When: 7pm on Thursday 29 May 2025
Where: YES Basement, 38 Charles Street, Manchester, M1 7DB

We’re delighted to be working with Lael Neale again!

Lael Neale’s minimalist drone pop draws inspiration from the Transcendentalists, the alienation of modern life, and a rich array of musical influences – ranging from Dionne Warwick and John Lennon to primitive American gospel and Spacemen 3.

Her expansive new record, Altogether Stranger, was written and recorded in the early morning quiet of Los Angeles. Clocking in at just 32 minutes, the nine-song LP covers an unexpected breadth of musical and lyrical terrain – from garage rock nursery rhymes and creation myths to Motorik dance dirges and solitary Omnichord meditations.

A brilliant lyricist, Neale has a unique ability to uncover the extraordinary within the mundane, tackling themes of polarity that recur throughout her work – country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, isolation vs. society. This album is her third collaboration with producer Guy Blakeslee who helps expand the tonal palette while staying true to Neale’s commitment to the raw immediacy and hand-made intimacy of home recording.

‘A unique, boldly weird proposition, and one that proudly carries the faint hint of tractor grease. Half of it comes on like cult 70s folk artist Karen Dalton hanging out with the Velvet Underground and Suicide, while the rest offers somewhat more modern balladry, placing her more in the world of Angel Olsen and Cat Power‘ – the Guardian

Tour support comes from Entrance. Emerging from the pre-internet post-hardcore scene of the late 90’s, Entrance (born Guy Blakeslee) began singing his lysergic blues and mystic troubadour folk in the underground venues of Baltimore and Chicago in 2002. The early 2000’s saw him touring extensively in the US, the UK  and Europe, supporting like-minded artists such as Devendra Banhart, Cat Power, Will Oldham and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Inspired in equal measure by the eerie falsetto of Skip James and the acid edged poetry of ’66 Dylan (and frizzy haired disciples like Buckley, Bolan & Barrett), Entrance was an integral voice at the vanguard of what became known as ‘freak folk,’ or ‘the New Weird America’. The first two  Entrance albums The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken By Storm and Honey Moan were made in collaboration with producer Chris Coady. Originally released by Tiger Style, both are now receiving an archival reboot from the Numero Group.

Since the early days of Entrance, Blakeslee has explored a surprisingly vast array of musical identities, from the cosmic blues of 2004’s Wandering  Stranger (Fat Possum) and the 2006 heavily electrified concept album Prayer Of Death, to serving for a decade as frontman for Los Angeles psych-rock legends The Entrance Band. Book of Changes (Thrill Jockey, 2017) channeled the ghosts of Roy Orbison and Leonard Cohen, and landed him onstage in support of Spiritualized and Father John Misty. Further solo albums (as Guy Blakeslee) include 2021’s Postcards From the Edge  and 2024’s ambient opus EXTRAVISION, which emerged in the wake of a life altering brain injury during a prolonged period of self-healing through sound and music.

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