Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 23rd September 2026
It’s very hard to capture the visual chaos of a Man Woman Chainsaw gig; there are six people on stage, all following their instinct. Likewise the apparently loose noise that is actually intricately arranged. Hitting the sweet spot, with songs put together in sections the band knows perfectly, allows an intuitive looseness where individuals can match their part to the mood and their body moves just follow on. One might be leaping, another crouching, another shaking their head – it’s a fury of emotional movement. It’s like prog rock played by punks and it’s wonderful – driving a deeply concentrated and felt wild abandon way beyond the promise of the album.
The drummer is the key – magically loose-limbed and groovy while pushing a pulse through everyone. The bass is deeply deep and solid, grounding the other wild sounds as the violin keens, jerks and buzzes, lead guitar roams into ferocious corners, rhythm guitar hammers fast and frantic and keys stab. And when the violin doesn’t have a part? She dances. It’s about the movement. It’s a jungle of sound, aural fronds seeming to wave in different directions while steamrollering the tune and beat into the rabid audience’s ears. There’s an intense centre to the crowd, dancing and going for it, surrounded by a packed-to-capacity room mostly stunned into rapt attention.
The sense of this band is like one of those Canadian collectives – Arcade Fire, Thee Silver Mount Zion, Godspeed! You Black Emperor – in feel (not content), while delivering cohesive pieces and filling nearly an hour with everything they know. Rounding up the set with the heavy grooves of ‘Cannonball’ and ‘Nosedive’ put the area in front of the stage into a frenzy. Leave the audience wanting more, they say; and they did – we’d have happily hoovered up whatever the band had to offer but they’d given us all their songs and left people with a taste for the next tour, in May 2027.
Ross McGibbon