Oh yes, it’s that time again – time for our favourite thing: sharing a bunch of great tunes with our mates, i.e. you lot and, of course, they all happen to artists from the wonderful world that is the Manchester music scene.
Be it a band, solo artist or any other configuration you like, we spend a good chunk of our time every month digging through the best stuff coming out of this city and the surrounding boroughs.
Luckily, there’s so much talent around these parts that we never struggle for choice, the only tough bit is singling out a mere handful every few weeks.
It’s tough work, we know, but we keep calm and carry on, for you. You’re welcome. Anyway, enough of that, let’s get stuck into the Manchester artists who’ve released new music or those who’ve simply stood out to us of late.
Five Manc bands and solo artists on our radar recently
1. Antony Szmierek
First up is the local king of spoken word and multi-talented Antony Szmierek from Hyde, whose melodic poetry spans multiple genres from hip-hop and electronic to alternative and even indie notes here and there, but always comes back to one core linchpin: the lyrics.
ADVERTISEMENT
Bursting onto the scene with his debut EP, Poems To Dance To, back in 2023 – a title that still pretty much sums up his whole style – we’ve got a lot of love for the teacher who’s split his time between mentoring children with special needs and chasing his dream. Now he gets to go full speed on the latter.
The obvious love for literature runs throughout all of his material but it’s always delivered in such an effortlessly relatable, casual and almost conversational manner, as if you’re just sat in listening to his stream of consciousness. ‘Heaven Is Other People’, ‘The Words to Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘Rounders’ are our entry points, but you’ll get a little something different from all of them – and you’ll definitely dance.
Over to Stockport next and no, we won’t be listening to any ‘it’s Cheshire nonsense’ today because we firmly want to put The Rolling People in our camp as there’s something just so familiar about them even though they’ve only just started putting out music.
The Stopfordian four-piece delivers good defiant British rock with very few frills, often fast-paced and Oasis-sounding in riffs, whilst other times reminding us of Shed Seven and drawing other contemporary comparisons such as The Crooks or resembling Tom Concannon of The Stanleys in vocals only just a touch gruffer.
These lads are still only in college but given how big they sound already, we’re expecting great things from them. For your first listen, there isn’t tonnes to get through but we’d go for ‘Grateful For Nothing’, ‘I’ll Be There’ and their latest single which has seen some love on Radio X, ‘Before It’s Gone’.
ADVERTISEMENT
They also appeared on one of StreamGM’s most recent episodes of Spill The Sound.
3. Pip Millett
Another big genre swing now and we’re going to the R&B meets funk and soul stylings of the ever-so-smooth Pip Millett, who might just be one of our favourite artists in Manchester at the minute, let alone outright vocalists.
Having hit another boom following her most recent COLOURS performance, we do not forgive if you’re only coming across her (tut-tut) but she’s been pretty prolific when it comes to releasing music ever since 2018 and has already collaborated with Maverick Sabre, Chase and Status, Ghetts and more.
We reckon you won’t find many better singers in Greater Manchester right now and if you enjoy female artists like Jorja Smith, Joy Crookes and Miraa May, you’ll love ‘r Pip. Start with ‘Heavenly Mother’, ‘June’ ‘Slow’ and go from there. We truly think she’s going full global soon enough so enjoy here whilst she’s still kind of our little secret.
Back to the guitar-driven stuff now and another solo artist who’s been putting in the hard yards for some time now but is finally starting to reap the rewards. It’s everyone’s favourite curly-haired busker, Alex Spencer.
The young lad from Droylsden has gradually gone from chatting with us lot on Market Street and playing City Square at the Etihad before games to now playing for the players themselves, supporting the likes of fellow Manc rising star Seb Lowe on tour and booking his biggest headline shows yet.
ADVERTISEMENT
He’s having quite the journey for someone who only just finished his GCSEs back in June 2023 and now that he’s signed to the same label as The Lottery Winners and The Coral, he can really push on. ‘Do What I Wanna’ and ‘Love And Let Go’ are probably his most well-rounded tracks, but we’ve still got a soft spot for his debut ‘A Night To Waste’ as we know the graft that went into getting to that point.
THE LOVE FOR FEAR WILL KILL THE FUTURE HAS BEEN CRAZYY! Thankyou so much❤️🩶🔥
Here’s the lyric video for it and its finally on YouTube for everyone asking!
Now to our final act and we have only two moods left: head-bobbing while our hair drapes to the ground or lying up on our backs as we stare up at a starry sky. That’s our best description of how the shoegaze approach of Manchester alt-rock outfit cruush makes us feel.
That new wave space in music can sometimes be a hard-to-define corner of modern music and that’s often why we love it so much but, in the case of this fuzzy-sounding local foursome, those distorted guitars and and floating vocals are textbook.
You get notes of everything from Wolf Alice and Slowdive to My Bloody Valentine and even Drop Nineteens if the lead singer was a girl. They’re everything you want from modern shoegaze and whether it’s ‘Ladybird Song’, ‘Stick in the Mud’ or ‘All My Plants Are Dead’, they never deviate too far from a winning formula we know and love.
Aww, and that’s all she wrote for another month. It always goes so quick.
ADVERTISEMENT
We know you’re gutted, we are too but don’t worry, the thing about these regular series and having such a rich pool to fish from is that we’ll be back with more up-and-coming Manchester artists come the end of May – god, isn’t finding new music just the best?
Keep soaking in those tunes, folks, and be sure to let us know who you’ve been enjoying lately in the comments. We thank you in advance.
Oh, and of course, if you haven’t caught up on our picks from last month, look no further.
Featured Images — Pip Millett (via Facebook)/cruush (via IG)/Press Image
Audio
Girls Aloud at AO Arena, Manchester – setlist, stage times, tickets, and more
Daisy Jackson
Girls Aloud will be performing in Manchester for the first time in more than a decade this week.
The iconic pop group are about to take on a three-night residency at the huge AO Arena, a tour that will honour founding bandmate and Mancunian Sarah Harding who sadly passed away in 2021.
Cheryl, Kimberley, Nadine, Nicola and Sarah won over the nation on Popstars: The Rivals, and have legions of loyal fans excited to see hits like Sound of the Underground, Love Machine, and The Promise live.
Girls Aloud will be marking their 20 year anniversary with the tour, which kicked off in Dublin and is almost ready to head across to Manchester.
If you’re going along to the AO Arena to see Girls Aloud, here’s everything you need to know.
Tickets for Girls Aloud in Manchester
There are still a handful of tickets available for Girls Aloud’s three shows in Manchester, though a lot of those are resale tickets.
You can also book hospitality packages and platinum seats still.
Stage times are always subject to change, but based on Girls Aloud’s tour dates so far, this is when you should be able to expect them to hit the stage.
Doors – 6pm
Support – 7.30pm
Girls Aloud – 8.45pm
Support act
Warming up the crowds so far has been DJ Mr Theo, who’s been filling arenas with back-to-back pop bangers.
It should set the tone for a pop-tastic evening in Manchester.
Act I Untouchable The Show Something New Love Machine Can’t Speak French Biology Whole Lotta History Act II Wake Me Up Sound of the Underground Girl Overboard No Good Advice Graffiti My Soul Long Hot Summer I’ll Stand by Youn(Pretenders cover) ACT III Sexy! No No No… On the Metro Jump (For My Love) Call the Shots Something Kinda Ooooh Encore: The Promise
The Mezz at the AO Arena
The Mezz restaurant at the AO ArenaThe Mezz bar at the AO Arena
The Mezz is the AO Arena’s newly-opened, ultra-luxury members’ bar and restaurant, where gig-goers can kick back in relax in beautiful surroundings before, during and after the show.
There are a range of packages, including themed bottomless offers (for Girls Aloud, that means prosecco and small plates), plus a restaurant with a menu created by Simon Rogan.
Then you can head through your own dedicated entrance into the plush seats reserved for The Mezz guests.
Let’s all stop pretending Nickelback are anything but mint – their gig at Manchester’s AO Arena proved it
Danny Jones
Don’t ask us how, why or when, but once upon a time, long, long ago, half the world decided that they didn’t like Nickelback and that’s just the way it’s been ever since.
In fact, they’re probably one of the most Marmite acts, not to mention most memed bands on the planet – they even have a new documentary called Hate to Love – but we’re here to put a stop to that today.
Who knows what it was that put a bee in the collective bonnet when it came to Nickelback all those years ago, all we know is that we’re bored of it and you shouldn’t waste a second more of your life pretending to hate them.
This isn’t even a guilty pleasure thing: we have absolutely no shame in ‘confessing’ that we think Nickelback are mint and their gig at the AO Arena in Manchester on Monday night proved it.
Exhibit A: it all started with an absolutely perfect choice of support act in The Lottery Winners. While you could argue their brand of indie rock doesn’t necessarily line up with what you’d expect most Nickelback fans to listen to, their pop sensibility and love of proper catchy hooks definitely do.
The local band from just down the road in Leigh continue to be one of our favourite Manchester bands at the minute not least because of their banter and energy up on the stage.
Yes, their tunes are great and we particularly loved the audience participation they got going for ‘Start Again’ (we would have really loved Frank Turner to suddenly appear for his bit), but it was Tom’s effortless Manc chat and jokey but sincere energy throughout the set that won over the crowd.
By the time they were about to leave the stage they managed to get the crowd jumping arguably just as much as they did when the headliners came out. Speaking of…
After a short little intro from a running VT of a getaway van leading a police chase that looked like a cutscene from some kind of late 2000s PS3 trailer (you just have to chuckle at the over-the-top Americana of it all), they erupted on stage to kick things into fifth gear.
They say Canadians are famously polite but there was nothing reserved about this entrance; they smashed the doors down to set the arena to full party mode with banger after banger and, honestly, we forgot just how many they had.
It’s not often you hear this phase unironically, but this was, as Chad put it, a good old fashioned ‘rock show’ and the roughly 20,000 fans were all ‘rocking out’ from start to finish.
The four-piece were very much enjoying a little bit of naughtiness from the Manchester crowd too, with the camera panning to a woman holding a sign that read ‘I like my pants around my feet’ – the first line from ‘Figured It Out’ – to which the frontman replied, “me too” before proceeding to play the song in full.
Those little moments of funny nonsense didn’t stop there either – not even close.
From jokingly introing the song as ‘Look at this graaaph’ and confessing that they do have the internet, to getting a member of the crew on stage to serve shots as they got the crowd to chant his name, they were just having fun and throwing some very good tunes in between.
That slightly odd and nostalgic visualiser kept popping up in the background every now and again too but the icing on the cake had to be when they got a literal Chad Kroeger lookalike on stage to sing ‘Rockstar’ with them.
You’ve not quite lived until you’ve seen a somewhat tipsy Manc with the original long, blonde Nickelback hair in a black band tee tucked into blue jeans and a big shiny belt buckle genuinely make the actual bloke from Nickelback want to grow his back.
A shining moment
There were lots of highlights and particularly memorable moments to pick out amongst all the fun.
Be it rhythm guitarist Ryan Peake explaining how the QR code on the screen was to help raise funds for wells in the third world before they played ‘When We Stand Together’, or hearing everyone roll back the years as they raspily sang ‘How You Remind Me’, we were spoilt for choice.
Watching the AO Arena bouncing to ‘Burn It to The Ground’ was also up there with some of the standouts, but there was no more beautiful sight than seeing the band bring The Lottery Winners back out on stage to have an arena full of Mancs belting out ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.
Chad said at the time, “Now we know you can sing”, and true to form we were in full voice from that moment on, singing every word, every line and every song from what suddenly felt like a greatest hits tour because the truth is, Nickelback are great and you’re just lying to yourself if you think otherwise.
We were slightly gutted we didn’t get to hear ‘This Means War’, ‘Never Gonna Be Alone’ and a fair few others, but that’s what happens when you take a band that has been around for nearly three decades, with a discography this rich, and try to cram everything into a couple of hours.
So we’re hoping that puts an end to his nonsense that the rock veterans are rubbish because they’re not, they’re mint. Come on, join us – the dark days are over and we’re saying it’s ok to admit you like them.
And just wait, we’re coming for you Coldplay haters next…
Danny Jones -
30th April 2024 
