[Live Preview] A Dark Dark Xmas @ Storytellers, Stockton

Bear Love Records’ annual A Dark Dark Xmas returns this year to Stockton’s Storytellers on Friday 20th December for a special unplugged edition featuring an exclusive acoustic reworking of their debut album, Splendid Beast, from Teesside’s alt rock heroes Weathership. Fans can expect stripped back versions of live favourites like The Swimmer, Just A Ghost …

[Album] Weathership / Splendid Beast (Bear Love Records/Butterfly Effect)

Life’s great leveller, the duality of fear and love, is something a lot of men struggle with. It is in stark contrast to the animalistic instincts to provide and reproduce where God is, so often, war. Hormonal urges (and social constructs some going back hundreds of years) have pre-programmed us to shake our fists, beat …

[Live] Twisterella @ Various, Middlesbrough

The reverse headliner trend Twisterella have helped popularise over the years offers a unique sober environment and atmosphere to catch an established act or previous headliner first on the bill, a bit like watching a band for breakfast. So, York’s The Howl & The Hum kickstart proceedings this year with their subtle and sublime indie-rock …

[Editorial] The Detroit of the UK

When I first started visiting Middlesbrough’s den of progressive socialism and purveyor of all things record related, Press On Vinyl, co-founder Danny Lowe spoke enthusiastically to me about his vision for Middlesbrough as a kind of Detroit of the UK. He meant the inclusive Motown ethos of the 1960s where struggling artists could record music …

[Album] Falcon Threads / Fear Eats The Soul

Back in the 90s were you even in a moderately successful indie band if you didn’t spaff your first royalty cheque on a remix by UNKLE complete with an equally expensive sample from a B-movie or a long-forgotten celebrity interview? The practice reached its zenith when the likes of Fatboy Slim and UNKLE’s James Lavelle …

[Editorial] Plot Twist: The Overground Is Real

I talk a lot on here (and anywhere else that will have me) about the sub-cultural underground and how the worse things get the more creative people become. So, after several shared creative spaces closed in a relatively short space of time on Teesside recently it was encouraging to see a number of previously disparate …

[Live] Benefits @ KU Stockton (A Gig For Gaza)

The day I gave up smoking my better half and I went to see one of the final performances by a seminal local band at Saltburn Spa. “We’ll miss them,” my better half said as we got into the car to drive home, meaning the band, I concurring half-meaning the cigarettes, as a murder of …

Opinion: Thinking Critically

[First published by God Is In The TV on January 15, 2019] Back in March last year I wrote an article for a regional monthly reviewing all the up and coming single releases. It was something I’d done a few times before and didn’t give much thought to as I dismissed the majority of them …

[Live] Perfect Chicken @ Cafe Etch, Middlesbrough

Packed with an odd mix of chavs and art school cool kids Perfect Chicken’s Cafe Etch debut was another Boro happening for sure as the intimate venue continues to stake its claim as a place to be seen early doors on a Friday night along with Disgraceland a couple of streets away. Can-carrying North Face …

[App] Indie Town

Introducing Brandon Taj Hanick and Adam Franklin from Athens, Georgia and Seattle, Washington respectively. You know, just the homes of some of our favourite bands of all time such as REM and Nirvana and new underground and emerging artists such as Honeypuppy and Recess Party. Brandon has played with King of Prussia and Future Lives …