Hello all. And Happy New Year. It’s that time again; the Picky Bastards editing team are here, for the next week or two, to tell you about the things we liked best (or disagreed upon most) in 2024 and the things we’re looking forward to in 2025.
We begin our list with a look back at our favourite live shows from the last 12 months. The picks within this should show you why we can never agree on anything:
Young Fathers – Victoria Warehouse, Manchester (March)
Okay okay, I am so way behind the rest of my Picky Bastards on Young Fathers, I get it. Last year’s fantastic Heavy Heavy album completely hooked me in a way their music never had, but seeing them live for the first time back in March is what has fully converted me into a fan. I was emotionally overwhelmed by how cathartic that performance felt, alongside a local community choir I couldn’t believe how that live set made me feel.
The high energy songs like ‘I Saw’ went off in that room while the more delicate moments had so much poignancy. I’ve constantly thought about how impactful that Young Fathers set was for me and this year very few live shows came close.
Sam Atkins
The Smile – Apollo, Manchester (March)
You could bottle the magic of this show into a single song. Hearing Thom, Johnny, and Tom perform ‘Teleharmonic’ in the Apollo was transcendent, a moment where I simply had to stand in awe, struggling to believe that I was standing close enough to my favourite musician to watch his throat wobble as he sang.
The Smile are so tight live, their sound so suited to the stage. While I miss Radiohead as much as any fan, this hour and a half with The Smile made me realise how lucky we are to have them. There are few musicians in the world who, after such a long and successful career, who would put this much care and attention into every second of their set. A total joy.
Fran Slater
Folly Group – Yes, Manchester (March)
Having not loved the debut album when it arrived, I was unsure what to expect from this gig. I couldn’t shift my spare ticket, so went alone, and arrived to an almost entirely empty Pink Room. These didn’t feel like good signs. Fortunately everything swiftly improved from this point onwards. If there is one word that can sum up a Folly Group live performance, it is ENERGY. All in caps. In more expanded prose, it was the sort of gig that reminds you just why live music is the best. A song or an album can be enjoyable, but nothing beats live, especially when it has the power to entirely change how you feel about a band’s music. And Folly Group also played a bunch of the early singles and EP tracks that grabbed my attention and led me to this gig in the first place. The power of drums and percussion played together, along with plenty of unison vocals, built the energy, sorry ENERGY, throughout, leading to half the band jumping into what might generously be called a moshpit, banging cowbells that were promptly lost to members of the audience. I was a few feet and a reluctant instrument grabbing hand away from temporarily being in the band myself. Quite a moment.
James Spearing
Oneohtrix Point Never – New Century, Manchester (April)
I had no idea what to expect when experimental electronic composer Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never came to Manchester. I just knew I had to get a ticket. I went along with a fellow intrigued soul in my brother, and what we got surpassed our expectations. It was a dazzling display. New Century’s expensive speaker system was tested to its very limits with body-shaking bass and blasting synths, a ludicrous amount of flashing lights, and an incredibly trippy arrray of surreal cartoon visuals. He went all over the shop with his set, from the closest things you could call ‘hits’ like ‘Mutant Standard’ and ‘Boring Angel’ to some left field techno tunes I’d not heard before. I know to some this will sound like I’m speaking in a different language, but honestly it was amazing. Next time he comes to your town, buy a ticket.
Tom Burrows
Taylor Swift – Anfield Stadium, Liverpool (June)
There are shows that you get to see in your life that genuinely live up to the ‘once in a lifetime’ moniker. It has been a long time since I’ve felt like that and Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour was exactly this. Seeing someone during this specific moment as the undeniable biggest artist in the world felt like a privilege and every moment felt special. My favourite thing about the Eras Tour is that beneath the sheer scale of it all the only thing that mattered were the songs. Over forty of them but every one as important as the last, singing along to some of the best songs of the last two decades.
Taylor Swift is at her best standing on stage with her guitar with tens of thousands of people enraptured and singing every word. Hearing huge songs like ‘Blank Space’ and ‘All Too Well’ and album cuts like ‘August’ and ‘You’re Losing Me’ get the same reception gave every moment a gravitas that can’t be explained. It was a life changing show to witness and I feel so grateful for being able to be there.
Sam Atkins
Linkin Park – Barclays Center, Brooklyn (September)
Despite them being one of my most influential bands, I had never seen Linkin Park live, until this year. And of course, there is the caveat of it not being Chester, but it was a phenomenal show. Loud, intimate, full of energy and fun. Considering its been a long time and a lot has changed since they toured last, the performance was very slick and they looked very comfortable on stage together.
There was a lot of controversy over the arrival of the new Linkin Park singer. However, one aspect of Emily Amrstrong’s appointment was not called into question — her singing. Emily has done a phenomenal job stepping into Chester’s shoes. She carries the raw emotion and power needed for the older songs, but is not a simple soundalike. Instead, the band sound fresh and exciting, allowing me to connect with some songs that passed me by first time round. What more could I want?
Matt Paul
Death From Above 1979 – Webster Hall, Manhattan (September)
Another trip into nostalgia for me as another old favourite went out on an anniversary tour. It’s been 20 years since the release of You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine, so I jumped at the chance to see the album played in full (plus an encore of the hits!). And DFA delivered with their big swinging riffs and beefy drums. But what stuck out was the light show. And this will be impossible to describe. But the lights were the best I had seen before in my countless gigs. We’re not talking about a stadium here. 1500 millennials were squeezed into Webster Hall. But with that more limited set-up they were doing artful things with silhouettes, interpolating beams of light and strobes. All to those killer dance-punk tracks.
Matt Paul
Khruangbin – Apollo, Manchester (November)
What sort of thing is Khruangbin? It’s a question I struggled to answer in the days and weeks before this gig when asked who I was seeing live next. What I didn’t anticipate was how the follow-up questions after the gig would be even harder to answer. If you don’t already know and ‘get’ Khruangbin, it’s incredibly hard to succinctly get across just how great they are live. The simplest way to put it is that they are greater than the sum of their parts. But that really does not do it justice. Yes there was the added theatricality of the staging in the style of the A La Sala album cover, the lighting, the audio-visual weather effects and the guitar-forward unison strutting about. These all added to the brilliance of the show, yet it’s still near impossible to grasp how drums, bass, guitar and the most minimal of vocals can create an experience quite like it. You just had to be there, man.
James Spearing
Charli XCX – Co-op Live, Manchester (November)
“On the tram platform there’s a lad wearing thigh-high fishnet stockings and a massive fluffy lime green jacket.” This was not a sentence I thought I’d be typing into WhatsApp about a fellow gig-goer at the start of 2024. But come November, here I was, in the near zero degrees of St Peter’s Square tram stop, in a very warm jacket, feeling suddenly very overdressed. You couldn’t get much more 2024 than Charli XCX’s Brat tour. I went along to the Manchester show, thanks to fellow Bastard and Ticketmaster whisperer Sam Atkins. Speaking for both of us, we quite simply had a blast. It was rave culture condensed into the form of a pop concert. All aggressive flashing lights, heightened performances of album tracks, and some stunning curtain drops (the way a MASSIVE green curtain emblazoned with the album title dropped from the ceiling to start the show was amazing). It was a memorable night, certainly up there with the year’s best experiences for me.
Tom Burrows
Fontaines DC – Aviva Studios, Manchester (November)
After not loving Romance quite as much as every other human on the planet this year, I had wondered whether Fontaines DC would deliver on my 3rd time seeing them live. They did. Not only was this by far the best live performance I’ve seen from them, but it was probably the most complete live show I saw in the whole of 2024.
It feels mad to say that the gig was packed full of hits when it still feels like Fontaines DC only arrived on the scene yesterday, but each of their four albums has featured some of the best songs of their respective years. Seeing them play those tracks back to back, with a confidence and swagger that now oozes out of every pore, was an absolutely treat.
It’s possible that 70% of my enjoyment came from the exceptional sound quality at my first Aviva Studios gig. But take nothing away from Grian and the boys; they were bang on form.
Fran Slater
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