The Hills Are Alive: Year In Review 2024

Let’s face it. Most end-of-year reviews are nothing but an excuse to rehash old content, push wildly subjective opinion and squeeze in as many band references as possible for social media reshare juice. Well, here at Dirty Sunbeams HQ we’re absolutely no different. So let the ramblings begin.

There have been highs and lows. Moments of euphoria and times of despair. Challenges as well as triumphs.

Searching for words to succinctly capture the past 12 months, we settled on one: ‘Togetherness’.

While the financial threat to grassroots music remains and, you could argue, grows more fierce, we’ve been invigorated by the emergence of a plethora of exciting new bands in the region – The Caymans, Grow, The Incident, Deep Sea Lemons, doogle, The Carmines and more.

A defining characteristic of this new breed is their unity, their eagerness to support one another, to share a stage and to collaborate. In essence, their togetherness.

They are a collection of like-minded, genial, early-stage musicians, marked by a mutual appreciation and respect. They have a shared sense of optimism and effervescence and, it has to be said, that zeal is proving quite infectious. Crucially, they are enthusiastic supporters of the area and, in particular, of the venues that have given them their first opportunities.

Those venues, the Calder Valley’s five key independent, grassroots venues – The Trades Club, The Golden Lion, The Grayston Unity, The Puzzle and The Blind Pig – have, through 2024, continued to operate at a level that belies their semi-rural locale.

With enduring passion and hard graft, each has attracted a succession of big-name live acts. Among them, Doves, BC Camplight, English Teacher, Gas Coombes, Daniel Avery, Hinds, Jane Weaver, Erol Alkan, Loose Articles, Mary Gauthier, Utah Saints, Miles Hunt, David Holmes, Fat Dog, My Son The Hurricane, Sonic Boom, Miami Deutch, Lanterns On The Lake, Sea Power, Hot Chip, Arthur Brown, The Bug Club, Miki Berenyi, Willie J Healey, The Bluetones, The Last Dinner Party, The Soup Dragons…

Our five, core independent venues have also made steps to galvanise their solidarity, forming an alliance, The Calderdale Grassroots Music Network, under the guidance of musician and promoter Andy Abbott. Out of that collaboration, and with the financial support of CultureDale, a quarterly gig listings brochure has been produced and distributed across the borough, as well as A Beginners Guide aimed at the next-gen of promoters, sound techs, musicians and media producers.

It’s a start. Further manoeuvres in this direction may be in the offing. With the future business models of grassroots venues still uncertain, unity is needed. How to ensure the breeding ground of creativity remains fertile? One feels that the government-proposed voluntary levy on arena tickets is a strong opening gambit but perhaps not yet a complete solution for an issue that finally attracted widespread attention in 2024.

Towards the other end of the spectrum is The Piece Hall in Halifax. Whether you’d genuinely consider The Piece Hall, with its capacity at 6,000, to be ‘arena size’ is debatable (although the Music Venue Trust has called for the levy to start at 5,500-cap venues). Either way, it’s safe to say The Piece Hall creates live music events on a scale very different to those at grassroots. And in most ways, it does so quite magnificently.

There was some criticism levelled at The Piece Hall’s ticket prices in 2024, which do seem extortionate in light of the average household income in Halifax. That said, big-name acts come at a premium. A new insistence that gig-goers be inside the venue before 8pm was also met with a backlash. But it cannot be denied that The Piece Hall, largely through its summer series of A-list gigs, has accomplished its mission to bring huge throngs of visitors to Halifax and elevate the town’s cultural standing.

The latest series was the biggest yet with total ticket sales approaching 200,000. Headline acts across the 34 nights included Blondie, Loyle Carner, Tom Jones, Cheryl Crow, Grace Jones, Nile Rogers, Fatboy Slim, Ellie Sax, Underworld, Bryan Adams, Korn and Noel Gallagher. A Piece Hall gig is something special. A stunning vista and high-end sound engineering combine to help make it so.

We are blessed to have such thriving entertainment experiences at different ends of the spread, though there is certainly scope for our grassroots venues and The Piece Hall to collaborate.

Big events, at any level, require a lot of organising and legwork – much of it at grassroots going unpaid – and the borough played host to numerous festivals in 2024 that simply wouldn’t have happened but for the muscle and determination of its volunteers.

The Todmorden Folk Festival enjoyed its eighth edition, selling out many of its headline events. The Town Festival of Music & Words in Halifax conjured, yet again, an eye-popping line-up of musicians and writers across two weekends. The new Sowerby Bridge Festival was born, bringing an impressive 50 bands to the town. And Noise In The Valley Festival – also ticket-free, also in Sowerby Bridge – crammed 18 bands into one day, with renowned Leeds-based noiseniks Pulled Apart By Horses topping the bill.

Elsewhere, as is to be expected in the weird and wonderful environs of the Calder Valley, sonic experimentation ran amok. Andy Abbott’s ADRA Promotions hosted a succession of underground, alternative acts, most notably at The Puzzle and, through its Antidote series, across multiple other local venues. Acts from the US, Pakistan, Belgium, Spain, Iceland and Latvia all played The Puzzle in 2024.

Dark Matter Promotions too has proven a leading light in giving innovative, genre-bending, mould-breaking artists a platform – usually the one upstairs at The Golden Lion. Nan Moors continues to put on beautifully subversive events. Adding to the mix, releases from the likes of Folklore Tapes further enrich the inventive, liberalist, alternative spirit of the region’s musical output.

Open mics and jam nights were also buoyant throughout the year in 2024, including a surge in interest for electronic open mics like the adeptly-named Technical Difficulties at The Puzzle.

Such communal ways of experiencing and sharing music seem particularly befitting of the Calder Valley. Nestled between the glitzy city lights of Leeds and Manchester, this idiosyncratic creative beast quietly purrs by day in lawless scheming and dances unfettered at night to its own signature tunes. And all for the common good.

The region is known for its community action and charitable causes, Music For The Many being a particularly good example, offering equal opportunities in music education to kids in Todmorden. Togetherness, you see. Similarly, it’s essential we highlight the continued work of the Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra, through which school kids can create experimental soundscapes, improvised compositions and film soundtracks.

The healing power of music can never be under-estimated. Meditative audio-visual events such as those now run by Resonance Calder, using sound frequency and vibration, are another case in point.

Obstacles may still blight the horizon, but 2025 begins full of promise, with a lot of work to be done and a lot of partying to be had.

So. To the awards. The pointless awards. The ranking of art for ranking’s sake. I urge you to violently disagree with what follows and rest easy in the assurance that you almost certainly know better.

Track Of The Year

The coveted gold gong for ‘Track Of The Year’ goes to Fat Frances and ‘BCMW’ – a smouldering brew of smoky lo-fi pop delirium.

Snapping at his heels were Brigantes and their multi-genre fire-cracker Battlin’, Wax Tree Cast with ‘Straightjacket’, The Short Causeway’s ‘On My Way Home‘ and The Caymans’ ‘All That’s Mine‘.

Album Of The Year

Lines Of Silence stole our ambient-psych hearts with ‘The Long Way Home’, released on Todmorden label AnalogueTrash.

A mighty shout-out too for Spaceship’s cosmic, transformational ‘Structures‘ and The Hazy Janes’ self-titled debut.

Top 10 Gigs Of The Year

By our amateur reckoning, there were around 1,000 gigs in the borough over the course of 2024. We got to something like 10% of that number. About 100 or so. And from that little bunch, here’s a top 10. The 1%ers.

There were dilemmas aplenty. Honourable mentions go to The Caymans, Grow and doogle who just missed out and, if this were a top 20, they’d have filled numerous slots between them. Next year shall no doubt be theirs for the taking.

1) English Teacher at The Trades Club
2) The Lounge Society (unplugged) at The Golden Lion
3) The Incident at The Grayston Unity
4) Chris Brain at The Puzzle
5) Goo at The Blind Pig
6) Hammell On Trial / Ruth Theodore at Todmorden Working Men’s Club
7) Loyle Carner at The Piece Hall
8) Chemtrails / Gas Kunst at The Golden Lion
9) Personal Trainer at The Trades Club
10) Wax Tree Cast at Loafers

Gig-Goer Of The Year Award

To end, it’s only right we shift our focus away from the stage for a moment and settle our attention on the crowds, without whom, none of this would be possible. Down the front, representing us all with his unbridled fervour and dedication to live music, our Gig-Goer Of The Year Award goes to the one and only Dermot De Faoite.

Dermot hosts a brilliant weekly music show on Louder Than War Radio called Where’s Me Jumper?