The silly season is coming to and end and darker nights means back rooms and basements are coming alive with music once again. Autumn 2025 kicks off with a double bill of encouragingly strange new sounds.
First up is Flip Top Head from Brighton. They’re a 6 piece, crammed onto the small stage with keyboards, violin and guitars plus a deputising bassist drafted in having only rehearsed earlier that day not that you’d know it, such is the confidence with which the songs are attacked.
There’s no obvious focal point – singer Bowie Bartlett (nominative determinism alert) is tucked away behind the PA but has an excellent, soaring voice as a counterpoint to the other singer Bertie who leans into the dreaded ‘Sprechgesang’ spoken word thing but not to the point where we’re looking at another Sleaford Yard Cleaners D.C. – far from it.
The mix of soaraway and spoken is just right and musically things are an enjoyably disorientating mix of jazzy, folky, avant rock but with plenty of musical anchors and hooks to keep you interested. I like ’em.
Headlining tonight are Dog Race. Early days for them but it’s a sell out show and there’s a definite buzz in the air. The band file on – I’m still getting used to the fact that Paul Calf moustaches, mullets and clobber last seen on Limahl from Kajagoogoo in 1983 are in vogue again but preferable to Library-hater Liam Gallagher and his fucking designer anorak gurning at me from billboards. Unlike the support, Dog Race have a very definite focal point in singer Katie Healy. Her voice, rising from deep and guttural, to screamy to an almost operatic warble is quite something. I hear a hint of Billy Mackenzie, Anohni/Anthony, and maybe going way back Lene Lovich. It lifts Dog Race sky high above the standard 2025 Indie competition – and although Healy is not exactly throwing shapes she puts in a completely gripping performance.
Musically things are more conventional – bass driven, synth and guitar. The Cure, Joy Division, Soft Cell, Bauhaus…so far, so 4AD. The vocals take us to some uncanny spaces and the music needs to follow it – and sure enough there is an unnamed new song – written days earlier – where the band hang back and Healy plays solo on keys and we can hear the unconventional intonation and tone she can conjur up before she steps away and things explode. There’s something happening here. Quietly charismatic, unsettling and wonderfully gothic but in a very 2025 way rather than a retro 80s way – and there is some serious frugging and grooving going on in the audience.
Following a triumphant headline set at Manchester Psychfest earlier this year, those little Horrors are back with what promoters like to call an ‘Underplay’ tour –
i.e. a run of intimate shows at smaller venues. Not to suggest that their appeal has become more selective (the tour sold out in no time), rather after a few years of minimal Rock Action for The Horrors this is to give them a chance to get up close and personal with an audience again and road test a few new songs ready for next year which promises a new LP ‘Night Life’, festival appearances and presumably some bigger stages.
The Horrors are also using this opportunity to showcase some new bands they want us to hear- different supports each night of the tour and we get a good one in the shape of MYNK – a London post-punk power trio who currently have just one digital EP to their name so far- produced by Horrors frontperson Faris Badwan no less – entitled ‘Pleaser’ and very good it is too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR2qDsltSMU
MYNK play as the venue slowly fills up and I find myself drawn into their world rather than lingering at the back – singer Bex drives the songs along with thundering bass and interacts with guitarist Lewis who plays the kinds of guitar I like – spectral not-quite riffs that hang somewhere in mid air. Just when you think this is yr standard Banshees/Wire/PiL style post-punk business – they swerve this way and that (both physically and sonically) and wrong-foot you – in a pleasingly disconcerting way. I’m into it, the gathering audience are too and I’ll definitely watch out for more MYNK – and so should you.
So, The Horrors. I go back with these guys – not as far as their Screaming Lord Goth debut ‘Strange House’ (which lest we forget, got rave reviews at the time) but certainly to their curveball 2nd LP ‘Primary Colours’ which I saw debuted at a raucous show in Manchester back in 2009 (the long, lost Ruby Lounge). This saw them find a sweet-spot between their B-movie horror shtick, My Bloody Valentine churning guitars and metronomic Kosmiche Musik and since then it’s been fun to follow them down a few unlikely paths – early Simple Minds-esque Big Music on ‘Skying’, the Numanoid/Depeche black-clad disco of ‘V’ and most recently a somewhat controversial step into Cyborg-metal with the ‘Lout’ EP – but always in the same skinny jeans and pasty complexions – the essential heart of the Horrors has always been there. Their only misstep, perhaps the somewhat directionless ‘Luminous’ LP notable by its absence from tonight’s set – although it has a few fan favourites on it too.
The other thing about the Horrors is they never seemed to play quite as often as I’d have liked – and like The Fall or New Order (before they turned Pro) they could be a bit erratic – indeed at Leeds in 2022 for a one-off show – the band seemed to struggle to fill the gaps left by former Keyboard player Tom Furse and a poor sound mix rendering Faris inaudible – which made for a frustrating and dispiriting experience for both band and audience. “Goodbye Forever” was the parting shot.
So it is a relief when they lurch onto the stage with the jabbing electronic stabs of ‘Whiplash’ (from the Lout EP) and we get a clearly audible Faris and the band in all their Horror.
Faris, still like a Gerald Scarfe cartoon of a rock star, lurches forward from his mic stand staring the audience out and leading the merry dance – the somewhat demonic Rhys Webb has decided to paint his face with panstick which drips down his face as the gig goes on to add a nice bit of Sensational Alex Harvey showmanship to the occasion. Josh the guitarist hangs in the shadows sending those signature churning washes of guitar up into the stratosphere and they crash into ‘Three Decades’, the first of 5 tracks from ‘Primary Colours’ – and we can relax cos there’s a band up on stage who look like they were born to do this – this is clearly going to be fucking ace. And it is.
There is a new drummer (not sure what happened to ‘Coffin’ Joe Spurgeon) but Jordan Cook does a sterling job and Amelia Kidd (who we can’t see hidden behind the speaker stack from where we’re stood) is getting busy with synths and backing vocals that are so crucial to the Horrors sound – she brings what was missing from that Leeds gig and injects some feminine cool into proceedings. If anything, she could do with her being louder in the mix – there is a point during ‘Sea Within A Sea’ where she gets the keyboard riff going and the phones go up and the energy level soars – more Keyboards please!
We get 3 new songs from the forthcoming ‘Night Life’ the first of which is ‘Trial By Fire’ – it’s classic Horrors but with brutal bursts of violent distortion and Faris (who is of Palestinian heritage if you didn’t know), leaves us in no doubt about what might be driving some of this newfound fury.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV69ePJv8Yo
It sets the scene for a new LP which, based on what has been played and released so far seems to tie up the clues left from ‘Strange House’ up to ‘Lout’ and maybe they’ve arrived at a sound which is truly theirs .
For a band accused of ‘Record Collection Rock’ (see also Primal Scream) tonight everything hangs together and you start to see a band with a strong identity that are built to last – with the set ending with their most poptastic moment, the weirdly bleak dance anthem ‘Something to Remember Me By’ but even that fits seamlessly.
As always there are shouts at the encore for ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’ and cuts from ‘Strange House’ and – who knows maybe a veteran Horrors will revisit those one day but for now we’re looking at band who have tunes to burn (and they don’t play all of them) a very promising new record and, still only in their 30s, maybe they’re only just getting started….
