, released in 2016 to universal acclaim and notably their first UK Top 10 album since 1997, a mark of how much they’re treasured. The new record is quintessential TFC: melodies are equal parts heart-warming and heart-aching, guitars chime and distort, keyboard lines mesh and spiral, harmony-coated choruses burst out like sun on a stormy day. 

“I think of an endless arcade as a city that you can wander through, with a sense of mystery, an imaginary one that goes on forever…” says Raymond McGinley, one half of the band’s songwriters for this album alongside Norman Blake. “When it came to choosing an album title, it seemed to have something for this collection of songs.”

As part of their UK tour, the band is in Leeds at Beckett’s on 9 April 2022

 Dream Wife

“New wave structure meets punk blatancy and 21st-century gender fluency” – New York Times
“Punk rock trio Dream Wife make music that flips a middle finger to convention.” – The FADER
“The art-school project that’s evolved into one of indie-rock’s most politically dynamic emerging acts” – Entertainment Weekly
“The girl gang proving there’s force in femininity. Dream Wife create pop anthems for the Instagram generation” – Dazed
“The follow-up to their self-titled 2018 debut continues to blend 2000s guitar bands with yelping riot grrrl whilst sounding surprisingly new” – The Observer
Dream Wife is in Leeds on 21 March 2022 at The Wardrobe

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