Live: School of Seven Bells

School of Seven Bells

Night & Day Café, Manchester

27^th February

‘SOLD OUT’ reads the paper sign outside the Night and Day Café in the heart of the cities still hip Northern Quarter. Whilst a number of flash venues have established themselves in Manc-land over the past year, Night & Day still stands as the holy grail of dank, dark gigging to many folk about town.

Decidedly non-plussed after witnessing the back end of Apache Beat’s taut art-rock set, we find Leicestershire’s Kyte limbering up around their instruments. Still very much developing after a couple of low key EP releases, they’ve since hit their stride in the live arena. These lads don’t look they’d be much fun on a night out, but their musical ambition is matched with achingly beautiful tunes to comfort anyone through a harsh winter. You’ll either want to hug or strangle singer Nick Moon and his unique vocals, but we’re left with more evidence of this bands growing reputation.

School of Seven Bells are late onstage due to woes on the M6 but any cobwebs are blown away with a balanced set taking in the majority of Alpinisms, their ‘out-now’ debut album. Early on, ‘Prince Of Peace’ neatly brings together glitched beats with stuttering vocal harmonies from identical twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, while on glorious single ‘Half Asleep’, Benjamin Curtis provides avalanches of gorgeous, controlled feedback noise. The beat heavy ‘Iamundernodisguise’ is a spooky journey into prog guitar sounds and chanted vocals, and ‘Connjur’ takes cues from Au Revoir Simone’s dream-pop; the colliding guitar and synth melodies stealing our breath away.

We’ll sleep well tonight.

Written originally for Clash Music