MANTRALUNA

Night And Day Cafe,

Manchester

THIS venue's famously indifferent audience got up off their backsides to go down to the front and have a look at this lot.

Great bands create a universe the minute they appear on stage.

The songs Mantraluna have written command more of anyone's soul than is reasonable.

The melodies are not quite like anyone else's, with little alien twists taking the tunes somewhere you never quite foresaw.

Their songs root out echoes in places you didn't know you had.

There's very little showmanship from this unsigned Manchester band.

They have a lanky singer who cannot get his eyes open, a lead guitarist who has his instrument unfashionably high-slung, an occasional trumpet player who makes you forget that brass bands were ever invented.

The band are jerked about by their songs like puppets on strings.

Total commitment from a band is disastrous when they're peddling rubbish.

Luckily for Mantraluna, and those of us fortunate enough to have seen them, they're not.

WENDY COOK

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.