Tag: Off The Record

Manchester Venue 74 Soup Kitchen – Part 1

The Soup Kitchen which has recently been rebranded simply as Soup resides deep in the Northern Quarter on Spear St, within stumbling distance of the Night and Day venue. During the Covid apocalypse an eminently sensible decision was made to pedestrianise the nearby Stevenson Square area to create a European style outdoor seating vibe and thankfully this ethos has been retained post-pandemic.

Manchester Soup Kitchen. Image Credit Pinterest.

The upstairs room is laid out in a canteen style with long wooden benches to create a communal atmosphere. It has decent but slightly overpriced tucker available and has a plethora of craft ales to imbibe. Downstairs resides the venue with a small bar to the right and stage to the left with a 150 capacity. When approaching the room limit, it can get very busy down in the slightly damp cellar setting.  The unisex toilets would be best quantified in the ‘basic’ category, but it all adds to the grungy allure of the place. They have a lot of upcoming bands and DJ’s who frequent their busy live roster.

I have attended Soup fourteen times in total and first heard of the venue when the much-hyped Milk Music from Washington DC played there on 17/05/12. They had only released a couple of early singles by this stage, and they had an engaging slacker vibe about them, despite the venue only being half full. There was little audience participation until they somewhat oddly woke from the slumber on the last song to create an impromptu mosh pit!

I must say since this gig the band completely dropped off my radar until I began researching this article and was surprised to find they are still in existence. I am just now listening to their debut album ‘Cruise Your Illusion’ which has shades of Neil Young, Dinosaur Jr and Meat Puppets therein which sounds like a tidy combination to me. They were supported on the night by an appearance from Eagulls who I cited in last week’s Beacons Festival review. They were my only two viewings of the Leeds based band, coincidentally within a couple of months of each other.

Milk Music. Image Credit VICE.

Many of my attendances have been part of multi event wristband events such as Dot to Dot or Off the Record festivals and one such appearance was a couple of years later to see Remember Remember. The Glasgow band was initially the brainchild of Graeme Rowland who released a 2008 album with participation from other collaborators. By the time I witnessed them in 2014 they had morphed into a seven-piece band and had just released their third album ‘Forgetting the Present’, before they subsequently split the following year.

They were on Rock Action roster run by Mogwai, with whom they had supported. They were also in the fully instrumental post-rock genre, but they were of a gentler variation than their label counterparts and I enjoyed their show.

A year later I saw Worriedaboutsatan from Bradford, their name deriving from a track by Belgium band Deus. They were formed by Gavin Millar around 2006, before being joined by Leeds College of Music pal Tom Ragsdale. They have a crossover post-rock/electronic template and have supported luminaries such as 65daysofstatic and Maybeshewill. They garnered considerable radio airplay, and their music has also somewhat bizarrely been featured on Coronation Street!  

Manchester Venues 68 and 69 Gullivers NQ – Part 1

Located squarely at the top end of Oldham Street you would find the distinctive green fronted Gullivers NQ, one of the stalwart venues of the Northern Quarter. It has a fair old history dating back to 1865 and has an interesting background, at one point existing as a jazz club and a transvestite bar.

It has had several names, once a Wilsons brewery house called the Albert Hotel, then latterly The Grenadier before the ever-reliable JW Lees brewery took ownership and renamed it Gullivers sometime in the 1970’s.

Gullivers NQ. Image Credit tasteofmanchester.com

I have discovered that in Manchester there is a proliferation of small breweries, many around the back streets near Piccadilly station, however a lot of them, for example Cloudwater serve cloudy and citra beers. Though I would never turn one of these down if offered, because that would be downright foolish, I do prefer the more traditional ales and thus JW Lees served in Gullivers and a more local pub nearby me, the Parrswood hits that very spot.    

It is an archetypal grass roots venue and alongside live music, has spoken word, theatre, film screenings and comedy events. The pub has a homely traditional bar leading you into a back room and downstairs venue. The pub sits squarely across the road from another principal and sister venue the Castle.

It has regularly been utilised as a hub point for picking up tickets for multi wrist band events such as Carefully Planned, Fair Play and Off the Record festivals, these festivals accounting for many of my attendances at gigs in this establishment.

It contains two venues, the first accessed down a thin corridor at the rear of the building is the Gullivers NQ Lounge, mainly for acoustic acts with a capacity of 40, though it feels highly populated when only half that number are in residence.

I have attended there four times, the first at Dot-to-Dot Festival in 2016 to see Lyon Apprentice, a folk duo originally from Melbourne who were residing in Manchester at this time and recording in their home studio. 

Later that year, we uncovered a diamond by witnessing an early performance by Katherine Priddy, a folk musician from Birmingham. She was a captivating engaging presence with a distinctive guitar style, dark lyrics and hypnotic voice, a rare treat!

Her stock rose exponentially in the intervening years with her debut ep receiving considerable airplay on Radio 2 and 6Music with folk behemoth Richard Thompson naming it as his ‘best thing he has heard all year’ in MOJO magazine, being so singularly impressed he invited her out onto a support slot on his upcoming tour.

Katherine Priddy. Image Credit birminghamreview.net

Her first appearance at Cambridge Folk Festival garnered her with the Christian Raphael Award, a prize awarded to one deserving developing artist from the festival each year. Her debut album ‘The Eternal Rocks Beneath’ received critical acclaim and she then backed that up with a sold-out national tour.   

Eighteen months later I witnessed singer-songwriter Kate Anita, who around that time released a single called ‘Human’ accompanied by a documentary video which showcased her interpretation of the culture and community within her home city Manchester.  

My final attendance there was to see local Manchester artist Lindsay Munroe, who produced some honest unflinching music with strong vocals epitomised by her debut single ‘Split’. I heard shades of Mazzy Star and Sharon Van Etten in there, the latter I later discovered is a big fan of her output.