Photo Credit: BBC/Shirlaine Forrest
BBC Radio 6 Music Festival returned to Manchester this past week, taking over some of the city’s most beloved independent, grassroots venues. On Friday night, the festival landed in the Pink Room at the iconic YES Manchester, bringing with it Leeds-born post-punk band Yard Act, alongside support from SORRY.
Whilst local bars and pubs filled with post-work crowds and Manchester’s usual Friday-night energy; 6 Music fans gathered into the venue’s second floor, ready for a night of indie, post-punk and spoken-word.
SORRY were first to take the stage, warming up the room with a set of genre-blurring tracks, drifting between lo-fi grunge to sharper indie-rock. Signature tracks such as ‘Echoes’, ‘Jetplane‘ and ‘Screaming in the Rain‘ sat alongside newer releases ‘Billy Elliot‘ and ‘Alone in Cologne‘. As a band who have been consistently supported 6 Music’s ecosystem – their moody, experimental sound not only ignited the crowd, but also set the atmospheric foundations of the evening.
Yard Act closed the show with a set that felt both tightly controlled and completely unrestrained. Their mix of post-punk, indie rock, hip-hop rhythms topped with sharp, spoken-word delivery has made them a staple of 6 Music’s rotation – and their live presence was evidence of this.
Despite their experience at larger-scale venues and festival stages, the band made the Pink Room feel entirely their own. Frontman James Smith, equal parts narrator and performer, could be seen moving with ease across the stage – at one point gripping the beams to take in the full scope of the crowd, all the way to the back of the room.
The set pulled from across their 2022 and 2024 album releases, including favoured tracks: ‘The Overload’, ‘100% Endurance’, ‘Dream Job‘ and ‘We Make Hits‘. Inside the venues four pink walls, the energy was relentless, fans hanging off every word, shouting lyrics back in unison – turning the intimate space into something much bigger.
It felt fitting that a festival of this scale and status rooted itself in the foundations of the city’s music scene, making use of venues like YES. Long before sold-out tours and festival stages, it’s in spaces like these that bands such as Yard Act and SORRY build their audiences and define their sound.
Photo Credit: BBC/Shirlaine Forrest
Taped Magazine 