LIVE REVIEW: Dopplegänger @ The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool

It is the mid 80s. Uni students are covering the half-written essays on their desks with piles of lyrics, teenagers are shuffling back through their windows after gigs and people are tumbling over pavements with messy guitar ringing in their ears. This was the beginning of the grunge movement and since then, not much has changed. 

There are still Uni students grabbing lyrics from under their schoolwork and hurtling down sticky basement stairs, and in 2026 it is Dopplegänger, gracing the stage of The Shipping Forecast for their first gig of the year. 

Photo Credit: Esme Morgan-Jones

They open with 'Spoken Suicide', a contemplation on a distorted youth, one of golden promise and little result. It embodies the solitude of a Dinosaur Jr. tune, downtrodden by similar worlds, fighting similar issues. There is something slightly disturbing about the wall of sound that builds around these lyrics, piling on distortion like snow threatening to imprison its listeners. Toeing this line gracefully, there is a resonant lead guitar that cuts through the heaviness of the bass and the crushing weight of the drums is broken by an occasional riff: always intense but never suffocating. 

They live in the purgatory between grunge and shoegaze, in the world of Julie and Swervedriver, in the world of angry etherealism. Their debut single 'Take Some Time' is what embodies this wholly, with muffled lyrics sung into the mounds of murky chords scattered around the stage. Each crescendo allows a new layer of hazy guitar to settle above the sea of gig goers, hovering gently in a static-y mist. 

Their night ends in an exploration of what can truly be done with music. 'So Hard' begins with the gentle padding of a bass guitar and a raspy Kurt Cobain vocal line. The drums creep steadily  into the song's peripheral vision, and a beer bottle is scraped along the neck of the lead guitar, presumably an homage to the recent experimentation of BCNR. Whispers of Ovlov or TAGABOW can be heard through the scream of the lead singer, who flirts with the extremity of screamo sounds like Your Arms Are My Cocoon. Structure loosens and a restless chaos takes over Dopplegänger in their final moments on stage.

So no, we admit, it is not the 80s and it is not the beginning of the grunge movement. It is the beginning of 2026, a year of grunge-graze and post-punk and noise-rock, a year of guitars played with bottles and chords so heavy they snow you in. It is a year that confirms that messy guitar never stopped ringing, it simply changed hands, and the ones that have it now are treating it beautifully.