Sneaky Pete's

Walt Disco are a band whose influences derive not from just music itself, but much more so from love, glamour and androgyny. Crooning vocals, angular guitars, dark shimmering synths – their music is a gateway to a space of lust, loss and everything in-between.

Funky/folk/jazz quartet The Moonlands will be gracing the Sneaky Pete’s stage for a huge hometown headline show on Friday 19th March!

We had so much fun at Dry Cleaning’s sell out show in February that we’ve asked them back – but this time in The Caves!

Firm friends for years, the band (Lewis Maynard, Tom Dowse, Florence Shaw & Nick Buxton) only started making music after a party in 2017 inspired a collaboration. They wrote instrumentally to begin with and six months later Shaw, a university lecturer and picture researcher by day, joined on vocals with no prior musical experience. They recorded their debut “Sweet Princess” EP before playing their first show only last year.

Dry Cleaning’s music is simple – direct and uncomplicated. The Feelies, the Necessaries, the B52s and Pylon all served as inspirations when the band first came together. The small and intimate garage / rehearsal space had a huge influence on the sound; anything unnecessary was to be left behind.

A discussion among the four band members about how to make the prospect of performing as comfortable as possible for Florence (a first timer) ahead of the band’s first rehearsal as a four piece, led to her using her speaking voice. There were several references for this; Will Powers, The Anaemic Boyfriends and Grace Jones, among others.

Formed late 2014 in Chester university digs, the three-piece band Peaness write catchy, fuzzy, harmony driven indie-pop songs about love, friendship, frustrations, Brexit and food waste.

The trio have been playing together since summer 2015, and their fun, friendships fuelled live performances have been winning the hearts and minds of people up and down the country. They have secured nationwide and international shows with bands such as The Beths, Kero Kero Bonito, The Cribs, We Are Scientists, The Big Moon & Dream Wife. They have performed at many festivals including Green Man, Benicassim, Truck, Great Escape, 2000 Trees, Kendal Calling & Indietracks. Peaness have received backing from across the BBC, including a live 6music session with Marc Riley, multiple plays on Radio 1, 2, 6music and have become firm favourites on their local BBC Introducing stations BBC Radio Wales and Merseyside. The band have also received support from Radio X with a live session with John Kennedy, as well as a multitude of press coverage from Kerrang! Magazine, Rolling Stone, Dork, Clash, Drowned in Sound and The Metro. The band have strong roots in the DIY scene, self-releasing their first EP ‘No Fun’, and releasing their critically acclaimed EP ‘Are You Sure?’ with UK independent label royalty Alcopop! They often make their own music videos, have close creative friends doing press shots and art work, and even have their mum’s making handmade squeaky peas for merchandise.

With their debut album due early 2020, the band are cited as ones to watch for the year ahead.

Midland-born, Toronto-based indie rock band Born Ruffians—guitarist/vocalist Luke Lalonde, bassist Mitch DeRosier, and drummer Steve Hamelin—are proof that a group of friends with a tireless work ethic and fierce, grassroots commitment to their labour’s integrity and vision can still go a long, long way. 15 years into their career, the trio isn’t slowing; instead, they’re doubling down on those designations with JUICE, their 6th full-length record. It’s a hyper, earnest, and affecting collection of rock and roll songs, written and polished over a three-year span then sewn together into a cohesive and uniquely enjoyable experience. It’s Born Ruffians as they’ve always been: on their own terms, heads against the wind until their work is done.

“Here’s the thing: you get further as a band when all members embrace the strength of their creative relationship, keeping the external demands and pressures at bay” says Lalonde. “JUICE kind of reflects that as a title. We’re squeezing more out of this bond that we’ve forged over so many years.”

JUICE, due on April 3, 2020 via Yep Roc Records, embodies the band’s longstanding history, exhuming Born Ruffians’ early days in Toronto, while dissecting their relationships with that time and the memories they hold. “Was it all the way it seemed? How I wonder what you see/In that wavy haze,” Lalonde belts on the chorus.“ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Lalonde explains with a grin. Those days were marked by equal doses of anxiety and excitement, living hand to mouth in a basement in downtown Toronto. “That anxiety will exist forever, I think,” says Hamelin. “But the more you take your life into your own hands, it alleviates some of that anxiety.”

JUICE evokes this simplicity: the desperate appreciation for, and necessity of, major key melodies and camaraderie that’s prompted when your back is against the wall. Heard on their own, each single is a neon bolt of energy and storytelling, but placed alongside and tumbling into one another from start to finish, they’re recontextualized as interlocking pieces in a puzzle.
Our collective 21st century spiritual malaise requires a salve, and JUICE is just that: a sweet, delectable nectar from a band that’s lived longer than most. It’s bright and punchy, from the brass section blasts opening the breathless rock and roll sprint of “I Fall In Love Every Night” to the playful throb of Hamelin’s drums on “Breathe.” The plucky gait of “Dedication” completes this opening trio with whistles and percussion blocks framing Lalonde’s sardonic reading of dogged devotion to capitalism, rhyming off would-be Extremely Online listicles: “12 ways to die in a fire, 10 ways to be consumed by desire, 8 things you didn’t know about the all-consuming shadow of this empire.”

This beginning three-track suite is mirrored on the back end by the final three songs, an adventure capped off with “Wavy Haze.” It’s a four-minute wander through Lalonde’s foggy recollections of the band’s beginning hemmed in by cotton-candy guitars and rumbling drums. “Miss the stuff you did not need: attention headaches, nicotine, alcohol, and some amphetamines,” Lalonde declares on the verse. It’s almost like taking stock, counting chips before the next bet. “There’s a bit of pride in what we’ve done, and looking back and looking forward all at the same time,” says DeRosier.

In the end, JUICE is a testament to where Born Ruffians have come from, and a bold, pulpy mission statement for the future. However weird and overwhelming things get, Born Ruffians close out the record by reminding us that they’re in this for the long haul, as Lalonde sings, “You see a light come shining from behind, reminding you that kid is always on your back.”