Northwest Gig Highlights – February 2016

Welcome, friends, to the other side of January, where it’s still mercilessly dark, gusty and harsh on the face but there are, at least, reasons to go out in it.

Those reasons begin with two of Manchester’s most hotly tipped bands of recent years, who both play in Liverpool this month. PINS, jazzed from recent support slots for Sleater-Kinney, are at the O2 Academy on 16 Feb, while Money, fresh off the back of their second album, Suicide Songs, are at Leaf on Bold Street on the 12th. The latter have taken a slightly unexpected tack with their new record; where you may have expected them to go bigger, Suicide Songs feels more stripped than 2013’s debut The Shadow of Heaven, largely resting upon frontman Jamie Lee’s by turns vulnerable and brittle vocals – which have always been front and centre, but are now, often, almost naked.

Another unmissable gig in Liverpool this month is, of course, the unparalleled John Grant at the Philharmonic Hall (7 Feb); tickets for that (and his date at Manchester Albert Hall, 8 Feb) appeared sold out at the time of going to press, but keep an ear out for any returns. There are, however, a handful of tickets left for Joanna Newsom at the Phil on 1 Mar; after a long time absent from these shores, her recent Halloween concert in Manchester in support of new album Divers had our reviewer bewitched: “when Sapokanikan’s dramatic unravelling has the audience this rapt, and when the processional glimmer of Leaving the City hits this hard, there’s surely a case for Divers’ material standing among her very best.” You know what to do.

In Manchester it’s a month of #feelings as we find ourselves suddenly reckoning with the passage of time: apparently Tame Impala are absolutely massive now (playing Manchester Arena on 11 Feb), while those for whom early MySpace demos of Cassius and Two Steps, Twice were the soundtrack of their teens may be horrified to discover that a decade has shot by, and Foals are now an arena-filling prospect (at the same venue, 13 Feb).

Having seemingly mastered the art of balance, closeting themselves away every couple of years to write a tightly wound album – each one a distinct progression from the last – and then touring like fuck, Yannis Philippakis and his crew have outlasted almost all of the hyped bands of the mid-noughties through a combination of genuine creative evolution and blood, sweat and tears (literally; photos of drummer Jack’s bloodied, bandaged hands aren’t rare). No need to worry that the 21,000-capacity Manchester Arena outsizes them; the holy roar of latest album What Went Down’s titular track announced ‘stadium’ within its first reptilian refrain. Let’s hope for a lighters-aloft Spanish Sahara/Late Night, too.

For a similarly visceral but slightly more intimate experience, Savages are at Albert Hall on 22 Feb. Urgent, unforgiving and inspiring for it, their articulate post-punk sound has made them something of a cult watch on the live circuit over the past couple of years. On new album Adore Life, it receives an extra shot of optimism; in an interview with The Skinny in this month's issue, band member Fay Milton says the album is “about being strong enough to change who you want to be.” As on the record’s striking cover art, we’re sure there’ll be fists in the air all across the room.

Finally, a couple of last-minute tip-offs, as reward for those dedicated enough to reach the end of this column. Fiery Furnaces co-founder Eleanor Friedberger plays from her new album New View at the Eagle Inn, Salford, on 4 Feb, though it’ll be a tricky choice for some as Trevor Powers aka Youth Lagoon plays Band on the Wall the same evening. The young Powers was just 22 when his breakthrough record, The Year of Hibernation, helped hasten along the so-called chillwave movement; where lesser acts have since faded, the Idaho-based musician’s keening, avian vocal, knack for a tune and approachable outspokenness on Twitter keep him part of the conversation.

Bookending things nicely, one of Liverpool’s outstanding experimental acts Ex-Easter Island Head play in Manchester, presenting the results of their stay at Salford’s arts complex Islington Mill as part of residency programme Samarbeta. They premiere New Music for Large Electric Ensemble – for which they have worked with a selection of local guitarists, making use of gamelan tunings, change-ringing patterns and the harmonics of mass-amplified strings – at the venue on 20 Feb.

Do Not Miss: Floating Points @ The Ritz, 12 Feb

He’s a name who seems to have been on the scene forever, as one of the heads behind London’s Plastic People club, an in-demand DJ and a frequent collaborator with Four Tet, yet Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points only released his debut album last year. And what a work it is. Five years in the making, Elaenia is an expansive and engrossing journey in compositional electronica, balling influences as wide-reaching as Kenny Wheeler, Toru Takemitsu and Moreton Subotnick into a clear whole and then blowing it apart; highlights include – as our reviewer had it – the “Tarkovskian dream sequence” of opening track Nespole, and the three-part Silhouettes, “which could almost pass as a threnody with its weaving, elegiac strings and operatic vocals.”

His full-band show, tonight upgraded to the Ritz from Academy 2 due to demand, easily merits your Do Not Miss pick this month as one of only a handful of dates in the UK before he heads off to the likes of Sónar Iceland; and those who fancy spending the whole evening in the company of Shepherd can head to the afterparty at Hidden, where he’ll be playing a four-hour set for a pre-Valentine's Day do, courtesy of local party heads Lost in Space. Dreamy. [Laura Swift]