When: 7.30pm on Thursday 9 April 2015
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW

We’re delighted to be welcoming back Thomas Truax – his first Manchester headline show in three years – plus Vinny Peculiar.

One of the most imaginative characters on the pop music fringe, Thomas Truax (pronounced ‘troo-aks’) travels the world performing with his ‘band’ of bizarre self-made Harry Partch-esque instruments including a motorised drum machine made of bike wheels called ‘Mother Superior’ and a pimped-up Dr Seuss-ian Gramophone called ‘The Hornicator’, as well as his venerable resonator guitar ‘Hank’.

More than just an inventor and entertainer, Truax crafts rich, poetically evocative songs about insects, trees, technology and various reasons ‘Why Dogs Howl at The Moon’, the title of his 2007 album. Notable supporters and collaborators include Jarvis Cocker, Duke Special, Richard Hawley, David Lynch, Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione (of the Dresden Dolls/Violent Femmes) who plays drums on Thomas’s newest album Jetstream Sunset, set for release this Spring.

‘Truax is shaping up nicely as one of the great rock eccentrics’ – Uncut

‘When he performs, it is a spectacle – the originality and seeming impossibility of what he does is much of the appeal’ – The Guardian

We’re delighted to be able to add Vinny Peculiar to the bill. Vinny played our first ever show, nine years ago, and has been a regular performed over the years – including at our first Sounds From The Other City stage. His latest album, Down The Bright Stream, came out this March – with the Irish Times saying of it: ‘Part Pulp, part Kinks, and very much part Peculiar, this is observational, punk-tinged songwriting at its best.’

Opening the show is Cynthia’s Periscope. Manchester-based Aberdonian Paul Morrice has been performing under the guise Cynthia’s Periscope since the summer of 2014. His music varies from the melodic and sentimental to the brutal and cathartic, drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Robert Wyatt, Four Tet, Tunng and Arab Strap.

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

Attend on: Facebook | Last.fm