I was futzing about on the internet recently, as you do, and I happened across a YouTube channel run by a band from Manchester called Former Bullies. According to Suffering Jukebox – a label, now on hiatus I think, run by one of the guys from Mazes – the band have been around for nearly seven years and, for whatever reasons, have yet to really crack any kind of serious audience.

The people I have spoken to in Manchester tend to treat the recent outbreak of lo-fi garage rock in that city as something of a cathartic experience.  Venues were beset by pay-to-play promoters, who have now all but been expunged from the city’s musical landscape, and the style of the city was very much dominated by excessive reverence of the past, be it the Hacienda and Factory Records scene, or the brainless lad-rock of Oasis.

When The Courteeners threatened briefly to break into the mainstream a couple of years ago, that was by all accounts something of a catalyst amongst those in the city who didn’t want to just re-hash old glories they weren’t that keen on in the first place.  ‘Oh fuck, not this shit, again‘ was more or less how it seems to have gone.

If the conversations I have had with a few different bands recently are to be believed, the reaction against this has, as much as anything, brought about the recent explosion in really good Manchester bands and promoters.  There is presumably a bit more to it than that, but there you go.

Anyway, as with most sudden explosions of a particular scene, there are a few people who suddenly get a lot of attention very quickly, some merited, some less so.  But there are also people who work away in the background for a long time and who, when the rest of the world finally catches on, seem to get a bit less credit than those who shout louder than they do.

Depending on what you make of their music, Former Bullies appear to quite possibly be one of these bands.  On the aforementioned YouTube channel, the page which brought me to all of this in the first place, they have videos made for all sorts of bands (all written in capital letters too, so you know they must be pretty cool) and, from the looks of it, for no better reason than that the guy likes making videos.

However, that breadth of interest means that the channel itself is a pretty good place to have a browse and find new bands, because there are quite a few represented there, including the likes of Sic Alps, who I’ve been hearing a fair bit about recently, but have been around for a few years apparently, and the awesomely messy, lo-fi, shoegazey Waiters.

I’ve included a couple of videos below, one by Waiters and one by Sex Hands, but there are plenty more on YouTube.