The Wedding Present + more across Manchester Academy.
Are You Listening? Festival
Reading
9th & 10th May 2025
Reading’s Are You Listening? Festival is now in it’s 12th year. Keith Goldhanger makes the annual trip to the Berkshire capital for another multi-venue event.
After festivals like this you can only come away congratulating yourself on any good decisions made if there are good choices available in the first place. This years Are You Listening? Festival looked good enough to visit for both days and proved to be one of the best weekends since we began attending this annual event. Held across seven venues with over forty artists to chose from, not only did the acts we decided to aim for feel like the right ones but it seemed to coincide with many of them playing the best shows we’ve seen by them to date.
This doesn’t mean the line-up was full of bands we’ve already seen before though. Friday evening inside Saint Laurence Church introduced one or two of us for the first time to Manchester trio Yaang. There was once a time many years ago when we were inundated with guitar bands using drum machines. Yaang have reminded us how ace this sounds. Fronted by a hyperactive singer who spends the short set dancing continuously whether singing or not and bookended by two companions that appear to be taking this a lot more seriously than the front man, this is a fabulous start to the proceedings. Standing inside a big church on a sunny Friday evening watching a shirtless man with a deadpan look on his face in front of a statue of Jesus on a cross is a bizarre way to begin any weekend but it sets the scene nicely for what lies ahead.
Mandrake Handshake follow and it feels as though we’re witnessing Stereolab playing Psychedelic hymns. They’re shaking tambourines, maracas, a triangle comes out and there’s a lot of other percussion that we don’t know the names of. They’re hypnotising us with the two vocalists, two trippy guitars and a hippie synth. If we’d walked into this at three AM at a festival we’d probably walk away fast however experiencing this as the sun goes down feels perfect. Their single Hypersonic Super-Astrid manages to last a little less than ten minutes. It’s the tune that drew us here, it’s the tune that we’re glad we got to see played live and we’d do it again.
Sprints are loud, brutal and straight in our faces as they manage to turn this fabulous church into one big mosh pit as they thrash away at not only the familiar tunes from their debut album Letter to Self but some equally huge songs from a forthcoming second album it’s believed may have already been recorded. Heavy is accompanied by the raucous crowd singing along, How Does The Story Go? Still sounds as great as the first time we heard it and the whole experience is one that’s soon expected to be replicated in much larger environments over the next couple of years. They have all the ingredients required to attract huge crowds now ; Big grungy riffs, sing along choruses and an audience waiting in the wings that may not yet have even discovered these yet. It’s only a matter of time of course before the public gets what we know they want. There’ll be some fabulous times ahead for Sprints and this was one for the watching crowd to soak in just as it was when Idles played this event some time ago.
The sun is shining, the crowds are out early and day two presents us with more than one venue and a huge list of bands to be seen or missed for those of us unable to be in two places at the same time.
We start the day in the midday sun having a look at local singer-songwriter Ben Marwood entertaining not just the wristband queue but those already sat comfortably in front of him who are familiar enough with his music to be visibly singing along to his songs. We return to where we ended the previous evening back inside the cooler Saint Laurence Church where South London outfit Y are nonchalantly treating us to some unfamiliar tunes however the familiar sound of Ladies Who and Why? hit the spot and maintain the high standard of performances seen inside this building so far this weekend.
We realise that a lot of acts we want to see are appearing inside this venue today and remain for the fabulous Ziyad Al-Samman who seems to get better and better every time we cross paths with this Jordan born performer. The word Eurovision is mentioned at least once every time he performs however this is only a visual observation. Today he provides a selection of songs that MGMT (remember them?) would have been proud of. Every song a banger, every face in the room is smiling, people are dancing already and no one inside this venue will leave wishing they were elsewhere. This was a fabulous performance once again.
The days eclectic line-up is starting to be noticed as the sweet fragile sound of Honeyglaze calms us down before a brisk walk along the street to witness another show by the incredible Benefits who yet again never disappoint with their intense, energetic, electronic assault on our ears. It’s encouraging that this duo continuing to draw more people into their shows and get airtime on our favourite radio stations in a world that seems saturated with bouncy verses and sing along choruses. Watching a Benefits performance is invigorating. The noise made between the two is strangely comforting, interrupted every now and then by Kingsley politely thanking us all for being there and then giving us something harsh, challenging and more importantly, different. At any other time during our lives music like this would have be kept on the back burner and saved for inclusion in events of a more aggressive nature. The existence and inclusion of Benefits at events such as this is encouraging for others out there making music that challenges our ears, the establishment and reflects on some of the unpleasant segments of the world we live in today with raw emotion and sincerity. Their nod (more of a headbutt) to Born Slippy that closes the show is a wonderful moment too. Yet another ten out of ten performance.
Doops sound promising for the short amount of time we catch them over at Sub 89 however we’re simply popping in on our way back to what we can call our ‘happy place’ this weekend (St Laurence Church) for what we know will be an ideal setting for musician, poet, all round entertainer and lovely human being Josh Idehen. He starts by describing the previous 24 hours of his life. This in itself comes across like a work of art, carefully scripted and hugely entertaining. It isn’t scripted of course, he’s just arrived from Vienna having lost some of his possessions and some required sleep. His interaction with the attentive audience is second to none as he encourages us to all take a few seconds to introduce ourselves to each other in the crowd and participate in a ‘Nigerian wave’ (like a Mexican wave but from front to back not side to side). His casual chat morphs seamlessly into Don’t You Give Up On Me and our feet start moving without us realising. Learn To Swim and Mum Does The Washing are aired and given the respect from the audience each piece deserves and as one, we return outside to the bright sunshine noticing that everyone is leaving with a huge smile on their face, feeling blessed and feeling they way one should be after exiting a building such as this.
Nathan Fake is a producer and electronic music artist providing an ideal soundtrack for anyone wanting to hear some inspiring dance music at three AM in a dark room. Today though it’s still early evening, the sun is still shining and for this moment in time is also the perfect soundtrack to compliment a much needed rest on the pavement outside.
Belfast band Makeshift Art Bar sound like a band we’re all going to love one day however they fail to appear. This was the one disappointment of the day only made up by the fact that we’ve now found another noisy band that need investigating another day.
Big Special’s performance we expect will be busy in an hour or two so we’ll end our day at Sub 89 in preparation and watch Coach Party who some of us haven’t seen since 2023 when they played the same venue at the same event. Once the first three songs have been thrown out at speed, we realise that this isn’t going to slow down. It’s a thrilling display of blistering guitar music that the Pixies once provided whenever they put their feet down hard on the accelerator. Tonight, the band that never lose momentum and for a little over half an hour manage to cram as many tunes as they can into their allocated slot leaving us breathless and slightly regretful that we’ve not given this band more attention previously.
Midlands duo Big Special don’t serve up anything that surprises us anymore. A small criticism for those of us who haven’t crossed paths with them since the release of debut album Postindustrial Hometown Blues that came out (we’re told) exactly a year ago.
The duo are more confident with their banter with the huge crowd inside this venue tonight. Dig, Shithouse and Trees are the timeless classics some of us knew they’d be when we first set our eyes and ears on them. We get a poem or two as well as the now obligatory walk into the crowd that we’re told Joe has now taken upon himself to do at most of their shows nowadays. It’s great seeing them draw in such an enthusiastic large crowd, one that we always expected from the first time we set eyes and ears on them.
Are You Listening ? Festival didn’t end there though. Festival favourites AK/DK were still playing down the road, there were one or two other bands and DJ’s still yet to grace one or two stages but for those of us London bound we call it a day to reminisce on what we decide has been our favourite Are You Listening? Festival so far. Two of the venues we didn’t even step foot inside this year. We’re sure that many others did and came away with different experiences all together.
The alternative choices available looked just as satisfactory as the bands we saw. We improvised our activities throughout the festival and yet again came away content that yet again this is an annual event that will remain into our diaries.
Join us again next year for what is always a great event to attend before the camping gear comes out for the summer. The train to and from central London only takes twenty minutes.
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Words and photos by Keith Goldhanger. More writing by Keith on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. You can also find Keith on Facebook Instagram and Bluesky
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