Featured image and gallery: Gracie Hall
Gorilla gets its brains rocked out by Lambrini Girls. The Brighton-based punk duo who are touring their debut album, Who Let The Dogs Out, blend riot grrrl and neurodivergent humour to form a chaotic but inclusive evening. With Phoebe Lunny on vocals and guitar, Lilly Macieira-Boşgelmez on bass and Misha Phillips on drums, the queer neurodivergent duo imprints a bold and empowering impression on the diverse crowd in front of them.
Manchester’s favourite punk quartet Loose Articles thoroughly warm up the crowd with their equally loud and boisterous riot grrrl songs.
Enticing the crowd to participate in a game of limbo mid set, Loose Articles vocalists Natalie Wardle and Erin Caine take to the pit stretching the mic lead taught across the crowd as punters limbo back and forth. Loose Articles finish their set with the first mosh pits of predictably many of the evening.
The crowd is immediately swept up by the opening track, ‘Big D*** Energy.’ With Lunny joining the crowd barely one song in, she sets the tone for the night as both Lunny and Macieria-Boşgelmez leave the stage on multiple occasions throughout the set.
Splitting the crowd in two, encouraging circle pits, a 10-person human pyramid, crowd surfing and even an attempt from Lunny to hang from the exposed steel skeleton of Gorilla’s ceiling using strong and tall audience members to propel her above their heads.
Though after a near-catastrophic fall backwards from Lunny, the attempt is deserted and replaced by a graceful trust fall into a sea of hands, ready and waiting to catch her.
With multiple politically-charged songs and speeches from Lunny, chants of ‘free Palestine’ and anti-government rhetoric ring through the crowd in agreement with the girls, known for championing marginalised communities and acting as a beacon of power for anyone and everyone who falls foul of conservative values.
Ending with ‘C**tology 101’, an explosive song about self-love and acceptance, the duo provides a cathartic release for the crowd as they chant along with Lambrini Girls and Loose Articles’ frontwomen.
By the final chords of the songs, all the girls – except Lilly – are surfing the crowd, while Manchester-based photographer Sinead Ferguson and two enthusiastic punters clamber onto the stage. One of whom received an accidental kick to the head from Macieira-Boşgelmez earlier in the set (she was checked on and fine!) but the consolation present of joining her faves on stage and grasping a drumstick in hand seems to have been well worth it to the fan who was delighted to be up there.
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