Manchester

Reviews

You can’t polish a turd. Whoever said that? Were they onto something or were they just talking shit? The reality was something we knew all along: the turd was quite happy feeling shit. When you’ve been unceremoniously squeezed out of someone’s arse and suffered the ignominy of being chewed up, absorbed and subjected to the usual slings and arrows of the exhausting digestive process, you’re unlikely to respond positively to the demands of civil society, style or no style. Turds Continue Reading

Live

Elbow @ Brixton Academy, London, 15.04.08

Crud’s own seldom seen kid takes a seldom taken look at this year’s most seldom seen band. James Berry attends yet another Elbow gig. And who can blame him. New single, ‘One Day Like This’ out 02.06.08 It’s one of the great modern pop curiosities. Could we start the rumour now that Chris Martin has accumulated a kidnapped mass of Elbow fans, possibly in a cavernous bunker deep under his snazzy Belsize Park pad where they’re starved of daylight and Continue Reading

Features

Badly Drawn Boy Interview

The ‘shambolic’ subtext of nu acoustic guru, Damon Gough, a.k.a Badly Drawn Boy was an affectionate enough tribute one would have thought. But think again. This is a man who holds court with one hand and plays beautifully realised music with the other. Northern Crud plays host to Northern Man. Damon Gough is almost invisible as he wanders onto the stage at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia on a warm October night. Shuffling in from the wings, he Continue Reading