For over a decade, Manchester Psych Fest has brought a massive line-up spanning many genres and styles to the city. Across the ten venues hosting its 2025 edition, the festival showcased many up-and-coming bands from Manchester and across England.
Westside Cowboy opened the Wide Awake stage with slow number and EP closer ‘Slowly I’m Sure’. During the set, the band showcased some of their unreleased material, with several songs drawing heavily on their Loaded-era The Velvet Underground and Pavement influences. Whenever Westside Cowboy play to a new room, they win people over with songs like ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’. When the whole band joins in on vocals, their passion shines through to the audience.
At the end of their live sets, drummer Paddy Murphy picks up his snare drum and reunites with his band at the front of the stage. Here, they perform an unreleased traditional folk-inspired song in which only snare, rhythm guitar, and vocals build the track. It’s a fantastic closer, presenting in a single song their approach to music and their roots.
Next I was heading down Oxford Road towards the O2 Ritz to see The Orchestra (For Now), a progressive rock band who have dominated the ever-ascendant Windmill scene, named after the prolific venue in Brixton for a while.
They played mostly new material that will presumably be featured on their second EP, Plan 76, which will be released at the end of October. The songs echo their debut’s style but lean more heavily on falsetto in the grand choruses, drawing similarities to Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Singer Joe Scarisbrick has a stage presence similar to Cameron Winter of Geese, coming off as slightly shy, but displaying vocals which develop from quiet, to aggressive, raw, and guttural.
‘Hattrick’, the first single from the new EP, features strange guitar riffs woven with interludes of cello and violin. These interludes have themes of eeriness, and were backed by dark red visuals and flashing images of the band members created by their own guitarist, Bill Bickerstaff, facilitating a brooding and chilling atmosphere.
Just across the street at Gorilla, Famous began their set with ‘Surfs Up’, with singer-guitarist Jack Merrett parading the stage and occasionally holding hands with a man in the front row who can only be described as dancing psychedelically. With the song’s lead part being its strange, jagged synth, it was unfortunately far too quiet, to no fault of the band, but this did not stop them from delivering. Merrett was losing his voice throughout the set, resulting in a vocal performance reminiscent of late-night drunken karaoke; however, as he said during the set, Famous songs are “not about the singing”. Their songs are focused on the stunning instrumentation: piano lines intertwined with lead guitar.
Newer songs are mostly set to a backdrop of scattered drums, almost out of place but fit perfectly, akin to the drumming in ‘Snow Globes’ by Black Country, New Road: this new material highlighted a unique and fantastic future for the band, so the announcement of the group’s indefinite hiatus came as a shock and disappointment not only to the cult fanbase who could be seen shouting every lyric, but also for the post-punk scene as a whole.
Fat White Family member Lias Saoudi entered the stage as part of The Moonlandingz, wearing pink sunglasses and sporting an image strapped to his chest with tape, only slightly obscured by a yellow jacket. It was a fitting entrance. The band dominated the Projekts Skate Park, which is maybe the most interesting and unique stage of Manchester Psych Fest. Saoudi commanded all eyes on him, prancing about the stage, rambling controversial sarcasm such as “vote Reform” and ranting about how Fontaines D.C. “fucking suck”. The Moonlandingz mostly played songs from their latest album, No Rocket Required, which is less eccentric than the band’s debut and features high-profile collaborations ranging from Iggy Pop to Yoko Ono.
The dynamic on stage was strange but engaging; Saoudi would writhe and shout around their backing vocalist, taken from Jeanie and The White Boys, and the next second would pick fights with the drummer for starting the songs too early. It built up a tense atmosphere that enhanced the performance, leaving the crowd asking if these disagreements were part of the act or not.
Dove Ellis was nothing short of incredible. His vocal range could be compared to Jeff Buckley, and his lyricism to Leonard Cohen. The bassist went from playing bass to soprano saxophone, and the drummer to guitar. The band was the perfect backing for Ellis, allowing him to express his vision in full. Dove Ellis finished with his song ‘To The Sandals’, a slow, beautiful ballad with a sense of artistic direction similar to that displayed by Cameron Winter. With an upcoming tour in the US with Geese on the horizon, Dove Ellis is sure to release more studio songs other than the current collection of demos that are available on Bandcamp.
Getdown Services arrived on the O2 Ritz stage late, but were still met by cheers and screams from a massive crowd of fans. Their songs were mostly interesting but largely featured the duo singing over a backing track, with some songs in which they played guitar. However, but the real issue lies between the tracks. The duo had a presence and crowd interaction that came off as tacky. They were fun and interactive; the feeling was unfortunately comparable to entertainment at a holiday park, putting an irredeemable dampener on the performance.
Adult DVD took the stage at Gorilla and, within minutes, mosh pits formed, with many people crowd surfing instantly, including Manchester’s own TTSSFU. Frontman Harry Hanson is charismatic and engaging, providing a perfect conduit for the band’s exciting indie sleaze that can be compared to bands like LCD Soundsystem. They create dance music with guitars, utilising multiple synthesisers, cowbell and basslines.
Adult DVD easily get the whole crowd moving, and as a band, they are a well-oiled machine; not a single member has only one job to do, they all split duties between playing synthesiser, percussion or providing backing vocals. A highlight of the set was their newest song, ‘Because I Like It’. In the chorus, Harry has an intense vocal performance that penetrates over harsh synths and the crashing of the drums, whilst remixing his vocals live to make them reverberate and ring out.
YAANG frontman Davey Moore entered the stage to a backdrop of snowy mountains as atmospheric synth filled the small venue of YES Basement, followed by a steady pulsating electronic drum that drove the first ten minutes of the band’s opening track. Before the set, Moore was keen to mention that the live recording of this thirty-minute Krautrock song would be released, and that it would comprise their entire live set this time around. This was a daring and exciting choice: something truly unique to finish off Manchester Psych Fest.
One by one, the other members of YAANG entered the stage. Oliver Duffy, the band’s guitarist who swapped, for this set, to be behind the drum kit, took the stage with confidence, beginning with light percussion reminiscent of seventies avant-garde group CAN. Once bassist, or in this set guitarist, Ben White arrived, the song started to really gain momentum. White started with sparse, striking chords, which grew more rapid as the performance sped along.
As the song built in tension, the crowd became increasingly riled, until finally blossoming as an intense mosh. The drums grew in intensity, and so did the crowd, before the song slowly faded down and finished. The pummelling of the drums and propulsive guitar work provided a canvas for Davey’s reverberating and distorted vocals.
YAANG’s set wasn’t just a song, but a piece of performance art, consistently changing in intensity and emotion. The band are evidently branching out into new genres, different from their post-punk sensibilities. The song could be compared to the work of Krautrock pioneers Amon Duul II and Faust, and this performance was the most interesting and truly unique of the entire festival. They prove themselves to be incredibly talented musicians and are, without a doubt, one of the most promising acts to come out of Manchester in recent years.
Overall, Manchester Psych Fest continues to grow, boasting a vast line-up of genre-defying music. Each year, they introduce more unique acts and stages while staying true to their core principle of showcasing up-and-coming bands from the North West.
