SikTh | Mon 4 Dec | Mama Roux’s | £15
Once upon a time, Watford’s six-strong harbingers of chaos brought ruthlessly mathematical grooves into the mainstream, an almost perfect onslaught of technical virtuosity and neck-snapping breakdowns. Their unexpected reunion is a chance to see these legendary innovators once again returning to the genre they almost single-handedly invented. See our full preview here.
The Wytches | Tue 5 Dec | Hare & Hounds | £11
Brighton bruisers the Wytches take the garage-rock playbook and splash a kaleidoscopic spectrum of grunge across the pages, a psych-horror smash of surf-rock, lo-fi fuzz and melancholy. Last year’s ‘All Your Happy Life’ dragged their sound even further away from any major-label polish, a deliberately rough and unsettling ride that dares you to tear your face away. seetickets.com
Happy Mondays | Wed 6 Dec | O2 Institute | £33.75
The wildly incoherent poets and musical mavericks of the Madchester scene, Happy Mondays made an all-too-fleeting blaze across the musical landscape of the 80s and 90s, ending in a bewildering maelstrom of drug abuse, theft and punctured egos. The rock and roll excess is left behind on this 30th Anniversary tour, but the classic tunes live large. See our full preview here.
Confidence Man | Thu 7 Dec | Hare & Hounds | £11
Australian dance-punk four-piece Confidence Man are a one-band big beat movement for the 2010s – the love child Le Tigre and Soulwax, with enough sinister sass left over to base a whole Spike Jonze-style music video of brutal voodoo revenge enacted on smiling Ken dolls. It’s been a while since anyone did such a good job combining deadpan delivery and earbone-shaking basslines. seetickets.com
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds | Fri 8 Dec | Sunflower Lounge | £11.25
Musical icons don’t come any cooler than the sludge heavy guitar maestro known as Kid Congo Powers. From a decade-spanning career in The Gun Club, the Cramps and the Bad Seeds of Nick Cave fame comes the Pink Monkey Birds: a rabble of dirty Southern fuzz messiahs, fronted by Congo’s moonshine drawl. See our full preview here.
Words: Chris Donald - Gigs Editor
Published on: Wed 6 Dec 2017