The expansion of Manchester Psych Fest since its launch in 2014 has now cast the event as one of the UK’s largest city festivals. Despite its rapid growth, with performances this year taking place in diverse venues across Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor, the festival remains rooted in the grassroots venue scene of its early years.
It's not new information that small, independent venues across the country are increasingly threatened with closure, the 2023 annual report of the Music Venues Trust (MVT) finding that independent music venues remain notably underfunded as cultural hubs. More than a third of music venues across the UK reported a loss last year, with 125 forced to shut in response to ‘challenges in accessing suitable cultural funding’ amid cost-of-living crises.
The number of venues operating at Manchester Psych Fest, all within a short walking distance from each other, is a testament to the city’s multi-purpose spaces which allow events like this one to happen. As the MVT survey puts it, “identifying multi-use arts spaces that host grassroots live music is important to the work of the music trust, as these spaces make a significant contribution to the talent pipeline.”
This reliance of huge, corporate mega-venues on smaller grassroots spaces is central to propositions of a ‘Taylor Swift Tax’ following the 2023 MVT report: this would be a ticket levy on stadium shows in which buyers pay £1 extra per ticket, all this revenue supporting small independent venues across the country. Manchester’s AO Arena, the UK’s second largest capacity arena, is implicit in parliamentary discussions, as large venues are called on to contribute to the survival of smaller grassroots spaces.
The Projekts MCR Skatepark was perhaps the festival’s most unconventional venue. The UK’s largest community-led skatepark, located beneath the Mancunian Way Flyover, hosted a variety of punk and rock acts throughout the day. We caught a busy midday performance from Heartworms, self described as a ‘gothic post-punk’ band, who played a sweaty set in the sunshine. Audience members watched from all vantage points, faced towards the makeshift stage, which was set up between ramps.
The Indian restaurant and bar Bundobust Brewery similarly put up a stage for the day, hosting a variety of secret stripped-back sets announced only that morning. A success story born from a series of pop-up events, the brewery has become “a game changing enterprise within the independent food and drink industry”, and more recently a form of independent music venue. The room filled up to capacity for Marika Hackman’s surprise acoustic set which followed her pre-announced performance at the Albert Hall. In the restaurant, the musician played more intimately, performing a mix of old and new tracks, primarily from her latest album Big Sigh. Far from background music to soundtrack a restaurant experience, this set held the total attention of audience members.
Another seated venue crammed with performances throughout the festival was The Deaf Institute, a building dating back to 1878, now converted into a music venue and club. In the upper room of three floors, we sat down to watch EBBB play as a trio of vocals, drums and bass. The live sound of the band has been reviewed in The Line of Best Fit as having the potential to “effortlessly fill the arches of a church, whilst simultaneously vibrating through the ceiling of a sweaty city basement rave”. The venue seemed to make this true, with a floor pit at the front and rows of raised chairs behind, all beneath a high towering ceiling.
While the room was packed and the venue seemed to thrive, it was not long ago that The Deaf Institute, along with Manchester’s Gorilla, was narrowly saved from closure. Struggling post-Covid, both grassroots venues were set to shut before emergency government funding. At Gorilla, a 600 capacity space located below the Oxford Road station, we danced to USA folk-rock band Bonny Doon with an audience which started out tentative but gained momentum as the crowd was called closer to the stage.
The diversity of venues at Manchester Psych Fest reminded us of the importance of seating options for accessibility in music venues. The MVT report included a case study on York’s own The Crescent, with manager Harkirit Boparai grateful for emergency funding which supplied the venue with seating after 40 years usage of previous chairs left them warped and unsuitable: “At a time when music venues are facing significant financial challenges, this money is very welcome. A new set of chairs runs into thousands of pounds, which is simply something The Crescent can't afford to purchase by itself without assistance.” We are reminded that seating can make grassroots spaces more accessible for a greater number of people directly benefiting from and contributing to the local music scene.
A favourite venue for us was Manchester’s YES bar, which, like The Deaf Institute, hosted performances in multiple rooms within the space. Established in 2018 by independent promotion label, Now Wave, the bar has ceaselessly operated gigs featuring both emerging and established musicians, under the expertise of Ruth Hemmingfield, previous promoter of both The Deaf Institute and Gorilla. The Pink Room of the upper floor showcased the exceptional experimental performance of Laeticia Sadier from Stereolab, performing here as the Laeticia Sadier Source Ensemble. The band quickly filled capacity as a queue of people eager to catch even 15 minutes of the set formed outside. The frontwoman played avant-garde tracks which eased into each other, layering noise to create sound-collages which assembled a pulsing, web-like performance, seamlessly growing and shrinking in intensity. Sadier whimsically spoke of a song inspired by “the inside of a tree”, simultaneously grounding the set in her wit, responding to an audience request for a ‘speech’ with a deadpan reaction warning them to “be careful what [they] wish for.”
Following Sadier’s set, the atmosphere in the room shifted as punk trio Hot Wax filled the space with ripping guitar riffs and rapid rhythm sections, the crowd clearly thrilled. We later travelled down into the Basement of the bar to catch the second half of Glasgow punk band Humour, perfectly appropriate to the sweaty, 60 person capacity room, before moving back up to watch a DJ set from Cardiff-based Das Koolies. Previously the psychedelic-rock band Super Furry Animals, this trio performed behind two shadowed screens, with synths and guitars creeping over their decks to create a danceable fusion.
Adding to the reformatted and new projects of Das Koolies and Laeticia Sadier, the festival saw a performance from A. Savage of Parquet Courts. The frontman of the NYC band took to the stage of The Union at Manchester Met Uni (MMU) to perform a set filled with songs from his latest album Several Songs About Fire, as well as some tracks from the previous album of his solo project. Savage, playing a guitar loaned to him that day by his “new friend Ben” after an airline had lost his equipment, played flawlessly nonetheless, a definite highlight for me. The musician commented on the lack of psychedelia in his music, despite performing at the Manchester Psych Fest, and it's true that the sound of his band is perhaps more ‘60s psychedelia-inspired than his own project. “Some of my most psychedelic moments have been in silence” Savage tells us, as he invites us to listen to the “quietest song” of the set, ‘Wild Wild Wild Horses’, a beautiful, reflective gem for which the atmosphere in the room becomes momentarily quiet and still.
On that note, the main merit of this whole event, like at any good festival, was the diversity of music. Despite its name, the all-dayer stretched the meaning of ‘Psych’ to bill a range of artists and bands from various genres. The distinct venues, arts spaces and music resulted in a fantastic event, with our only wish being that there could be more time to see all the music packed into one day.
