Friday at In The City

Full confession to make: despite being a resident of Manchester for ten years and despite writing about In The City for Metro year after year, I've never actually been to this festival of new music before (incidentally, these were previews, not reviews!). My excuse? A combination of being away the very weekend it was on, and not really being that interested in seeing a bunch of "hotly tipped" bands in Brannigans.

But In The City seemed to get something spectacularly right this year - not least because it has relocated to where it should naturally have been in the first place: The Northern Quarter. There was a real excitement in the streets on Friday as people rushed from venue to venue check out a much-tweeted about band. In short, it felt like a proper festival, and the people I spoke to said it was the best In The City in years.

First up were Rapids! at Umbro's impressive Dale Street space. Sadly their MySpace is undergoing maintenance at the moment so I can't expand upon my initial impression that they sounded a lot like Foals and a little like Bloc Party. All shouty vocals and intricate guitar. Still, they had Steve Lamacq nodding in the shadows, looking very much like the indie godfather he is. And "hello, we're from Bournemouth" has to be the most unintentionally hilarious piece of stage banter to a bunch of early evening Manchester hipsters in quite some time.

On, then to Dry Bar. The last time I was there I was DJing at the much missed Helen Of Troy Does Countertop Dancing night, and it stunk. But I was really impressed with their new, clean, and wide open basement space. And The Bewitched Hands filled it nicely. They look like a bunch of beardy West Coast slackers in love with sunkissed psychedelia (apart from, ahem, the girl in the band. She didn't have a beard). So it was quite nice to find that they're French, and not entirely in love with psychedelia. In fact they revealed a shared love of straightahead singalong pop (Work) and bouncy indie (Sea). But a frontman in glasses? Only Jarvis Cocker can pull that off. I say this as a full time glasses wearer myself.



Talking of refurbed venues, The Castle now has a really very good gig space out the back. Intimate, though, isn't the word. It was absolutely rammed for Working For A Nuclear Free City - and unsurprisingly so. I wrote about their interesting mix of Krautrock, electronica and straight blissed out rock back in 2006, and their set four years on merited a fresh look at their back catalogue. In the past year I've seen Battles and Caribou pack out Academy 2 and Deaf Institute, and WFANFC are on their propulsively epic level. Check out Autoblue - it's the kind of tune Karl Hyde would have ranted over in Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman days.

Knocking me out of such reverie was Youthless. Quite simply, they were the best, most impactful and exciting new band I saw all night - a two piece very loosely from Portugal who absolutely rocked Umbro. Nominally just a drummer and a bass guitarist, armed with an array of effects pedals they mutate into a garage dance/rock monster. Sometimes this trips over into straight metal, but seeing as all continental Europeans must at once stage have an Iron Maiden obsessions, this is understandable. Maybe two's all you need for a band these days.



In fact, I'd been expecting one for Windmill back at The Castle - Matthew Dillon. For he is Windmill, and has been for two albums of delightful piano-led alternative rock. But here he had a full band and it really made sense, widening his sonic pallette and suggesting there's more to come when Dillon sits down next year to write his theird record. He still sounds like he's from New Orleans rather than Newport Pagnell, though.



Dutch Uncles are very much an English band, and as such a fitting way to finish the evening. Their jumpy, frenetic indie-pop and post-punk has been so hotly-tipped for so long one wonders whether the buzz is actually becoming a millstone. While their peers - Delphic and Everything Everything - have signed deals and released albums, Dutch Uncles are still on the fringes. Some of that might be down to an ill-judged release on an enthusiastic German label, which means they're not labelled as being "new" anymore. Some is certainly down to a sound which is perhaps just a little too clever to fully engage. Tonight, they play their best song - Face In - first, when the sound isn't quite right.

Dutch Uncles 'Face In' from Love & Disaster on Vimeo.

Not the In The City "moment" I was expecting then. That came with Youthless. But the star of the evening was undoubtedly Manchester's Northern Quarter. The range of venues was impressive, and the city came alive. More of the same next year please. I might even make it two years in a row.

With thanks to Holly and Will at In House Press for arranging the wristband