In Photos: Blood Red Shoes @ Manchester Academy 3

Photos are kinda dull. Get Owen Richards on board!

Also started somewhere.

My last post was something a dickhead would write. Bad day at work. I'm sorry.

I was stuck in the same spot for ages and could'nt use the big ol lens for long so shots of the drummer were sparse I'm afraid, he is technically in five of them though...
No worries Pinknoise I'll work on the dullness.

In a week of some excellent gigs, I would actually pick out this one as kind of special. There was a punky feel about things from the start, and what I liked was how one scene merged into another. It marks the return of 1984 who claimed a few British hearts during their their last visit to Manchester in April. In the crowded World of copy-cat music, it is really good to hear something a bit different.

Rolo Tomassi provided shock and awe in fair measure; especially to the uninitiated, but also to those on the edge of the moshing. It must have been amusing from the stage. There is no logical reason why someone like me should like this band, apart from them being really nice decent people; I don't have much appetite for hardcore. It is a mystery to me, but an interesting one.

Against all all the odds then what Rolo Tomassi succeed in doing in song after song is to entice you into their world, engage you, and express in way you cannot what you feel about things. I was deeply impressed. The touch I really like is how Emma ends her journeys into that other noisy world with a sweet quiet reassurance in the form of a return to that quiet place she started from.

Blood Red Shoes - well what a transition. Is it the atmosphere, the line-up, or they who have changed. Whatever it is, they have cut their corner and are confidently claiming it for their own. This is a band to see - like all the best duos they provide such an intimate interaction that they when they are fired up they let things go like a controlled explosion; it is directed at you. Even when the stage was invaded, their instruments in danger of falling over, they held it together in spectacular fashion.

I suspect that life will change now for all these bands. I am very glad I saw them on the cusp of greater fame and indeed of greatness.