Warriors newsletter 57!

It’s grimly fiendish the way summer ends not with a bang but a whimper. In the perma- drizzle of the soiled shores of Blighty those couple of hazy, lazy days of summer proper are already drifting into memory. They are the last fleeting luxuries we ever get in these days of rancid government run by strange man babies and tantrum children that make up the political class. As the sun fades behind the perma grey clouds we are left with a world that has truly gone ever madder - to hell in a handcart if the hand cart worked properly and ran on time but is currently two hours late like most the trains.

As Japan floods the oceans with radioactive water and Putin kills any rivals and the UK is run by feudal overlords it feels like the medieval times have never really ended but without any of the attendant chivalry…!

At least we have music to console ourselves with - a world to get lost in or a world to salve our bosoms with its spiky interference into the ongoing car crash. It's strange that in my long lost youth the rock n rollers were the lunatics and outsiders and in these febrile times its the people who run the world who are now the leering sociopaths - at least those old school musicians could conjure up a tune!

It's been great to see Miki Bereyni’s gradual ascent into a national treasure. Her memoirs reminded everyone of what a great pop culture observer she is and with the same added intense fan-dom as the rest of us. The book was witty and heartbreaking just like those far flung times and it put the spotlight back on her and her band Lush whose recent compilation came out. To celebrate we asked her for her current favourite albums and she came back with a list as great and thought provoking as you would expect.

Before summer turns into a boggy marsh we managed to make it to the Beautiful Days festival down in Devon - a £330 train ride from Manchester! Cripes! We expected gold-encrusted seats for that not a late train where you have to change a few times and have tour ticket inspected over and over again like you were some leering criminal on the loose. The festival was celebrating its twentieth anniversary and was a great collection of trad indie standards and new blood for young skulls that kept the crowd enthralled for the whole weekend.

Back in the day supergroups used to be full of men, and the resulting warring egos, with the classic example being Crosby Stills Nash and Young, but Boygenius are the exact opposite.They are a modern day indie supergroup formed by three of the best female songwriters around, and thankfully free of all that tiresome ego. It is clear from the moment as they gather round a mic backstage to sing an a capella version of Without You Without Them that Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus are a team of equals.

We are very much looking forward to Pauline Murray's upcoming book and to celebrate we have her booked for our  Louder Than Words festival which takes place in Manchester on November 10/12. There is lots on, but we have flagged up the Pauline Murray event as there are only 9 tickets left for her in conversation.

There is plenty more on at the festival as well - check this link for specific events or maybe get the weekend pass?

Those ever productive Osees returned with a new album On A Foul Form. The band are on fire! they sound louder and more overwhelming than ever and they have shredded their recent formulas, incinerated them and conjured something from the ashes that just might be their most brutal creation. It’s a total blast!

We didn't even know that Limp Bizkit were still going! The band, who were front runners in nu metal and its gonzoid, baggy shorted, Trump baseball cap long socked micro glory played Halifax’s rather wonderful Piece Hall last week. It's an amazing 5000 capacity space that looks like Venice in the Yorkshire hills and the noisy veterans delivered their loud and now middle aged take on teenage tantrums in its quaint environs. It was a mixed bag of nostalgia and catharsis in equal measure. Louder Than War’s Dave Beech was there.

Billy Duffy and Johnny Marr go back a long way - all the way back to their mid teens in Wythenshawe when they were a couple of skinny teenage guitar gunslingers trading licks and chords and dreams. Decades later, they found their singers and created musical narratives that changed the times. To this day, they remain six string buddies and every now and then Billy pops up on stage to add a few guitar lines to Johnny’s songs - the latest was in Frome of all places.

Swans are very much a law unto their own. The New York based band take intensity to new levels and their crescendo upon crescendo psychedelic folk, no wave dissonance and sonic adventures pick up where The Doors ‘The End’ left off and carve out a whole new no future. Their records are stunning but their live show is something else. We went to the Manchester show in the perfect surroundings of the Albert Hall and were blown away by their decades long commitment to a perfect dissolution into sound!

The world's biggest punk festival  Rebellion, brightened up our early August in Blackpool. 7000 sturdy studded punk veterans and hundreds of bands created a noisy yet enthralling weekend and showed there is still very much an energy left in the form.

At last! Will Sergeant released the part 2 of his memoirs, which sees one of our favourite guitar player picked up from his award winning debut book and explore the early days of the Bunnymen as they transcended post-punk and carved out a niche as one of the great bands of the era with all the ups and downs that entails - all told with that witty way that made the debut book so treasured.