Louis Dunford – Acoustic Tour (23rd February 2024) – SOLD OUT

Louis Dunford is a story teller, with stories that need to be told.

Born under Bow bells and raised by the streets of Islington, Louis’ songs are chapters straight out of his lived experiences.

Sometimes raw, sometimes funny and always honest, the stories are all underpinned by infectious melodic hooks.

Fresh from a sold out show at Hammersmith Apollo, Louis will be playing a run of acoustic shows across the UK, trialing new material from his forthcoming debut album.

Anyone looking to resell tickets for this show is encouraged to use Fan-to-Fan resale platforms, in this case See’s Marketplace: HERE

CIRCA WAVES – 6th Feb 2024

Circa Waves have expanded their special run of intimate UK live dates from which a portion of the profits will be donated to local foodbanks in each town they are touring through.

The band recently released new album Never Going Under to high praise across press and radio and spent their summer headlining festival stages. Recognising their position in being able to help charities close to their hearts however, they made the decision to bring Never Going Under to intimate venues in ten UK towns and cities for the benefit of a foodbank in each area, at a time when donations are needed more than ever. Additional dates in Stoke and Glasgow now complete the run through Jan and Feb 2024.

The band had the following to say about the decision to show their support.

“We’re so happy to be supporting food banks on our next tour. In this current climate where the cost of living crisis is hitting everyone we know that being able to feed your family is no longer a given. We will be playing a handful of small intimate shows with a percentage of profits going to local food banks in each area. Can’t wait to see you there.”

Kieran, Sam, Joe and Colin

Hear new album Never Going Under here.

Tickets available NOW

The Zutons – 2nd March 2024 – SOLD OUT!

Playing The Sugarmill on Saturday 2nd March 2024, THE ZUTONS have announced details of their first album together for 16 years. The Big Decider is out 26^th April and was recorded at Abbey Road Studios with legendary songwriter and producer Nile Rodgers, alongside the band’s original producer Ian Broudie. The multi-platinum selling band released three studio albums between 2004 and 2008, scoring 9 UK Top 40 singles including two Top 10s with ‘Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love?’ and the all- conquering ‘Valerie’, the latter a triple-platinum hit for Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse. Today they return to share the fruits of their extended time away.

The Big Decider comes into view as an album of stark significance to the band, completed by Dave McCabe (guitar, lead vocals), Abi Harding (saxophone, vocals) and Sean Payne (drums, vocals). Written against the backdrop of a decade and a half’s worth of lived experience, it is born under the weight of family tragedies, lives lost and created, reality checks, and home truths faced up to and stared down. Wrestled into shape under the kind of steam that only decades-long friendships – with all their messy fall-outs, make-ups, breakdowns and ultimately love – can muster, The Big Decider became the sound of water passing under the bridge, and love for music, love for each other, and love for creating together becoming the most important thing of all.

Talking about the new album, lead singer and guitarist Dave McCabe says: “Working with Nile was just an amazing experience, he gave me a confidence that I’ve never felt before making a record. He’s very laid-back as a person and a good listener. On the song ‘Disappear’ , I wrote a spoken word piece about The Zutons travelling the stars and galaxies asking the most powerful question in the universe, “Why?”. I asked Nile if he’d read it out over the top of the end section of the song, thinking he’d just say no. But he jumped in the vocal booth with his chain around his neck and his sunglasses on and did about 20 different takes, all in different styles of himself. It was mind-blowing! It was as though he really does travel around the universe in some spaceship and just makes music in his spare time. He’s just one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.

It was great to reconnect with Ian Broudie on this record as well. He told me the demo of Big Decider brought a tear to his eye and that’s why he said yes to working with us again. It was one of the first songs we wrote for the album so getting that reaction from Ian made me feel like we were doing something right. The song spoke for itself.”

Long-anticipated, authentically hard-won, scorchingly self-aware and truly worth the wait, The Big Decider is the sound of a band channelling what Abi Harding describes as a lifetime of “great chemistry and great connection”. Or, as Sean Payne puts it: “We had a genuine feeling of a shared vision. In the past we haven’t really said how we feel, or we’ve taken each other the wrong way. But this album was different. We really didn’t feel good until it was just how we wanted it.”

As sunny as it is poignant, as heartfelt is as it triumphant and – for the band – as liberating as it is cathartic, The Big Decider reminds us that the magical songwriting smarts of The Zutons has been absent for too long. They are The Zutons, they are back, and they’re here to uplift your 2024 with their ‘Creeping On The Dance Tour’.

Pre-order new album The Big Decider HERE 

Anyone looking to resell tickets is encouraged to use Fan-to-Fan resale platforms – in this case See’s Marketplace HERE

BLACK FRIDAY All-Nighter (Friday 24th November ’23)

CUCAMARAS + Special Guests – (23rd Nov)

Nottingham born, Indie/Post-punk four-piece Cucamaras are described by Dork as “A band stamping their authority on the next wave of alternative guitar music”. Appearing on this year’s NME 100 and gaining praise from BBC Radio 1 after last year’s debut EP “Soft Soap”, the band have released their second EP, “Buck Rogers Time”, lead by singles Porcelain and Cotton Wool. 2022 saw the band perform across the UK and Europe, playing YNOT, Left of the Dial, Lokerse Feesten and supporting The Amazons. 2023 has seen the band gain repeated support from BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, perform at Eurosonic, The Great Escape, a French tour and appear on Dork Magazine’s Hype List tour.

Tickets available now.

New Year’s Eve All-Nighter (31st December 2023)

THE BIGGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR!

Our N.Y.E All-Nighter always sells out ~ so don’t miss it!

The Clause – plus Special Guests (26th January ’24)

Birmingham four-piece, The Clause are coming back to The Sugarmill on Friday 26th January 2024, as part of their intimate run of independent venues!

Bringing together the swagger of the 60s, the rolling groove of the 80s and the riotous verve and attitude of the 90s – The Clause effortlessly combine huge hooks with gritty verses, indie sensibilities and rhythm and blues groove and melodies to create an altogether different beast. With epic singalong choruses destined for stadiums and packed festival main stages, and darker, edgier moments evoking late night cruises down dingy back streets. The band have been together since they were kids and they’ve matured into one of the UK’s most exciting bands.

Tickets go on sale this Friday 24th November ’23 at 10 am!

Move:ment Presents Lowsteppa Boxing Day Special – (26th December 2023)

Pom Poko & Personal Trainer – (19th April 2024)

Coming to The Sugarmill on Friday 19th April ’24, in a fantastic co-headline show – Norway’s finest punk-pop anti-conformists Pom Poko and Dutch indie-rock septet Personal Trainer!

Pom Poko deliver sweet melodies, galvanic punky ructions and wild-at-art-rock eruptions. “If you have a vacancy for Favourite New Band, Pom Poko would like to apply for the role,” tweeted Tim Burgess in April, as the band revisited their joyous debut album, Birthday, for one of Tim’s mood-lifting Twitter listening parties. Pom Poko pimp their CV on all fronts with their glorious second album, Cheater, due for release via Bella Union in January 2021. Cheater is the sound of a band celebrating the binding extremes that make them so uniquely qualified to thrill: and, like Tim’s listening party, to fulfil any need you might have for a pick-you-up.

As singer Ragnhild Fangel explains of the leap from Birthday to Cheater, “I think it’s very accurate to say that we wanted to embrace our extremes a bit more. In the production process I think we aimed more for some sort of contrast between the meticulously written and arranged songs and a more chaotic execution and recording, but also let ourselves explore the less frantic parts of the Pom Poko universe. I think both in the more extreme and painful way, and in the sweet and lovely way, this album is kind of amplified.”

Hailing from the Netherlands Personal Trainer churn out songs that sound like all your favorite indie rock luminaries jam-packed into big-beaming pop psalms. One of the band’s early career highlights was a 24-hour (!) performance at Amsterdam’s legendary pop temple Paradiso. After releasing their debut EP Gazebo on Holm Front in 2021, the band released their first full-length LP Big Love Blanket. Recorded and produced in the span of several studio sessions with co-producer Casper van der Lans, the album brings a fresh pop sensibility and adventurous production values to songs that have been well-honed on the stage.

Tickets go on sale Friday 24th November 2023 at 10 am HERE

OF MICE & MEN + Caskets + Defects – (5th Dec)

Southern California quartet OF MICE & MEN – Aaron Pauley (bass and vocals), Valentino Arteaga (drums), Alan Ashby (guitar) and Phil Manansala (guitar) – are back to tour their eighth studio album, ‘Tether’.

Few hard rock albums are as intimate as the modern output from OF MICE & MEN. While their songs pack the kind of rhythmic punch and anthemic bombast that thrills festival crowds, the confessional lyrics, and haunting melodies are the heart of what they do. Taking all creative matters into their own hands, the Southern California quartet self-produced and engineered all of the songs on Tether, their astonishing eighth album. Frontman Aaron Pauley mixed and mastered the album while Drummer Valentino Arteaga designed and painted the album’s artwork. As a legion of devoted listeners worldwide has come to expect, guitarists Phil Manansala and Alan Ashby, Aaron, and Tino poured their hearts and souls into every note, creating another sonic document of their lives.

“With this one, we weren’t really focused on how it sounded as much as we focused on how it felt,” Pauley explains. “And that’s a weird thing to do when all you’re working with is sound. But that was really the goal. And we walked away from making it, feeling like we’ve accomplished that.”

OM&M take sobering looks at depression, anxiety, loneliness, and existential dread, powering through the darkness, and emphasizing the importance of creativity as a balm for mental health.

A commanding tempest of sounds coalesces within Of Mice & Men, blending the uplifting eloquence of modern active rock with the atmospheric dissonance of experimental post-rock. The band first emerged as part of a vanguard of future aggressive rock hitmakers. Over the years, they’ve distinguished themselves with musicality, creative ambition, and resilient determination.

Songs like the GOLD-certified “SECOND & SEBRING,” “Would You Still Be There,” and “Obsolete,” from 2021’s Echo, cemented OM&M at the forefront of hard rock and post-hardcore music. (WWE superstar Rhea Ripley counts “SECOND & SEBRING” among the ten songs that changed her life, alongside classics from Queen, Taylor Swift, Falling In Reverse, and Motionless In White.)

The rumble of their 2010 self-titled debut; the following year’s follow-up, The Flood; and 2014’s No. 1 Billboard Independent album, Restoring Force, catapulted them onto a massive tour with Linkin Park. Cold World (2016) saw them on the road with Slipknot and Five Finger Death Punch.

The California band took home the Best International Newcomer prize at the 2013 Kerrang! Awards and were twice nominated as Artist Of The Year at the APMAs, where Manansala took home Best Guitarist.

2018’s Defy put longtime bassist Aaron’s voice front and center. “Of Mice & Men don’t miss a beat with Pauley as the frontman,” wrote Loudwire. “Defy delivers the sound fans have come to expect (big hooks, monster grooves, and singalong melodies) while still breaking some new ground.” The band supported Defy on the road, including tours with Bullet For My Valentine and Nothing More.

Kerrang! heralded the incredibly heavy Earthandsky (2019) as “confident, cohesive,” and “angry.” Australia’s Wall Of Sound called it “the perfect balance in melodic metalcore” and “a great addition to their legendary catalog and contribution they’ve brought during their entire career as a band.”

Earthandsky cleared a path for the diverse trio of EPs that followed, collected as Echo in 2021. As OM&M wrote in a shared statement, Echo “covers life and impermanence, love and the infinite – how the most wonderful and most tragic parts of the human experience deeply intertwine.”

Album eight is no less ambitious. Tether is anchored by a reflective meditation on what it means to draw together as friends, family men, artists, and bandmates. What does it mean to be there for the people who depend on us, knowing we can’t fully protect them from the hardships of life?

“We’ve worked with so many talented producers and artists throughout our career, and we’ve been able to learn something from each of them,” Pauley explains. “We really left ourselves open as we wrote. Anytime a spark of imagination made anybody’s ears perk up, we pursued it.”

Tether is the next step in OM&M’s evolution, combining their core sound with experimental and ethereal sound designs. The creative process focused on the excitement of discovery rather than preconceived “goals.” Pursuing the moments when the elusive “x factor” reveals itself in the songs. Those moments are palpable in songs like “Integration,” “Warpaint,” “Enraptured,” and “Indigo.”

“Emotions and feelings are fleeting and change. Things that excite you one day don’t always excite you the next,” Pauley says. “For us, it was so much about continuously and endlessly chasing a feeling. Not only do we feel like it produces an album we can be proud of that will resonate with our fans, but there’s something deeply human about chasing the excitement in the process. As they say, ‘The man who loves walking will go further than the man who loves the destination.’”

The Of Mice & Men core since 2016 – Aaron, Alan, Tino, and Phil – maintain a powerful bond with their audience and each other, no matter the obstacles. Whether a powerful anthem or atmospheric confession, their songs translate in intimate clubs and massive festivals.  “It’s about creating moments for people,” Pauley says. “Music is the soundtrack to people’s lives.”

Tickets available here.