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Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy was the single greatest gig of my life – here’s why

Big words I know, but I'm going to try and back them up as best I can.

Danny Jones - 20th October 2024

I’m going start this review (if you can even call it that as opposed to just pure, unadulterated fanboying) by noting that I have a pretty high bar when it comes to concerts making it into my top 10, let alone considering ‘the best ever’, but Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy was the one.

Game-changing, a magnum opus; the yardstick by which I will now compare every gig for the foreseeable future – this all might sound far too superlative and exaggerated but I’m sticking by it.

This year alone, we’ve had the privilege of going along to see Jungle, Liam Gallagher, The 1975, Blossoms’ biggest-ever show at Wythenshawe Park and even the Sex Pistols with Frank Carter as the frontman just to name an extraordinary few.

Every single one of them was unreal and made me eternally grateful for that incomparable feeling of ecstasy that seeing the music you love brought to life in front of you brings, but seeing the increasingly high-flying Wunderhorse do their thing in front of a Manchester crowd sent actual chills down my spine.

Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy was pulsating from start to finish. (Credit: The Manc Group)

If you’ve for whatever reason not cottoned on to what these lads are doing yet, I’m not going roll out the typical tired trope of “What are you playing at!?” or any of that, I’m just going to implore you to start your journey with this band now and see them live as soon as you can.

Besides maybe Fontaines D.C., who they have already toured with earlier this year – cannot believe we missed out on that one – they are perhaps one of the most exciting bands around right now and they have just given me a core memory I will never forget. I dare say plenty of others in the room would agree.

For me there’s no question about it: I’ve fallen in love with this ferocious four-piece so hard it’s made me feel like a teenager who’s just discovering their taste for the first time and despite still only being a few years in, I am fully convinced they are the best thing since sliced bread.

The show itself was everything you would hope for from a proper rock show, from the fans screaming every last word like their lives depended on it, to the entire crowd jumping up and down from start to finish and the pit nearly consuming everyone with crowd-surfers galore and utterly breathless energy.

A 10/10 performance from the audience is always guaranteed in Manchester but the band themselves also went above and beyond by delivering moments like this:

Fuck it, here’s ‘Leader of the Pack’ extended intro in full:#wunderhorse @wunderhorse @wunderhorsehq pic.twitter.com/EwTx1S5YoO
— Danjo (@DannehJones) October 19, 2024

It might seem like a little thing to some of you, but vamping for a good minute or so on stage and thrashing out solos that aren’t part of the studio version of a song as if they’re jamming in a room like no one else is even there just doesn’t happen any more – at least not very often.

We’ve been watching clips of the Midas tour ever since it kicked off earlier this year and for me, personally, I feared that I had built up the expectation so much that it could never possibly have lived up to the vision I had in my head.

I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only were they flawless, with frontman Jacob Slater (who we recently interviewed) and lead guitarist Harry Fowler particularly intoxicating to watch up close and personal, but the roughly 2,600 fans inside the venue gave every last ounce of their effort.

There were the usual limbs, beers, cups and even items of clothing being flung in the air but, more specifically, I don’t think I’ve ever perspired so much at a gig. I was literally dripping and let me assure you, neither I nor anyone else could care less.

In fact, following a particularly sweaty mid-song hug with a stranger, we turned to each other and realised we were wearing the same bit of merch before proceeding to spend the entire gig losing our minds together and even swapping numbers after the show. You have to love special moments like that.

We started out here and ended up bouncing within spitting distance of **Jacob’s viral barking**. It was utterly delightful carnage.

It’s hard to say how or why a band strikes a chord with so many people, never mind so quickly having only put out their first single back in 2021, but they’re truly bound for greatness in my eyes.

This isn’t a love-drunk echo chamber either: another member of the team reviewed their gig at The Deaf Institute back in April 2023 and labelled them “a band so good you’ll never see them on a stage this small again.” We love it when we’re right.

We first saw them supporting the mighty Sam Fender in 2022, who is also clearly up there with this country’s greatest at the minute, and we were pretty blown away even back then as largely uninitiated listeners. Nothing has changed since other than the fact that both have gotten much, much bigger.

That being said, it feels rather fitting that Newcastle’s indie hero is bringing them along for as the UK support for his massive arena tour later this year. Things always have a way of coming back around full circle, don’t they?

Wunderhorse have clearly set a ridiculous standard for their live shows and simply refuse to drop their performance levels by even an inch and I can wholeheartedly say with my chest that last night will go down as the single greatest gig of my life.

But they’ve been making those kinds of memories for weeks on end now. Here they were in Leeds on Friday when our equally obsessed Hoot team went along to see them:

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Much like their unskippable albums, there wasn’t a single low point in the entire set but highlights included ‘Purple’, ‘Arizona’, ‘Emily’, the ultimate thrasher that is ‘July’ and cult-favourite ‘Superman’, which has only be played a handful of times on this tour. How lucky are we, eh?

In fact, we spent this entire song holding one fan a lot as he didn’t crowd surf so much as he just slowly spun in absolute dreamland and it’s the most envious I’ve been of someone so clearly in the moment that I’ve possibly ever been.

My arms are still aching, as is everything else to be fair, but there is nothing like walking away from a gig knowing that you left it all out on there and so did everyone else.

They were incredible and so were every single one of you inside the venue. I don’t care how over the top it may sound, nights like that are when the power of music literally floors you and makes you feel grateful to be alive to experience that level of emotion.

Anyway, enough of all that uncomfortable sincerity; this review of Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy wouldn’t be complete without the song everyone was waiting for: ‘Teal’, a.k.a. song that made me so happy I let out a tear the second the intro started. Soak it in and go see them for yourself.