Live Review: Gen & The Degenerates - Deaf Institute, Manchester
29th September 2022
Support: LibraLibra and Queen Cult
Words & Photos: Rich Price
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Deaf Institute in Manchester, it’s definitely one of Manchesters’ more unique venues. Warm, pleasant, inviting and an ambience second to few.
Starting off the night is Macclesfield’s three-piece Queen Cult. There’s a certain unassuming charm to the set which left me pleasantly surprised. Plenty of banter with a warmly receptive crowd. Singer Maisie is charismatic with a lovely warm voice and engages with plenty of interactions with the crowd. Songs such as ‘Song About Consent’ and the latest single ‘Better Believe it’ are excellent, there’s a real swing to them, with some great catchy choruses. Finishing their set with a cover of Anastacia’s Left Outside Alone, with a few bars of Rage Against the Machine thrown in couldn’t fail but to raise a smile. A decent amount of applause lingers in the crowd for a notably long time after the very enjoyable set concludes. Quality stuff!
Chilled out indie rock plays over the PA during the changeover and I had to take some time to notice just how wonderful the atmosphere was in here tonight. If you were to look up the word gig online, you’d almost certainly find a picture looking incredibly similar tonight, and a youtube ambient track sounding exactly like this. I couldn’t help but sit and smile and soak in the ambience of the whole thing, brilliant.
Next up was 3-piece LibraLibra, although, given their large sound and the fact that even the drummer had a keyboard, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were in fact a 5-piece tonight. This was a big boisterous performance, of particular note was the physical thumping of the drums, which is always going to get bonus points in my book. Some technical issues did highlight a lack of direct audience engagement, and slowed their momentum slightly, but not for long. The last song was incredible, with an absolute powerhouse vocal performance I needed to be careful not to trip over my own jaw.
Next up were the headliners, Gen and the Degenerates who have been building a buzz around them after having supported Skunk Anansie recently. It was immediately obvious why, this was an absolutely wonderful set. The set was once again plagued by some technical issues, broken guitars, Microphones, and bass guitar straps, to the point the tech guy Otto seemed to be a legitimate sixth member. However, none of those slowed them down in the slightest. Gen herself has a tremendous voice and is a great performer, she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand.
They have some great songs mainly taken from 'Only Alive When In Motion', featuring topics such as everyone being a dick on the internet, and the excellent latest single 'Girl God Gun'. For me the best moment was a particularly emotive moment when all the house lights were turned off, the venue was lit only by everyone’s camera phones, and we were treated to a magical song they’ve only just started to do live as a tribute to those we’ve left behind. Damn, that got me right in the feels.
It was a brilliant set, from a band whose star is on the rise, which made the fact that they were too broke to afford to have merch printed a sad reminder of the financial situation of many touring bands, and a reminder that live music as ever needs our support.
Photo credits: Rich Price Photography
