Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are a spirited bunch but in the half full main room of The Cockpit at one point one can see the curling mist of breath coming from the audience. Coats are on, there is room to swing, and it is distinctly chilly.

The band, oft talked of of having listened to a few too many Talking Heads circa 1986 records, are an interesting proposition. The early songs - crowd pleasing and coming towards the end of the meaty set - focus on the kind of deliberate quirk which Talking Head point to while newer work is more rough and ready and perhaps better for it. Alec Ounsworth's staccato vocal style of five years ago when the band first broke has been replaced by something more powerful and more able. He hits notes, guitars fuzz, it feels more real.

Which suggests a band in transition. Going from what made them known to something they are feeling out the edges of. Perhaps this accounts for the relatively Spartan audience showing. The tenancy for old favourites to dominate is common in most gigs but, when styles change and some are left behind, the effect can be on of dilution.

Not that that should deter band or audience. The newer work has an edge which is interesting, 4AD like if I were looking for comparisons, and more demanding. A shame then that it did not demand a bigger audience.

OK, I’ll level with you. I love Paul McCartney.

I love it when he sticks his thumb in the air. I love it twice as much when he sticks two thumbs in the air. I know there are those that don’t. They think he’s silly.

It will be interesting to see the bent that history affords him once he does leave us. The true genius of the Beatles, the innovator, the psychedelic sonic architect? Or remain just the sidekick of an angry-yet-empowering, peace-mongering poet-come-Martyr, who thought it might be, maybe, kinda cool if we all gave up meat?

This is the sort of thing I think about. And, to be honest, it doesn’t really matter one jot. His true legacy is his songs, and, as tonight proves, his songs are the best.

A giant screen or three projects a Höffner bass made from stars, the lights dim and people cheer. Loudly.

Now, I’m not one for giddiness but I am genuinely overcome as I realise that the little dot at the other end of the Manchester Arena is a Beatle. A real Beatle. My guest for the evening, my Mum, is transported back to the Bradford Gaumont, December 1963. It’s a moment. Silence ye cynics.

Countless moments follow, as Macca expertly picks from Beatles, Wings, The Fireman, and solo material, even throwing in Come And Get It, the 1969 hit he penned for Badfinger.

His defiant reclamation of Live And Let Die from Axl Rose and his cronies, with staggering indoor pyrotechnics, his thundering Maybe I’m Amazed, the majestic Long and Winding Road, and his perfect rendition of Yesterday which takes one and all back to Royal Variety performances of yore. Us in the cheap seats rattle our iPhones.

Oddly though, it’s a George Harrison song that pushes me over the edge. Now if you ask me, or Frank Sinatra, Something is indeed the greatest love song ever written. The blossoming version Macca delivers unfolds delicately from ukulele to full band with four-part harmonies. It is transcendental. Consider this spine well and truly tingled. And eyes moistened.

Now, it wouldn’t be Macca without a bit of that old cheese of course. A kid’s choir helps us all sing A Wonderful Christmas Time as the fake snow falls on the front rows. People are selected from the audience to join him on stage for a chat and hug. But as the cynics arm their pens, it’s worth remembering this isn’t a man fighting the wrongs of the Vietnam war, this is a man who wants to show us the transfer sticker tattoos his grandchildren gave him earlier in the day. Let him Be.

After the set-piece sing-along of sing-alongs Hey Jude leads us into an encore or two, there is one final moment for me, as Abe Jnr on drums powers the incredible band through Helter Skelter. Bucket List item #27 = ticked.

The fact that Macca chooses to include and deliver this near the end of three hour set is further proof that, despite approaching 70, there is no sign visible or audible to me that he wont continue for a 1,000 years at least.

And as Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End brings the night to a fitting close, Macca says he’ll see us next time.

And I respond with a big double thumbs up.

Set list on Setlist.fm | YouTube

The retrospective gig, which The Lemonheads at the fine Ritz in Manchester ostensibly is, assumes that the album work being celebrated is not only worthy of such devotion but will also stand up to the scrutiny placed on it.

Tonight the album some souls unimpressed at Seattle call early 90s America's finest (half) hour It's a Shame About Ray gets played in its entirety by a laconic Evan Dando.
Time has been graceful to Dando but not passed him over. His surfer/slacker looks are worn in, his mannerisms well practiced. He adjusts amp and levels between songs with an edge to perfectionism not in keeping with his image.

Dando start the show strumming solo before plunging into the album being celebrated with bassist and drummer. The pace is unrelenting.

The album stands up well being payed over more franticly live than memory of mellowed out listening suggests it would be. As an album It's A Shame About Ray captured stories - generally thought to be biographical - of a crossroads in a person's life. It tells of a turning that leads to a narcotic haze, another away from that and any number of compensation that come in companionship.

Dando pours an quart of his soul into the encapsulation of that that is My Drug Buddy. At times I've listened to Ray - and I'm no one's drug buddy and never have been - but heard challenging questions about if it is right to leave behind someone in the interests of improvement or do you owe it to that person to battle on together. I think of people I've known and shared things with but never see again. I think of The Beatles In My Life.

No Mrs Robinson, never a part of the album just a cd bonus track, but after Ray is done and the band work through some entertaining numbers from around their still continuing career it is contextualised in the same way Bridge Over Troubled Waters came at the moment Simon and Garfunkle's reached its shattering summit.

All albums capture a time for the audience which passes too quickly, not all do for bands who are required to live with their work and see it bleed back and forth unto other work. Ray though is an album of friction from a decision now resolved.

Live the album can be repeated, one doubts it could be recreated.

It is said that Morrissey's set at Glastonbury did not raise much of a note against the back drop of Beyonce but tonight Steven is on familiar ground.

Playing to an audience mostly advancing in years it might be seventeen years since the one time The Smiths front man was hosted in thus venue or this city but should he cast his eye over the faces that yodel back at the singer must feel on familiar ground.

Morrissey knows his audience and plays appropriately. Six The Smith tracks and a smattering of his modern stomp alongs are raucously received. The lighter moments of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out float over the heads of the beer guzzling sort who sing football songs between tracks.

It's difficult to recall sometimes just how insanely important The Smiths songs seemed on a personal level. They were Zeitgeist, they moved the person you were, informed the person you wanted to be.

Perhaps the gang mentality that weaves through of Morrissey's songs - and is seen in his backing band - attract the sort of element which missed that formative isolation which many years ago the Mancunian singer seemed to be all about avoiding. Morrissey is all about gangs, and leading them, and to illustrate that while he shimmers in a purple shirt the six men behind him dress identically in t-shirt emblazoned with the words Fuck Fur.

Morrissey is at his most effective when cast as the outcast leader. I Want The One I Can't Have still crackles with anti-authoritarianism and there is a stunned silence to the images of slaughter and animal cruelty projected behind Meat Is Murder.

It is there that Morrissey has risen to his full height as the reminder. The tap on the back or hand on the shoulder that recalls a person changed by time, and age, but who had nurtured dreams of something else.

Set list on Setlist.fm

Belle and Sebastian

So Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch enjoys working through a few of the band's less well know numbers at Leeds having indulged the audience with Juno favourite Piazza, New York Catcher. There is talking loud throughout it because this is Leeds, and sometimes the music drowned out what must be a series of important conversations which buzz around.

I've always wondered what bands do between tours. Record, one supposes, but seemingly not together. We have a myth, us music fans, of the band as best mates living in one comedy house. It's not true, but we have to believe bands like each other, and us.

The latter seems a problem from the seats high in the O2 Academy - I'm not going on that floor again if I can help it - and while the band show no disdain or distaste towards their audience there is not the connection that seemed to mark the Manchester gig in December.
instead there are a few trips to areas one might not expect. Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie is not often heard, nor is Slow Graffiti.

The band must out the lavish set of Manchester, no I Fought In A War here, but finish pairing Judy And The Dream of Horses with Me And The Major so people exit happy.

They have a reputation as being a hit and miss band do and perhaps it is justified but to me they seem more like a symbiotic act going their best when they get something from the audience which is missing tonight.

The band go their separate ways, the audience do too. On the night they never really came together.

Set list on Setlist.fm

For the initiated imagine this: Paul Simon and Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust collaborating and neither being prepared to compromise. That is Sufjan Stevens.

An acoustic guitar and a sweetly pitched voice verbalising esoteric lyrics Stevens is the man who performs songs with titles like Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois and lyrics which reflect that deliberate curiosity he stands at the front of the stage of Manchester's Apollo and communicates something small and private to his audience. His audience significant too, he is a cult for sure, but a sizeable one.

But those moments are interleaved with an utterly constructed, garish, and in the very truest sense of the word awe inspiring show which begins with Seven Swans and Stevens sporting a pair of Swans wings that recall the horrors of David Peece's Red Riding as much as any dreaminess. There is neon on the stage, and dancing girls who danced just the right side of unprofessional to maintain the general edge of unease.

There are videos and curious artwork. There are lights and balloon. It is - frankly - unexpected. Much of it stems from the experimental electronic music of The Age of Adz which clashes viciously with (Come On Feel The) Illinoise and at the heart of the contradiction is Stevens. Cutting away from showmanship with hints at irony but never reveals itself Stevens delivers a cover of R.E.M.'s The One I Love at whisper quiet volume.

It is the tension at the heart of Stevens' duality which is so fascinating. He is neither the shoddy showman nor the simple acoustic artist or he is both but the violent clash is awesome to behold.

Breathless, and unlike anything else.

Last.fm link for images from Flickr and set list on setlist.fm.

The Radio Dept. were to feature in the first Dalliance review five years ago - they cancelled the gig – and have remained elusive since. The proposal of seeing them in one of the North's best venue The Deaf Institute in Manchester seemed to promise more than it could ever deliver.

The Swedes take their blend of fuzzed up guitar, circa-1988 electronic backing and whispered lyrics on the road infrequently but in the last year seemed to up output from the studio with both studio album Clinging to a Scheme and collection Passive Aggressive emerging from Lund.

The Answering Machine

Before that is Manchester's The Answering Machine who take a risk with their set playing to the main band's fans with collection of song's to match the mood. They are less energetic than previously and will have better nights than this.

Which is not to say that the three guys and a gal do not make a good noise, but they seem ill at ease with what they are doing where as they have looked so comfortable.

Then The Radio Dept. The four piece appear as a three - one reportedly not liking touring at all, causing the cancellation of the last set of Northern English gigs in 2006 - shuffling onto stage to take up guitar, bass and keyboard. There is a duskiness to proceedings as the bright sunlight that bathed their support fades.

Interaction is brief between anticipatory audience and seemingly criminally shy band. Occasionally instructions are passed to the sound man but these come in Swedish, which is apologised for.

A rich catalogue is reduced with little mercy. Domestic Scene starts the gig with a hush and a reverence. Three songs in and The New Improved Hypocrisy has both band and audience in comfort zones.

The fuzz of guitar both hides and reveals. Enveloping the band in a pocket of hissing The Radio Dept. seem to seep into the mind rather than enter the head through the ears. They are a sense more than a sensation, more reaction than a realisation.

In lament 1995 there is a hunt at why the Swedes distance themselves from their audience. It is in the crack of the voice on the line "Although I'm happier now I always go sometimes/back to 1995."

After 1995 there is an ease in the auditorium. Worst Take In Music is applauded from the first mention, Heaven's On Fire is a small scale Livin' On A Prayer. It is easy street for the band now having tentatively exposed a crack from which one could glimpse of their heart, their soul;

As with a dream though that crack is fleeting, and perhaps never happened. Perhaps it was just the mind playing tricks, filling in the gaps of hazy half memory.

They depart the stage not to return. No encore, which unsettled some but seems some how apt. If The Radio Dept. capture the feel of a dream then the sudden end completes that.

The judder back into the world, the sense of remembering something more in emotion.

The idea at the back of your mind that you just cannot bring into focus but that swirl in your head, setting your mood for days to come.

She Keeps Bees are going to spend their days as an acquired taste.

Which is not a criticism of Jessica Larrabee and Andy LaPlant's band who combine the starkness of a drum guitar combination with a set of lyrics that talk of a kind of sharp distress which is fascinating but it is because of that snarkness that they will never be a radio favourite, even amongst the sort of people who loved PJ Harvey records who surely must see them as a very close cousin.

The world of She Keeps Bees is a slightly troubling one - at contrast to Jessica's amused banter between songs - but all the better for it. My second visit and the place gets more interesting.

2:54

Instantly interesting though are support 2:54. A pair of sisters from London who take their names from their favourite part of a Melvins song they muse onto stage with a thick smoke and set alight the buzz of heavily distorted guitars.

They make a music drenched in itself. Feedback to the point of constant fuzz with a hook or a solo sitting atop the noise and a vocal that weaves in and out of the forest of sound it is impossible to not mention My Bloody Valentine and Blonde Redhead but even on first listen there is so much more going on than a band wearing a reference on its sleeve.

Creeping builds a song by layers, it drills into the head, On A Wire has a woozy, lazy cool about it. Rumour has it this is the band's first set of dates, they return to West Yorkshire for Live At Leeds in May and they are very worth stopping what you are doing to listen.

Buen Chico

Perhaps this accounts for the generally mixed bag feel of Sunday night gigs and the unevenness of the evening. I'm hear to see Buen Chico and they are first up.

Stacking up four newer tracks Buen Chico offer something of a split set. The older work is more raw and battered out of the trio's mix of guitar, bass and drums with more aggression. The new tracks - which form a forthcoming ep - have a more considered feel.

Wot Gorilla?

That consideration does them good too. Nothing reinvents the wheel but the rolling is good which is not that case with the much discussed Wot Gorilla? who's reputation proceeds them onto stage but there seems to be a troubling discord with what they are doing.

Half steady band, half aggressive thump they have the odd touch at something good but it is lost in a kind of clashing at sound which is likened to standing equidistant between two bands getting one in one ear, the other in the other.

Not entirely bad, but entirely too much and perhaps on a Sunday evening one is in no mood for complexity or perhaps - for me - Wot Gorilla? just need to make less noise and more sense. They are not unappreciated and at least one can say that they offer something original.

Delta Sleep

Delta Sleep and Loose Talk Cost Lives follow but do not live long in the mind. The fashion for interesting Afrobeat mixed with guitar playing sensibilities that started with Vampire Weekend seems to have lost something in the translation to the Sunday evening and drifts into the night ineffectually.

Crowded onto the stage at the Brudenell are the six members of Freelance Whales and they have brought a glockenspiel.

A glockenspiel or a xylophone - I forget the difference between the two - but either way watching the Brooklyn band in action and seeing them pick out the melody to catchy hook from stand out track Hannah one is struck by the self-effacingness of it all. Chiming, simplistic and charming describes both melody, song and band.

For the uninitiated Freelance Whales fill the room left when Vampire Weekend made it fashionable to do something other than be The Strokes mixing the tried, tested and at times tiresome line up of instrumentation with the odd thing that gets hit with a stick that has a ball on the end of it.

And they do it well. "Indie" for sure but probably in the best and worse ways but enjoyable to watch. The set is first album Weathervanes reordered but the approach is fresh, and seems to blend the old and the new.

Broken Records

So while Broken Records - who follow as co-headliners - are a fine example of what they do they are left looking a little stolid. Not bad but heavy and claustrophobic. They put in a good set, but suffer in comparison.