When: 7.30pm on Friday 20 September 2013
Where: The Roadhouse, 8 Newton Street, Manchester M1 2AN

We’re delighted to be back at the Roadhouse for the first time in a couple of years, with one of our favourite Canadian bands.

Life on the road will play havoc with your head. If anyone can vouch for that it’s Canadian garage outfit Hooded Fang. Coming over like a spate of incurable sleep paralysis where fantasy and reality meet, the band’s unreal tour bus lifestyle is revealed through Gravez – their equally mind-bending new album.

Seamlessly following on from last LP, Tosta Mista, the new record is a continuation of the spontaneous, lively, heavily splintered guitar sound that has secured Hooded Fang as high flyers on The Hype Machine and nominees for Canadian Mercury equivalent, the Polaris Prize. Yet whereas Tosta Mista was a danceable take on real life’s ups and downs, Gravez is a skewed, off-the-wall piece of moving punk pop fiction blurring the boundaries between what’s real and fake, each track powering along like an interstellar joyride through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

If ever a band were to have a Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds moment, this is it. Ode To Subterrania comes over like a West Coast War of the Worlds and baselines reverb like a rubber band through the Tarantino soundtrack style of Sailor Bull. Wasteland tips a hat to The Black Lips if they played 1960s tropicalia while the bluesy slant of Genes recalls a more lethargic The Bees. The sinister Trasher sounds like each band member smearing their face in green for their own Halloween Party celebrations – albeit a good four months premature. Altogether wrapped up in 30 minutes dead; this is a group who know there’s nothing to be gained for labouring the point.

Joining Dan, Hooded Fang are April Aliermo (bass), Lane Halley (guitar), and D.Alex Meeks (drums). That the group even had time to write, let alone record a brand new record is a surprise. Aside from main band duties they continue to play in numerous side-projects, run a label (Daps Records) and work at April’s artist-led playschool, giving kids music lessons as well as putting on a host of all-ages shows.

‘A brilliant hybrid of Dick Dale-style surf guitar, psychedelic / beat group / go-go tunes and ‘Nuggets garage attitude – then rejigged it for Strokes- and Shins-attuned ears’ – Time Out

‘The Jesus And The Mary Chain in surf shirts’ – Uncut

Support comes from Temple Songs, a four-piece outfit from Manchester smashing out brilliantly crafted psychedelic pop tunes. Prolific songwriter and front man Jolan Lewis has created the kind of band that you might stumble across on a carefully selected LA Nuggets compilation and wonder how they are of the now. Blending sounds of The Beatles and The Beach Boys with the likes of Pavement and Deerhunter; Temple Songs carve songs that have a unique way of getting into your head.

Opening the show will be The Bell Peppers – a couplathree cack-handed young men from Manchester, England who dig Surf Music, Rock & Roll, Doo-Wop and 1950s and 1960s R&B.

Buy tickets now with no booking fee. Tickets are also available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketabc.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

Attend on: Facebook | Last.fm