Tag: This Will Destroy You

Manchester Venue 68 and 69 Gullivers NQ – Part 2

I have encountered many free bonus gigs at Gullivers NQ when visiting before and after attending another scheduled gig in the local area, it is also a useful ten-minute easy jaunt from Manchester Piccadilly station for the trains to and from home.

Upstairs via some cramped stairs leads you to Gullivers NQ Ballroom with a capacity of 110.  It is a windowless room with a raised stage at the end and can be very warm and a tad claustrophobic when busy. When less populated a gap on the side walls can be located to lean and sway upon.  I have attended fourteen gigs there in total.

My first visit prior to a gig at the Ruby Lounge on 21/10/10 was to see a local band called Blackjack Boys. Eighteen months later I witnessed Manchester trio the Onions who were in the Talking Heads mould, they garnered some attention in the following couple of years with a suite of 6 music sessions.

I visited three times in 2014, the initial one to watch Young Mountains, a six-piece post-rock band from Atlanta, Georgia who I surmise were named after their compatriots This Will Destroy You’s debut album.

Young Mountains. Image Credit listenherereviews.com

The second was a slightly anomalous one as it was the only time, I have paid for a singular gig there and not as part of a festival. The band in question was History of Apple Pie from London, a shoegaze act in the vein of Pains of Being Pure at Heart who I had seen previously at Salford Arms. They weren’t quite as good as that debut performance as the sound was a bit muddy prior to asking the audience ‘do we need to turn our guitars up?’ which received categoric assent from myself.    

History of Apple Pie. Image Credit NME

The final piece of that trilogy was Walton Hesse, another Manchester band who produced a fine slice of Americana with pleasing harmonies, reminding me of a country version of Nada Surf. Next on the roster was a double bill of London three-piece Mayors of Miyzaki and Personal Best, a punk band from Bristol. The latter acts initial line up having future members of Attack! Vipers! and Caves in their ranks.

At the 2016 edition of the Dot-to-Dot festival I saw the mod band Pleasure Beach, somewhat appropriately deriving from Blackpool formed by two schoolmates from Carr Hill High School in Kirkham. That school bizarrely being the first team we played at football when I was goalkeeper in the fifth year for Cuthbert Mayne High School in Preston.

Next on the list was a post-hardcore band from Leeds called Unwave, who were a very bracing challenging listen. At the tail end of 2017 another Leeds act called Mush were in town, they had an enjoyable off-kilter sound reminiscent of alt-rock luminaries such as Sonic Youth and Pavement. The band are currently about to go on a British tour.

Continuing the Yorkshire theme at the 2018 Dot-to-Dot I saw KAWALA who met originally whilst studying in Leeds but now reside in London, they were a tad limp for my tastes. Later that year I see roots singer Debra Ohalete who had African influences within her music.

Next on the Gullivers roster was Brighton based folk singer Bess Atwell. She was prolific from a tender age and started writing her own songs at the age of thirteen. My penultimate attendance there was to witness local post-punk four-piece Springfield Elementary. They reminded me a little of Stump of C86 fame.

My only post-covid visit thus far in April 22 was at the Fair Play Northern Quarter festival to see YAANG. Originally a Manchester duo called YANG they added a third member Ben White, previously of Working Mens Club during lockdown resulting in adding an extra A to their name. They were difficult to quantify but perhaps an apt description might be an electro doomy Joy Division, am I selling them well?  

Manchester Venues 63 and 64

Located deep in the Northern Quarter there used to reside the Cord Bar. It was situated on Dorsey Street off Tib Street, almost directly behind the Gullivers public house. Apparently at the start of the millennium, it was one of the ‘go to’ places in NQ as it was cited as a favoured DJ venue and like many in this area of town was a visiting spot for an embryonic Elbow.

It suffered declining numbers over the years and a reboot attempt under the name of NYQ in 2018 was unsuccessful, however I visited its latest incarnation a couple of weeks ago prior to watching the Courettes at Night and Day. It is now called Alvarium with a restaurant called Lazy Tony’s Lasagneria where we had a table by the old stage!   

I visited there three times under the auspices of the Dot to Dot and Carefully Planned multi venue festivals and quite liked the establishment as it always reminded of an archetypal New York diner style bar you would see on the American cop shows. The bands played in the downstairs bar, and this could be accessed via a choice of stairs at the front or rear of the venue.

Cord Bar. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

My first attendance on 19/10/14 was accessed from the latter steps and the acts played in an alcove where rather quaintly and somewhat niffily the space for the small number of punters was located outside the lavatories! The artist was a young local acoustic artist called John Ainsworth who released his debut album the following year.

When I landed there a year later, I discovered the stage was in the same place but was now thankfully facing the opposite way into a larger less pungent room. We saw Howie Reeve, who is a self-titled acoustic bass troubadour from the South of Glasgow. In May 2016, on my final visit I witnessed another local musician called Sam Frost. 

Nearby in the famous Afflecks Palace block there is a fine basement bar and live music venue. The club has had a couple of entrances, either from Oldham Street or Tib Street. It has also had a few name changes over the years, originally a singular 500 capacity music venue called Moho, then a hybrid site called Manchester Dive NQ. It is now called Dive Bar and Grill and is more focussed on being a food/sports bar and it appears that live music is now longer on the roster, and it is a late-night DJ location only.   

My first visit in April 2012 was in the Moho moniker era and we accessed the gig from the Tib Street entrance, and I thought the place had a decent layout.

Manchester Dive NQ. Image Credit venuescanner.com

Now, from the starting point of being a humongous Mogwai fan I have always searched out other like-minded bands positioned in the post-rock genre. However, a few of these have turned out to be in the Mogwai lite category, God is an Astronaut and I so I Watch from Afar spring to mind.

An exception to this was the band that night with the vaguely threatening but musically promising name of This Will Destroy You from Texas. They were an excellent live band, and it looks like the band are still operational and under their revised name of TWDY they are scheduled to play the ArcTangent festival later in 2022. It was also jointly my 150th different venue and my 150th gig in Manchester.  

After the change to Dive NQ where they moved the stage to the front of the venue, I attended four other times between 2016 and 2019. The first was to see a local blues-rock band called Turrentine Jones. The second was to see a young Sheffield band called Exhort, who were perhaps unsurprisingly heavily influenced by Arctic Monkeys. This was prior to attending a Julia Jacklin gig.  

On the penultimate visit whilst at the Dot-to-Dot festival we saw local act China Lane led by Reuben Hester who apparently after the band disbanded appeared on the reality TV programme Little Mix the Search. This was just before walking across the road to Night and Day to catch a young astounding Fontaines DC for the first time. My final attendance there was to see Saytr Play.