Tuesday 4 July 2017

Cabbage, The Blinders, Strange Bones - Saturday 1st July 2017 - O2 Ritz, Manchester



The Cabbage boys have been touring hard and have returned to their home town on a wave of success after their two Glastonbury appearances. They have arrived just in time to be part of The Manchester International Festival and play a big part with their Mossley roots.Tonight they bring along Strange Bones who get the crowd going with their indie punk sound. their set wins over some new fans and you can see why they were supporting Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. They pack a punch and you can sense they are going to do quite well and could well be headlining The Ritz themselves quite soon! I last saw The Blinders at this same venue earlier this year and they return much tighter and menacing than before. They perform a blistering version of Ramona Flowers which becomes more powerful each time they do it. Swine is as excellent as ever however the highlight has to be Brutus which hammers the audience with it's punk blues brutality. This band is so tight and you can see them being a force to be reckoned with. Expect to see them on the main festival circuit soon. Cabbage have been fucking around with their set list lately by doing past encores first and starters last. It works! Kevin gets the venue bouncing before they launch into one of their newies. Fickle gets the chanters out of the bag as does a great Dissonance. Terrorist Synthesiser gets everyone chanting the now famous Jeremy Corbyn anthem to the delight of all of us Labour voters. Dinner Lady crashes in and then the new tune Network Betrayal is unleashed on everyone with it's Fall like guitar riff and a killer bass line topped off with a great chorus which is going to be a Cabbage anthem. To top it all they do Tell Me Lies About Manchester for the first time in a while and everyone seems to know the lyrics by heart! Necroflat does the trick as does new tune Asa Morley (a bizarre tribute to their drummer!!) They then do the usual calm down tune Because You're Worth It before ending the set with Uber Capitalist Death Trade to everyones delight. Another great gig from the Mossley boys with no gimmicks, just pure skill as usual and a sense of a band that just keep growing. They could just keep releasing EP's for me but an album must be on the cards soon?? What will it be like? Hopefully a great debut to join the ranks of great Mancunian albums.










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