When: 7pm on Friday 23 May 2025
Where: YES Basement, 38 Charles Street, Manchester, M1 7DB

We’re delighted to be working with Toria Wooff for the first time!

Finding splendour in shadows, Toria Wooff sings tales of the beautifully strange. Announcing the release of her beguiling self-titled debut album, her gothic approach to the folk tradition has captured the attention of any who have caught her live over the last couple of years and as the record takes listeners deeper into her bittersweet world, it’s only a matter of time before countless others will fall under her spell. Toria heads out on a headline tour this Spring to play the album in full to audiences across the UK.

Containing tales of love, loss, hope, relationships and womanhood, the album is both an exorcism of torment and an invitation to feeling only what is good. Tugging at the cloaks of contemporary folk souls Katie J Pearson and This Is The Kit, the record offers a contemporary twist on the Anglo folk tradition through a bloody cocktail of classic rock origins and transcends time as it nods to the lyrical narratives of Led Zeppelin, Fairport Convention and Townes Van Zandt – all the while infused with inspiration from her collection of gothic literature and historical texts.

Local support comes from Creepy Crawly. Creepy Crawly is the project of Bristol-born and Manchester-based musician Rachel Cawley, weaving bittersweet narratives through shimmering, multilayered songwriting. Her distinctive crystalline vocals guide listeners through ethereal dreamscapes, moments of eerie unease, and the satisfying crunch of ’90s alt-rock melancholy.

Growing up in the rural West of England, her music is, in part, inspired by a childhood soundtracked by folk revival artists and traditional British folk music. But the pull of the city was huge and, aged 18, she moved to London and submerged herself in the many worlds of music available to her there – working at venues, writing for music magazines, temping at record labels – and going to a lot of gigs. But, as it so often does, London spat her back out. And so, during a period of self-reckoning with the question of ‘how the hell did I get here?’, living a life that seemed frighteningly ordinary, she returned to writing songs – tracing out the path of how she found herself in a place she didn’t want to be – and armed with newfound hope and resilience, plotting a route back out of it.

The result of this reflective work is her debut album Like a Real Thing, which will be self-released on 30 May 2025 and draws from a diverse palette of influences including Scott Walker, Big Thief, Laura Marling, Anne Briggs, Cat Power, Breeders and Heatmiser.

Book tickets now.

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