It’s 2am. A dark, scarcely lit room only ameliorated by the seeping, brief moonlight. Your body may be here, but your brain is far, far away standing upon the jags of washed-up planks or rusted, rotten metal abandoned in frantic, scattered quantities across the shoreline. Here, in the conjured-up mind palace of a solitudinous night to stare out onto a body of saline, dystopic black, what else is there to do but think?
It’s with that image that Alec Duckart of Searows is best introduced: the leading multi-instrumentalist engineer of saliferous, yearning, and dreamy neo-folk. Following his latest album Death in the Business of Whaling, he morphed his critical success as an artist into a propulsion, escaping from the repeated comparisons to contemporary folk-makers like Phoebe Bridgers or Ethel Cain — he took to sea, and broke free.
Riding that wave, he’s embarked on a trans-continental voyage to tour the album, including rebirths of his fledgling back-catalogue on the way. As Searows’ third time performing across the Manchester Academy venues, he commenced his hattrick this time inside the intimate maroons of Academy 2, creating an intense and immediate juxtaposition against the oceanic, ultramarine-pigmented manifestations of his sound.
But first, up-and-comer Amos Heart was given the conch. Despite having so little of an online following, his sound was the perfect precursor, thematically speaking, to the moonlit, still weight of the headliner. In songs like ‘Coffee for Two’, Amos transported the audience not necessarily to the sea, but to the sky; his music almost sounds as if the oncoming sunset knew how to play guitar, serving as the perfect eulogy to the passing of a day and the transition into night.
Appropriately given the name of the song, his relaxed and suave instrumentation conjures the image of a coffee shop ready for close, or a neighbourhood park watching its last few guests be ushered out by the encroaching orange hues of the shifting times. This said orange follows him everywhere, with an almost Halloween-y hue bordering the cover of his 2025 album From the Perspective of a Loved One: a great listen for anyone seeking this sun-kissed, guitar-driven dream, or someone wondering what it would sound like if Mk.gee made Wunderhorse‘s ‘Aeroplane’.
Before heading off, he thanked everyone for coming to hear this wonderful music, and highlighted its power for escape. He asked for one simple, magical thing: to forget about everything beyond the walls for an evening, and let the sound of the sea do the talking. Thus, after a conversation-led half-hour, Searows took shape on stage with a trio of instrumental supports, ready to make waves. As someone soon said — and likely thought themselves unheard through the bustlings of the crowd — “it’s time to be sad (in a good way)”.
Without so much as a word, the fluttering melancholy of ‘Belly of the Whale’ began to swallow the room whole: an epitomising demonstration of the magic of live music, as such a subtle and simple guitar melody could capture the masses in a trance of anticipation. Of course, the crowd weren’t really out at sea, but it could certainly be argued with how they swayed like a mesmerising, unisonant tide.
The show began in a slow and steady rhythm, moving through the first steps of Death in the Business of Whaling with softness and grace. But, as Duckart’s third time performing in Manchester, he had to make this one stand out. As such, the show really rose the anchor in how dynamic it wound up: the set featured a total rearranging of opening track ‘martingale’ from the excellent if dejected EP flush; we heard a departure from the on-stage quartet, allowing at times for merely Alec to have the throne and deliver fleeting tunes of solo transformation; we heard the public unveiling and live-exclusive cover of Lorde‘s ‘David’, told to be a practice session for further plays coming in the future.
It was as if the setlist veered off-course to unroot a sunken treasure, before sailing back onto the destined path. But first, a special moment came in a group of mega-fans in the front row handing Alec a DIY-made scrapbook, which was signed and decorated in loving notes by many others in the crowd. It brought a standstill, but made for one of the show’s most heartwarming breaks, and a further bullet point in making the night unique.
Soon enough, the concert had found its final act. Returning to the back-half of his 2026 album, ‘Dirt’ played as a slow and yearning lap through stanzas on managing to forge a name for ourselves before we sink or suffer skeletonisation. These poetic, grieving odes continued with a backstep into ‘Hunter’: the album’s fourth tune, and unmistakably a contender for most moving. The drum-led progression into the chorus threw the room into hypnotised enchantment as a shadowy projection of the Searows spirit bled into the Academy walls.
It became time for the encore, where they insisted on “committing to the bit” in declaring that there will absolutely, definitively not be said encore, before proceeding to play two of them. The Searows sound has always metamorphosed the passing of time, whether it be through the mesmeric, retrospective synths of ‘In Violet’, or through the poetry of ‘House Song’, which was next in line. The crowd roared as the opening folky acoustic made it clear what was about to be heard, as if they were all delighted to drown themselves into anthems of the downcast.
For anyone in the crowd stumbling through the Northern Quarter on the way to the show, and lamenting the sight of the “Anyone Selling Geese Tickets?” in the window on Church Street, Searows allowed his crowd the chance to say they heard ‘Geese’ live. The closer of his latest album became the concert’s sea-chartering outro, casting the audience into the sad realisations of existentialism and the pursuit of anything. It worked as an appropriate send-off, as all in attendance were sent back into meandering daily lives with the reminder to fight on and strive to keep going. If Amos told us to forget it all for just one night, Searows’ performance said to instead sink ourselves into yearning and remembrance, if for nothing but the pursuit of feeling human.
