'Manchester can pack a lot in - but still has time for great gigs'

With the start of longer days and festival season making a comeback to Manchester, there's been a summery feel to March in the city.

In some ways, that's no surprise as acts refine their performances ahead of a slew of album releases to come later this season, before doing festival circuit proper. What is a surprise, however, is the breadth of talent packed into Manchester's schedule.

Alongside the multi-venue BBC Radio 6Music Festival, we've had post-punk risers sell out Victorian venues, a new junglist takeover a -historic hall, and a power pop star play to a raucous railway arch. Not bad for a city that's going through the mother-of-all cost-of-living crises.

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And the MEN team have been out there to soak up as much of it as possible. So here are out top picks for the best shows of March 2023.

Louisa Roach’s — aka She Drew The Gun —‘evening with’ show in the Deaf Institute ‘lodge’ was an intimate and insightful look into the world of the Birkenhead singer. That was to be expected — because Roach told fans that’s exactly what would happen at the start of the gig.

Part acoustic performance of hits like ‘Something For The Pain’, and part sketch-pad for ideas, Roach was at her most open and bravest in the evening. She recounted moments in her childhood — like asking two punks to dress her up as a punk for a Butlins holiday costume competition, only to lose to another girl in a shop-bought princess outfit — and delved into a poem her mum wrote to social housing bosses to apply for a makeover grant.

You would have been hard-pressed not to have learned something new about Roach the woman, and mum, on leaving Deaf Institute. But you’d also