LIVE REVIEW: 48 Hour Party People @ Future Yard, Birkenhead

Future Yard is expanding, in style. It’s constructing a new building with greater capacity to highlight local acts, there’s going to be more studio space and additional training hours for the young people that they support. Some of them are clearly here this weekend; Geese look-alikes who should probably be revising for their A-levels mixing with the groups of familiar faces who will swear that they saw The Beatles in a venue this size. They’re all the people that Future Yard has cradled weekend after weekend, and this weekend is a big one. 

To fundraise for their expansion, Future Yard are putting on a 48 hour gig, stuffed full of Merseyside bands and community projects and pints. Pinned to their door on the Friday evening is an outstanding lineup, and flowing from their kitchen is a heap of steaming pizzas; it’s a madness of a weekend that awaits. 

Opening for them is Dave McCabe, yes, that Dave McCabe, who plays an intimate set to the people who have successfully managed to rush to the venue for 6pm. He is perched on a stool that’s awkwardly tall, hair working its way loose from its styled state and cascading down his forehead. It feels spontaneous, like he’s been begged to play ‘Valerie’ whilst perched on the edge of a mate's sofa, a plastic plate of sausage rolls still in hand. Emerging from behind the unruly hair, he beautifully captures the highs that Future Yard has seen through the years, the sarcastic “shite, that” remarks mid-cult-classics and the warmth of an acoustic guitar. He almost (almost) makes it feel like we could last though all 48 hours. 

What follows is a mix of brilliantly eclectic bands. The lineup is what you would imagine the notes app of an NME journalist to look like: a kid kick-started by TikTok, a heavy metal Tori Amos and an industrial-goth-rave to finish. 

The TikTok kid is, of course, Michael Aldag, neither a kid or really defined by his social media, but a bewitchingly painful, vibrato soaked, bedroom-pop sensation. 

Standing in sharp contrast to these acoustic sets are some heavier, shadowier bands. Steel are the first of these, a band who Sub Pop probably needed to discover … about 40 years ago. They could easily hold their own between Sonic Youth and L7, with flippant spoken word lyricism and guitar lines that have been smeared over weary drum beats. 

The blisteringly energetic Chicken Man and the Bad Eggs follow in a punk induced frenzy, introduced by a megaphone. The origins of the megaphone seem somewhat unclear, as it is subsequently used by the rest of the bands of the evening, but our best bet is on Two Tonne Machete. They’re a politically charged, feminist onslaught of thundering basslines and grinding vocals, which should only ever be sung through a megaphone. 

Ending the Friday, although with another 42 hours of gig to go, is Dead Animals, an operatic, industrial, panic attack. They are absurd, in every way, from the furious dancing to the layer upon layer of industrial hooliganism. It is unsettling, and powerful, and undeniably cool. 

For those who didn’t overindulge in grapefruit beer and DJ sets on the Friday night, there’s morning yoga to begin the Saturday, which we are sure was good. 

Following this is a run of female fronted bands, from the The Japanese House inspired etherealism of Bunny Alex to the mellow jazz beats of Cherie Nova and the outraged political folk of Zara Smile. 

Emily Baron is a 60s sensation amongst these Saturday openers. She has a Joan Baez, Sandy Denny inspired pain about her work, despite her age, weaving a galloping guitar line into soaring, bell-like vocals. She makes the art of 60s folk revival look like a simple part of a lazy Saturday morning, which maybe it should be. 

Morning lapses to afternoon at Future Yard, and the music begins to become stranger. News From Neptune begin this, swamped in a thick psychedelic smoke. They’re a little Spiritualized, a little Saint Etienne in their production; a guitar layered above a cloudy breath of synth. His vocals have the sweetness of schoolboy nerves, hovering gently above the experimental pop below. He appears later, in Flower Show, a 6 piece that remains mostly obscured by the flowing cape donned by its lead singer. Their playful, glamorous rock creates a sort of frazzled idealism that defines the rest of the night. 

Dog Minder ride high on this fantastical world, spinning wildly into a power-pop induced whirl. They sound like The New Pornographers, if they had found scraps of their old songs behind the sofa and rearranged them into an erratic, drum led, noisy 90s band. In other words, they were brilliant. 

The Saturday is drawn to a close by two well established Liverpool acts, alright (okay) taking the lead. It’s lucky that Future Yard are planning an extra room, because they’ve outgrown the current one; their wall of sound too vast, their frontman too dynamic. They’re a band at the properly gritty end of the alternative scene, lying in a grimy afters somewhere between Title Fight and Squid. 

The Drop Jonnies, on the other hand, are probably still at the event, soaking up early 2000s sleaze in pin stripe suits, dancing until the last second. They have the scruffiness of an early Arctic Monkeys tune and the bounciness of Supergrass. The night seems young when they leave the stage, and luckily there’s about 20 hours of it left. 

The Sunday is kind to the madmen who have stayed for the majority of the weekend, wafting a lineup of gentle folk singers their way. It opens with the graceful, dancing melodies of Helen Maw, moving through the woozy beats of Ketwig Salon and into the silky, poetic, Adrianne Lenker inspired Catherine Bullock. 

The 48 hours ends with the enormously talented Danny Bradley who plays about busking for hungover hen-parties and Liverpool sun. Leaning into the mic, he releases a charmingly ragged whirl of storytelling which flickers in and out of his finger-picked tunes. They glide up and down the room with an elegant precision. 

By the end of his set, the venue is softer than it had been on the Friday night, with coffee cups replacing pint glasses and the cables being wound back onto their neat little boxes. The Geese look-alikes wander out, as baffled as they always are about where on earth the time went. The veterans of the scene hang back to say goodbye to the bar staff and offer to shove tables to the side, as they always do.

But Future Yard shouldn’t stay this familiar for long. It’s got more gigs to plan, and a new building to finish, and hordes of young people to train up. The people there this weekend are the start of this, but only the start, there is so much more to come.