Beyond the Headliners: Manchester Psych Fest

To the uninitiated, the September scaries is the feeling of immense dread and regret you get at the end of festival season where it begins to set in that you’ll no longer be able to see Bathing Suits every week on every lineup in every country in Europe. I certainly experienced the scaries this year, but luckily enough my fall into seasonal depression was cushioned by the warm embrace of Manchester Psych fest. Only 5 days into September, Psych fest is always well-placed to alleviate the annual Autumnal agonies.

Also known as the most profitable day of the year for Beavertown Brewery’s Neck Oil Session IPA, Psych fest is an annual celebration of all music alternative, psychedelic and on the fringes of what Radio 6 producers would call acceptable. It is uniquely still only a 1 day festival despite having enough acts for at least a weekend, with 69 acts performing this year. This forces all attendees to get their priorities together in order to see the headliners, who were Beta Band, Stereolab, Ty Segall and Angine de Poitrine. However as with all festivals, the best emerging bands are often found further down the lineup, in this case with Adult DVD, Girl Group and Model/Actriz. 

The festival is decentralised, with venues across Manchester from the big hitters such as the Apollo and the Academies, to local pubs like Sandbar and Bread Shed. This means you get to experience more of the city with Deansgate and Oxford Road, but also that you walk at least 5 miles frantically moving between them throughout the day. Most locations in the festival were new to me, and I was seriously impressed by how well organised the small and medium sized venues were. My first stop was Academy 1 at 1:30 to see Anna Von Hausswolff.

I’ve always wanted to see Anna Von Hausswolff because it feels as if her music is too sprawling and grand to be constrained to the studio. Her take on Neoclassical Darkwave (which is the 2nd most pretentious genre name behind intelligent dance music) is more operatic than her predecessors, which certainly suited the emboldened acoustics of Academy 1. The set was dominated by songs from her new album Iconoclasts (2026) such as ‘Facing Atlas’ and ‘Struggle with the Beast’. ‘Facing Atlas’ is one of the most fitting opening songs to a set that I’ve ever heard – it instantly galvanised the crowd and introduced us to the power of her vocal delay. The centrepiece of the show was the all-encompassing ‘The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra’. It is unbelievable how effortlessly von Hausswolff’s band recreated the sounds of the organ used in the original track, which in my completely unbiased opinion is one of the best songs of all time. The lighting also vividly emphasised the performance, with the oppressive flashes creating the most suffocating atmosphere of the day. All of this before I’d even had lunch was a lot to handle, but the tightly packed schedule means there’s no time to spare during Psych Fest (unless you underestimate the size of the queue for the Apollo).

That, unfortunately, is exactly what I did. Arriving at the queue for the Apollo at 4:30 (30 minutes before Angine de Poitrine) was a fateful error. The venue was not only full, but there must have been at least 300 people queueing in a one-in one-out queue. This threw a massive spanner in the works for my day but proved to be a blessing in disguise as I instead visited the Bread Shed to see the Portuguese industrial-punk band Maquina.

If I was on mastermind, I’ve got to say that neither industrial-punk, nor Portuguese music would be my specialist subjects. However, sometimes you need to improve your general knowledge, and this was definitely one of those days. The Bread Shed is like the Tardis inside, boasting a seemingly impossible 480 capacity alongside high-level acoustics and a fully equipped bar. At the left side of the bar there was a box of foam earplugs, I didn’t take any, and I regretted it. Maquina were loud, and stayed loud for the entire hour, with it sometimes being difficult to tell when one riff ended and another started. Their songs, such as ‘agony’, pulsated throughout to form what I can only describe as hardcore dance-punk with screamo-esque vocals. This was to the delight of the packed, Red Stripe-wielding crowd. I’ve never felt an atmosphere like it, with the power of the vocals and guitars being reciprocated by headache-inducing headbanging in all directions. An hour was ultimately enough for me, but Maquina were impressive and they commanded the Bread Shed to ensure that by 6, everyone had succumbed to their fuzzy tones.

Then followed a brief break, in which Tesco swindled me out of £4 for a Gary Neville endorsed bottle of Huel. I could not dwell on the 35 grams of protein inside for long though, as Adult DVD were playing at Projekts MCR Skatepark at 8. The skatepark is a phenomenal venue, it’s the largest community-led skatepark in the UK and has the graffiti to prove it. It was absolutely bustling on the day, with improvised seating available on any type of ramp you could desire. After a soundcheck nearly as long as the set, Adult DVD got straight into their small but punchy discography. 

In what was the most high-octane performance of the day, the Leeds-based dance-punk band utilised their set to celebrate the new music (which has since been released) on their eponymous debut album. The band epitomises everything fun about dance-punk, with the vocals frequently submitting to the aggressive synths on the most dance heavy tracks such as ‘Dogs in the Sun’ and ‘Rolling Face’. The enchanting nature of these songs almost seemed to hypnotise the crowd into knowing the words to the (at the time) unreleased songs. It’s rare to see the level of enjoyment and participation that I saw during this set nowadays, especially at a festival where at least 60% of people were wearing all black. Every song was injected with more venom and excitement than the last, much to the excitement of the day drinkers in the mosh pit. This momentum culminated in their closer ‘Bill Murray‘, a song about thinking Bill Murray and Tom Hanks are the same person (which I’m pretty sure is still up for debate). The song isn’t complex, but the band seemed to improvise and extend the heavier synth sections and ultimately layer the outro breathtakingly well. I hadn’t even heard of Adult DVD before the set, and after it finished, I felt like I’d known their music for years. Their performance was my favourite of the night, and they must have gained hundreds of new supporters because of it. Adult DVD could be the band to revive dance-punk and hopefully drown out the tired sounds of the tired imitators that Dare to besmirch the good work of James Murphy.

Luckily enough for my Huel fuelled stomach, the final act of the day was also in Projekts Skatepark; Model/Actriz at 9:45. Model/Actriz had always been a band on my radar to see, primarily to witness the brilliance of frontman Cole Haden’s performances. Haden commanded the crowd throughout with the most heartfelt vocals of the night, especially in the songs from their recent album Pirouette (2025) – an album where Haden ‘was working through [his] coming out story’. The juxtaposition between Haden’s soft vocals and the harsh, angular tones of Model/Actriz’ instrumentals are about as unique as it gets in noise rock, a genre usually plagued by aggressive Steve Albini impersonators. This especially shines in the songs ‘Diva’ and ‘Cinderella’ whose metronomic basslines echoed around the skatepark and gradually built into layered opuses where Haden came into the crowd to pirouette seemingly the best-looking man he could find in the crowd. He clearly must not have seen me though, so all I could do was look on in jealousy. The performance really reiterated Model/Actriz’ maturity since their inception in 2016, and how the band have scaled their music to sound so full when performed live. The set was punchy and truthfully had no weaknesses other than the band announcing they would not be coming back to the UK in the near future. However, their closing promises to have new material next time they’re across the pond means I’ll certainly be in line for a pirouette whenever they’re next in a skatepark near me.

That brought an end to a phenomenal day of psychedelia, where missing the headliners introduced me to the world of Portuguese punk, and I experienced one of the best sets I’ve seen. Psych fest was easily worth the wait, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.