Y Live at Third Man Records, 2025

30^th October, 2025. 6:47pm.

With Fifty Second Street Theme by Kenny Drew pounding in my ears, I charged up to Third Man Records, walking right past my friend Pedro who was waiting for me. He texted me to turn around and I immediately spotted his billowing cloud of long curly hair. He was bundled up appropriately against the biting cold that had descended like a bomb over the last few days. Barely had we said our greetings when he thrust a can of pre-mixed Malibu and coke in my hands. The band weren’t supposed to be on for another 40 minutes so we had time to kill…

Earlier this afternoon, I got a call from Pedro asking what my plans today were. I had tickets to go see Y at Third Man Records for the launch of their new single, but tickets had sold out a little bit ago. There’s always the waitlist, however. It took no more than 10 minutes for him to snag a ticket. God bless Dice. I’m usually joined by Eliza and Tabby to this kind of thing so I was looking forward to the opportunity to taking fresh blood to a weird gig.

I had caught Y once at Colours in Shoreditch and again during Manchester Psych Fest and each time I had to screw my head back on after the gig. Their shocking blend of post-punk is akin to stuffing a powder keg with a bunch of disparate genres and watching the thing blow sky high. So it was with mischievous glee that I dragged Pedro along like a human sacrifice.

From our aimless wandering we circled back around to Third Man Records, its yellow sign glowing in the cold with the comfort of the hob light late at night. I spotted the band having a cigarette and talking to some folk off to the side and immediately I was overcome with the desire and fear of talking to them. Locating my spine, I finally went over. Sophie Coppin (synth/vocals), Adam Brennan (guitar/vocals), and Harry (sax) were in a different conversational cluster, which is just as well because I was intimidated by Sophie’s magnificence and would probably made a fool out of myself given the opportunity. So I accosted Dan (bass) and Fells (drums) instead. We fell into a conversation about the necessity of being in multiple bands.

Fells quipped while rolling a cigarette, “Gone are the days when you could pay the bills by being in a single band.” Especially when some slimey venues will pay a band barely enough to cover transport. Everyone in Y has multiple irons in the fire. Adam and Fells are both in the Fat White Family. Dan and Adam are in SCUDFM. Dan is also in Meatraffle and occasionally fills in for Warmduscher and Decius. Fells is also in Children of the Pope. Adam’s been on and off with Pregoblin whereas Sophie co-produced and sang on one of their songs. Harry is in Star City. And Sophie has her solo project called Wayword. Beyond the need to keep the lights on, such musical Venn diagrams are easily drawn in a music scene so tightly woven like a Persian rug.

Pedro and I joined the queue, the doors opened, and in we went. Jack White really wants you to know that Third Man Records is his label because the place was a veritable shrine to The White Stripes. Mixed into a marvellously eclectic selection of records was every single White Stripes album. White Stripes themed boots and turntables. Guitar picks. Shirts. A stack of The White Stripes Complete Lyrics.

“I didn’t know White Stripes Funko Pops were a thing,” Pedro said, poking me on the shoulder and pointing to the strange artefact. I was thankful when they finally let us downstairs because I was bashful for turning up at this altar without an offering.

I wasn’t lied to when I was told this would be an intimate gig. But intimacy isn’t a word I’d use for Y. More like intense. The walls closing in held up the ceiling so low that at times I felt my hair skimming against it. Up front was a stage so small that I wondered how the band would fit on there. The sharp blue glow of this basement played tricks with its proportions. Pedro and I found a couch at the back, next to a bizarre contraption. It looked like a retro-futurist refrigerator with “LITERARIUM” emblazoned in huge letters near the top. The thing would spit out a random book if you fed it coins.

“Probably going to be another White Stripes book,” Pedro said sardonically.

The place was already quite full, and just when I thought that was it, more people kept wandering down the stairs. When it was their time to come on, the band squeezed their way up to the stage through a crowd of about sixty people. Everyone went dead quiet.

7:46pm.

Adam’s black beret and white Fender Strat were an unsettling juxtaposition considering what was to come. Fells was representing on the kit with a Children of the Pope shirt. Harry, in black wraparound sunglasses and a football shirt, kept it deathly cool in the back. Dan held and used his bass like a weapon. Sophie was front and centre on keys, her blonde hair glowing white hot, a restraint in her eyes which she was about to turn loose. She was kind of giving Laura Palmer…

We were right in the heart of the blast radius when the band detonated without a warning, sending the charred shrapnel of whatever genres they can get their hands on whizzing through the crowd. Their sound is as impossible to pin down as their name is to Google. With only a four-track EP and a single out, most of their material exists in the ether of a live performance. Their opening number, Truth as a Weapon, sounded like the destructive malfunctioning of some prodigious mechanised beast; sax, keys, guitars, and bass descending powerfully like planes falling out of the sky over cannon-fire drums.

As they ripped through May, a mosh pit manifested in the crowd. Goes to show that numbers play no part in the desire to fling oneself wantonly. And who can blame them? Fells whacked out a beat that defies standing still while the rest of the band turned it into a belligerent rager. Dan’s bassline felt like a mouthful of stimulants while Harry howled away on the sax, Sophie attacked her keys and Adam brought the thing to a spiralling close by scratching away at his guitar.

Speakers all across the land quivered at the volume they played Oh No. Indeed, even Adam’s amp was struggling to meet his wild guitar solos and brutalised riffs. The visceral texture of their sound is perfectly balanced by how ordered it all is. Everyone waits their turn and no one overstays their part. The crowd was winded by the end of the song where the riff hit them in the face slower and heavier.

Their anti-love song called Hate, the closing track of their EP, leapt at us with exploding drums and a guitar melody far more ecstatic and unhinged than the studio recording. It seems the band are improving with every show. Adam and Sophie’s voices softly entwine like simmering resentment while Fells skips out a restless beat that unravels into all-out apoplexy with the chorus, this time with bitter insults delivered via sax.

Adam and Dan swapped places on guitar and bass during Ladies Who – my favourite track - and their presence on each other’s instruments is immediately clear. Dan whipped out these screaming chords over Adam’s bloodthirsty bassline that chased over Fells’ concussive drums. While Harry’s sax stabbed away at the tune, Sophie’s tremendous vocals about murderous women overpowered this whole savage ensemble.

Things began heating up sonically and temperately during Marianne. The single digit temperature outside was irrelevant in this pressure cooker where the mosh pit had reached a frightening velocity. An AC gasped ineffectually in this furnace that was cooking me alive in my thermals. There was a depraved determination to Fells’ drumming interlocked with Adam’s bass. Meanwhile Dan’s discordant guitar and Harry’s sultry sax opposed each other like some irreconcilable inner struggle. Over this carnivalesque cacophony, Sophie howled away a warning about a woman whose greatness can’t compare. With lyrics dripping in religious imagery, she forcefully dragged out each syllable as the instrumentation kept degrading behind her.

Dan and Adam took over their usual instruments again to play Duplicate, this uncontrollably hysterical number with a chugging bassline and guitar and sax that threatens to derail the whole way through while keeping its wheels firmly on the tracks.

With a careening bend of guitar strings they drifted like a car off a cliff into their next song which currently has no title other than New One. A wicked smile on her face, Sophie swung her blazing hair around while playing a mischievous synth melody which Adam and Harry took turns answering with salvoes from their own instruments. I looked at Pedro who, eyes closed, whipped his majestic hair around just like Sophie. The song took a turn with a bright bass melody which Sophie, Adam, and Harry darkened with a menacing jam.

Fells’ drumming on Waiting had the speed and intensity of carpet bombing and his calamitous solo in the middle of the song more than proved his already obvious chops. As the rest of the instruments joined in again, Sophie’s maddening refrain of “SHOW ME WHY YOU LOVE… WAITING!” became angrier with each pass. Battles are scored to this tune.

Hairlines, another pulverising banger, started off with a jaunty bass and shuffling drums that screams 80’s punk. Flourishing each of Sophie’s foreboding verses were guitar and sax melodies that flashed like lighting, leaving hairline cracks across the sky. Pretty soon a storm broke out when the band descended into a psychotic instrumental freakout over which Sophie belted out these primal WOOOOOOs.

Scarcely had the painful feedback from this paroxysm faded when a deep undulating synth ensued like fast and choppy waves. The voyage of their most recent single, Skipper, is the reason we’re gathered here today. More hurricane vocal delivery from Sophie, her voice contorting to terrifying proportions over a hedonistic intercourse of guitar and sax.

I already knew what was coming when Sophie asked, “Can we have the sax nice and loud for this one?” The crowd went absolutely feral when Harry blew up the sadistic riff of Why which he kept playing throughout the song. This live version had Sophie’s synth zapping along a lot more prominently than the studio recording. Fells mutilated his kit to the frenetic groove of Dan’s bass, all the while Adam lashed out these crazed solos that elicited screams from the horde. The pandemonium that had gripped the room felt like being on the inside of a collapsing particle accelerator. A girl in front of me wearing a band t-shirt threw herself into the pit, undeterred by the fact that everyone else was twice as large as her.