When: 7.30pm on Friday 3 May 2019
Where: St Philip’s Church, Encombe Place, Salford, M3 6FJ

We’re delighted to be promoting a rare co-headline show for Josh Rouse and Grant-Lee Phillips.

Josh Rouse was born in Nebraska, and following an itinerant upbringing he eventually landed in Nashville where he recorded his debut Dressed Like Nebraska (1998). The album’s acclaim led to tours with Aimee Mann, Mark Etzel and the late Vic Chestnut. The follow-up – Home (2000) – yielded the song Directions, which Cameron Crowe used in his film Vanilla Sky.

For his breakthrough album, 1972 (2003), which happens to be the year he was born, Rouse decided to cheer up a bit. Noting that he’d earned a reputation for melancholy, he says, with a laugh, ‘I figured this is my career, I might as well try to enjoy it’. The follow-up, Nashville (2005), continued the hot streak and expanded his audience further.

After relocating to  Valencia, Spain with his wife Paz, Rouse has released a steady stream of high quality songs and albums. Subtitulo (2006) contained the international indie folk hit Quiet Town. On El Turista (2010) he even experimented with writing and singing some  songs in Spanish. In 2014, he won a Goya Award (the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar) for best song for Do You Really Want To Be In Love, from the film La Gran Familia Española.

His most recent release, The Embers of Time, was one of his strongest — self-described as “my surreal, ex-pat, therapy record.” Charles Pitter astutely noted in Pop Matters: ‘The critics may long for drama and scandal, but The Embers of Time often demonstrates that a simple life could be for the best.’

‘A talent to outrank Ryan Adams or Conor Oberst’ – Uncut

‘I’m drawing on the urgency of the moment,’ reflects Grant-Lee Phillips. ‘The things that eat away in the late hours.’

That urgency inspired the headlong rush of Widdershins – available now via Yep Roc – in which Grant-Lee Phillips invests the insight, nuance, and wit that has distinguished his songcraft over the past three decades in a riveting dissection of today’s fraught social landscape. Beneath the moment’s tumultuous veneer, Phillips uncovers resonances spanning centuries – patterns echoing from the present day to the distant past. Its twelve tracks were cut largely live in the studio with the sharp trio of Phillips (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Jerry Roe (drums) and Lex Price (bass) serving as messengers. Says Phillips, ‘This moment is explosive, volatile, and heightened. It’s important to me that the music reflect that.’

By turns sardonic, provocative, and illuminating, Widdershins (produced by Phillips and mixed by Tucker Martine) delivers its poetic truths through Phillips’s peerless melodic sensibilities, carefully balancing intensity and vulnerability. A now seasoned songwriter and performer, with more than two decades’ experience first as frontman of the acclaimed Grant Lee Buffalo then as an accomplished solo artist, Phillips awakens comfort and hope by shining light into darker corners. ‘I hope to express my faith in people, my faith in the good ideas we’re capable of, and that regardless of what opposition we face, the fact that we can surmount these things,’ he concludes. ‘We can stare them down, laugh at them, belittle them, and drive the darkness back into a hole.’

We’re excited to be returning to a very special venue for this show: St Philip’s Church. The building is one of Greater Manchester’s finest Georgian buildings, dating back to 1825, and its Greek style is unique in Salford.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Vinyl Exchange, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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