GIG REVIEW: Millie Manders And The Shut Up + Voodoo Radio @ Forum Music Centre, Darlington, Thursday 18 April 2024
Millie Manders is one of the approachable people in the world of DIY punk, and in a scene known for its sense of community that’s saying something.
But as she and her band The Shut Up get ready to release their long-awaited second album they’re angry. In fact, if the songs they’ve released from it so far are anything to go by they’re downright furious.
I first came across Millie Manders And The Shut Up (MMATSU for short) at Rebellion Festival in Blackpool in 2019, by which time they had already released three EPs. I warmed to them immediately, as they cross genres with ease, playing everything from ska-punk to post-hardcore.
Since then their sound has changed, with the guitar crunching a bit harder after Joe Quigley replaced James Pendle, and new drummer Pete forming a rock-solid rhythm section with effervescent bassist Georgina (if there’s a happier woman on a stage anywhere I’d love to see her).
At the centre of it all is Millie. Ferocious, compassionate, fierce, heartfelt, with a voice to die for, she commands the stage with her presence and connects at once with the audience.
Her vocal range is truly astonishing. She hits the high notes like an opera singer and has the guttural roar of a hardcore screamer – sometimes in the space of the same song.
The band recently played the Slam Dunk Winter Jam tour with Zebrahead, Teenage Bottlerocket and Spunge, and they’re clearly road-ready, as they’re firing on all cylinders from the start.
After a short intro they kick off with Here We Go Again, from 2020 debut album Telling Truths, Breaking Ties (reviewed here), and Millie immediately has the crowd (whose ages range from maybe 16 to 60), eating out of her hand immediately. There are punks, skins, skaterboys and girls and a good smattering of fairly ordinary looking folk here. These are her people.
The 18-song set is the longest I’ve seen MMATSU do, and includes the first album in its entirety. It’s all-killer, no-filler, and their new material shows real progression.
This is the Angry Side tour, of course, referring to the double A-side single (b/w Can I Get Off?) released last month as an appetiser for the forthcoming album, along with a range of new T-shirts to help raise funds for Mercy Without Limits, a nonprofit organisation which rescues and educates orphans. Did I mention this is a band with a social conscience as well as strongly-held views?
Both tracks (reviewed here) feature tonight, along with previous digital singles Shut Your Mouth and Rebound, which are both absolute bangers, exuding pop-punk energy from first to last.
Can I Get Off? is about the horrors which have been occurring in Gaza and elsewhere in recent times, and if we hadn’t noticed the green, white and red flag adorning the backdrop, Millie’s humanitarian message at the end is unequivocal: “Free Palestine!”
It’s powerful stuff, but they haven’t finished yet, and another of the new songs, Me Too, is perhaps their angriest so far, and possibly the best they’ve written yet. Again its message is clear: “Why are we teaching women to be safe instead of teaching men not to rape?”
Early songs aren’t forgotten, for those who’ve been with them throughout their journey thus far; we’re treated to Obsession Transgression and crowd favourite Bacchus, both from their debut EP.
MMATSU are a very modern punk band, who don’t just make a noise about our broken system and dangerous world, but want to actively change it.
Their songs are about weighty subjects – loss, betrayal, anxiety, and climate change – but they’re also uplifting, and Not OK and Your Story, which end their 75-minute set, are prime examples of this.
They’re a band who get better every time I see them, and their new material deserves to see them in venues far bigger than this.
A mention should be made, too, of tonight’s openers, Voodoo Radio, a dad and daughter duo from Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria who make a joyful garage-punk racket of their own.
Paige Cook, who sings and plays stand-up drums and her old man Tony (guitar and backing vocals), have clearly come a long way since they began busking in tube station tunnels back in 2018.
I hadn’t heard them before, but their songs are infectious, and more than a few of the crowd already seemed to know them. Paige is a sassy and engaging frontwoman, while Tony – wearing a bigfoot coat and leather cap which look like he’s had them since the ’60s – is more laid back, and knocks out some great riffs.
Their setlist is basically the tracklist of their 2022 debut 10in mini-album Pop Pills, two-and-a-half-minute earworms with titles like Basic Bitch, Slag Bank and Ice Cream Man.
The banter between them is natural, with Paige introducing closing number Turn Out The Light by saying “me dad wrote this for me … it’s about a one-night stand … bit fucking weird that, innit?”, which prompts a telling off for swearing!
This might have been the first time I’d seen Voodoo Radio, but it won’t be the last, and I recommend seeing them as soon as you can, before they outgrow great little grassroots venues like the Forum.
Bands like Voodoo Radio and Millie Manders And The Shut Up might not sound punk to the scene’s self-appointed gatekeepers, who dismiss anything recorded after 1982, but they’ve got the songs, the attitude and the political suss – as well as being hugely entertaining. Long live the new breed.
