In the City Report – Manchester, 30 September - 3 October 2005
By Andy N

So it all starts again. Manchester gets gripped in the fever of “In the City”, it's so called “Urban Glastonbury” where over a variety of venues and 4 different nights, a whole host of bands/artists are given a chance to impress record labels.

Unlike last year, when health issues caused me major grief, this year I was determinated to enjoy it as much as possible.

Things got off to a pretty bad start sadly, when we made the mistake of going to a bar called Font on the Friday Night. While the bar itself may have been a good bar to go in, frankly as a venue for “In the City” it was shocking as they were placed downstairs with a tiny, little mixing desk which was unfortunate for the three acts we managed to hear, as the noise from the crowd almost drowned them out totally – Emma Harvey, who had a not bad Liz Phair sort of sounding voice (and did a really sweet cover version of Patsy Cline's “Crazy”), Peter Haley who sounded like a second rate Damian Rice and Jenny McCormick who sounded like a really good folk singer.

Saturday night time, in contrast to both Sunday and Monday, was always going to be a lot quieter, but I and Octave Sounds (aka Jeff) popped out to Selfridges in the centre of Manchester for a few hours to catch a few acts.

First up, we saw a really naff acoustic/electric singer songwriter called Tom Cartledge, which sounded way too close to the self centred bollocks of James Blunt and David Gray for comfort.

Isobel Heyworth, who followed next, was thankfully miles and miles better.

Regular readers of my website ( http://www.geocities.com/aen1mpo ) will know I dearly love Isobel's music, with her hushed tones and delicate Nick Drake-ish guitars being a joy to behold if you watch her in the right venue. Here, despite the fact it was an unusual venue, she was amazing despite the fact she mostly stuck to new material aside from a wistful “Just For You.” The new material, from her new album which I haven't heard yet, showed a deeper sense of maternity with “My Red Dress” and a song which I didn't catch the name of about being buried under a tree were mournful but hopeful rather than depressing and she looked a lot more confident. Essential – and Angry Left Wing Mofo was mentioned on flyers she handed out afterwards.

After that, perhaps surprisingly was the R ‘n' B sounding K.T.Forester, who complete with 2 dancers and a rapper who I think was called Invincible followed very strangely and though on a personal level I thought they sounded way too close to Destiny's Child for my liking, I guess were good if you like that sort of thing and I could certainly see them hitting the charts here comfortably.

We ended up in the Frog and Bucket on Sunday Night and watched a local group called Laymar who certainly played a very loud almost Science Fiction sort of set which almost sounded like Mogwai playing a set of instrumental Joy Division cover versions. Excellent.

Leeds based iLIKETRAINS (Interviewed fairly recently on my website) perhaps played a kind of similar path, except they had a vocalist who despite sounding close to Nick Cave in places meshed brilliantly with their constantly developing noise; their finale “Stainless Steel” in particular saw their second guitarist start playing his guitar with a violin bow.

By the time we got to Monday lastly, I must admit there was nothing that really caught my eye in advance so we just decided to take a wander around and see what we could see.

Over the first hour, we skipped between various bars near the centre of Manchester (Bedlam, Squares, The Late Room to name but three) and saw bits of Catherine Trann (A nice girl-singer songwriter which we saw her play about a track and a half) and Cut-back (Perhaps akin to a bad early Adam and the Ants) before arriving at Squares where we suffered Chris Trait.

Nowadays I guess, male singer songwriters are ten to the penny as proved by the sudden rise of James Blunt (with the awful “You're Beautiful”) following on from the equally bland David Gray. I think for a singer songwriter to do something, they have to be that little bit something extra special and sadly Chris Trait does not fall into that level. It's not through a lack of effort, as the bloke clearly tries, but the magic is not there and when his band back him, despite their best efforts, they only sound second rate.

After that, we popped back into the Late Room and suffered Saint John (who did a bloody awful version of Oasis despite having a nice guitar line) before heading over to Bedlam to watch Susan Hedges and her band.

Now this was something a little different, as she launched initially into a P.J.Harvey-ish meets 80's rock sort of sound for a couple of songs, before then slowly sounding more and more like Led Zepillion with P.J.Harvey on vocals though not essential until they got to their finale, an ace version of Led Zepillion's “Rock N Roll”.. Good stuff mostly all in all, though perhaps not essential.

After that as a finale, we saw London based (but with a lead singer that originally came from Manchester), three piece The Fronts that was certainly like Julianne Regan (All About Eve) but backed with a very Keane sort of backing band which on the slower tracks (including an awesome Tori Amos-ish like crooner of a track with just the singer and the guy on keyboards) sounded wistful but retained a glorious pop rock sort of flavour on their more up tempo numbers. Their best track was probably the forthcoming single “Things You Don't See” which if there is any justice in the world should see the band shoot straight up the charts just on internet sales alone.

To conclude, perhaps the quality was slightly down on last year's material, but this was caused in part I feel by “In the City” themselves announcing things a good week and a half later than they did last year and leaving me less time to discover quality acts, but when it was good (for example Isobel Heyworth, iLIKETRAINS, Leymar or The Fronts) it was good, good stuff sometimes even bordering on the amazing but sadly when it was bad (Take your pick from any number of others listed and dozens of acts literally we heard while walking past Dry Bar, Night and Day, The Castle etc), believe me it was bloody awful.

No doubt, as always I will be there again next year but it would be a change also to hear something else but Oasis/Stone Roses sound-alike (or just as worryingly – David Gray/James Blunt copyists this year.) As some of the better acts I have heard this year proved, being different really does pay.

All pictures taken by Andy himself.