Sunday night gigs ain’t for me. On a Sunday, you just want to sit in bed with a G&T, cuppa tea or hot choc and watch shite telly, right? Work starts again tomorrow and you cannot be arsed one bit. It’s not helped by the temperature at this time of year (yes, I moaned about that in the last gig review, get over it).
But the trip had to be made, because a certain South African band were playing their first show in Manchester – landmark moments and all that. The night started in Jimmy’s as a football-hooligan type band aggressively covered ‘One Way Or Another’ down in the basement. It was bad, like seriously bad, so we swiftly moved onto the main event at the dingy Castle Hotel, where a pint of guest ale was less than £4 (hallelujah, pay day ain’t till Wednesday) and water dripped from the ceiling (not so hallelujah).
Despite the depressing state of the venue, Honeymoan were radiant. Dressed in matching outfits – that looked a little like pyjamas, making me question whether they’d recovered from the jet lag, before remembering the time difference between here and South Africa is a measly 2 hours – they looked the part.
It was a confident display. Playing for just under an hour, they showed the crowd they’ve got some proper tunes. Their singer is confident and charismatic, unafraid to dance along. Her vocal was reminiscent of St. Vincent, even reminding me of Lady Gaga at times, almost talking in a spoken-word style before belting everything out at once, but staying in tune, of course.
There’s clearly a lot of potential in this foursome, as you’d expect from a band dubbed the best to come from South Africa in years. Now, only if we could adopt them like we did with Kevin Pietersen and enter them in the next Eurovision…
Read our interview with the band HERE. Listen to Honeymoan on Spotify and Apple Music. Like what you’ve read? Grab a copy of our printed magazine, available HERE!
