1913

BLIMEY charley, it’s kicking off in here, shouts one lively reveller from the back of the venue.

He’s right - things are well and truly kicking off onstage. Angry words (which I cant mention here) are being exchanged between singer Ian Lawton and the venue’s flustered sound engineer.

Drummer, Lee Thompson is making a series of rude gestures with his clenched up fists. Bassist, Laurence Kevill throws a bottle across the stage (don’t worry, it was a plastic one) while guitarist, Joe Wilson shakes his head in utter disbelief. The shocked audience just look back in anger.

It was like a riotous scene in an old punk rock movie – it was anarchy in the academy. The band in the centre of all this filth and fury are Manchester’s rising stars, 1913.

This wasn’t just a clever PR stunt aimed at attracting tired A&R men / women huddled up in the corners with their notebooks and blackberry phones.

This was an unsigned band angry that their set was about to be cut short, angry because they can't play any more songs for their fans.

Faulty amp lead

True, they were 10 minutes late (apparently a faulty amp lead was to blame) and there were other bands on the bill - it just seems a little unfair to pull the plug after just two songs. Although, I suppose the poor engineer in question was only doing her job.

Still seething and full of pent-up rage, the band attempt to play another two songs (the crowd are demanding it).

However, the damage is done and they are allowed just one more, so the band perform their excellent debut single, Can't Move On (aptly named given the situation tonight).

It’s a sophisticated piece of pop dressed up as a balls out rock single - the perfect summary of the band's soaring, huge sound.

The band then throw down their instruments in anger and storm off the stage – heading straight towards the sound engineer for another bout of heated discussion.

The crowd boo, hiss and stamp their feet, like audience members of a bad end of pier pantomime – angry by the fact that they’ve been short-changed.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? 1913 and their devoted fans felt like they did tonight. - CityLIFE - Manchester Evening News

1913: Can't Move On. Yet another Manchester band. They've only been at it for a few months, but this atmospheric dance floor-hugging stuff may well be around for years to come. Think of Joy Division being happy, if that's at all possible. - Huddersfield Daily Examiner

1913 at Cloud 23

Chris Long (gig: 24/09/08)

1913's decision to launch their debut single halfway up the Beetham Tower with a fair slice of Greater Manchester sprawling out behind them was a brave one.

After all, if they’d been less than impressive, they could well have found that the crowd were spending more time looking at the stunning view than at the stage.

1913 didn’t hold such worries though and a couple of tracks into their set, it’s easy to see why. Big drums, forceful guitars and surging, storming rhythms mesh together in their steady hands to create something vibrant, exciting and urgent.

Swelling versions of the relentless 'Heaven Help Me' and the toe-tapping shape thrower 'Rock And A Hard Place' showed just why the word is getting out about them and underlined the enormous potential the band have.

They closed with a sweaty, thrilling take of that anthemic debut, 'Can't Move On', a song so strong that many more experienced bands would have given a limb or two to have written it, and left to a rousing ovation from the assembled.

As gig backdrops go, the Mancunian metropolis is pretty impressive, but on tonight's evidence, 1913 could end up with much more than just that at their feet. - BBC MANCHESTER

:: 1913 ::
15 September 2008 / White Label / Wing Records / 2 Trk CD
By JA

1913 are a well groomed band with lofty ambitions. Like a lot of stuff that's been dropping through the MM towers letterbox, this quartet create a swirl of pleasing anthemic rock fuelled by tornados of precisely controlled, majestic guitar. It's no surprise then that this band comprise of two former halves of The Cardinals and Frame Of Mind. It's all a bit dangerous really. The two former bands created their own local indie benchmarks and were experts at creating infectious, soaring guitar music. 1913 if anything are hungrier and thriving on their previous experience. There's little to differentiate "Can't Move On" and "Roll Into You" as they both deserve an equal lead billing. The guitars jangle and fracture over a swinging beat and an essential lifeblood of pulsing bass. It's hard to obtain the perfect formula, where head nodding musicality gels with exciting, shape throwing rock and roll, but on this evidence 1913 is already a vintage year.

MMMM ½
(4.5 / 5) - manchestermusic.co.uk

MEN Gig of the Week –
-1913
When CityLife first encountered 1913 earlier this year, the band attempted to contact the dead during our interview. The Manchester gloom-rockers are a somewhat morbid bunch – obsessed with Ouija boards and the afterlife, it was with that ghoulish Ouija device that they actually decided upon their name (a dead family member apparently uttered the numbers '1913').
It's fair to say 1913 aren't following the typical indie band career plan, and so it proves next week – when they launch their debut single with an exclusive gig in the Cloud 23 bar of the Hilton Hotel. Already hyped up by the band themselves as the 'tallest ever gig in Britain', 1913 have moved on from scaring us with ghosts, to now unnerving us with vertiginous stunts.
Not that 1913 are the sort of shiny modernist band who you'd expect to inhabit the Hilton. Alongside a couple of new Manchester bands (Lowline, Bobbie Peru, Laymar), 1913 are reviving a sort of 80s monochrome indie aesthetic; all reverbey guitars, portentous soundscapes and Joy Division chills. But as evinced by brilliant debut single 'Can't Move On', 1913 could turn out to be the most promising and enticingly muscular of the lot – marrying epic stadium rock pyrotechnics to their usual gloom Manc countenance, 1913 are slowly revealing themselves to be U2 underneath those black raincoats.
All of which makes next week's Hilton single launch something of a major Manc music event – provided you can get in that is. Tickets are NOT available from the usual outlets, but the band are reserving a special allocation for CityLife readers. Email – gareth@wingmanagement.co.uk to apply for tickets, and enjoy yourselves if you get one (if you can stomach the heights). - Manchester Evening News

"Every so often, Manchester produces a truly special band. Given their former bands, the potential for 1913 to be one was always there, but no-one could have expected the dark potency and driving power of Can’t Move On. If it’s anything to go by, a huge future is theirs for the taking."
- Chris Long - BBC Manchester

Being locked away in a recording studio for long periods can do strange things to a band's state of mind. It can drive a band to self-destruct, to work hard and party harder; it can send an otherwise happy group of young men tumbling into severe depression.
All of these things happened to Manchester band 1913 when they recently settled into Big Mushroom Studios (The Charlatans' owned studio in Middlewich) to record their debut single. Working gruelling, 12 hour days, and with serious cabin fever setting in, 1913 slowly began to lose their minds. The solution? To seek advice from the dead.
"We created our own Ouija board," reflects 1913's bass player Laurence Kevill. "We made it in the early hours of the morning, when we very, very drunk. The Ouija board ended up spelling out this sequence of numbers – one, nine, one and three. That's basically how we chose the name of this band – 1913. We've got no idea what the significance of that year is. But we're not gonna argue with the spirits from the dark side. They decided on the name 1913 and that's that."
As you've no doubt guessed already, 1913 are a band well attuned to the darker side of life. Only three gigs into their existence, and they're firmly establishing themselves as Manchester's latest and grandest architects of raincoat-clad misery rock. The handful of tracks on their MySpace page reveal a band effortlessly fusing spectral guitar soundscapes with Manchester eighties gothic indie – think Joy Division jamming with the Arcade Fire but with added stadium rock pyrotechnics.
But it's 1913's commitment to the malevolent dark side which makes them extra intriguing prospects. Ever since that infamous Ouija board incident, they now regularly commune with the afterlife ("I was in touch with my granddad the other week," Laurence eerily claims); whilst plans are already underway for the band to undertake a tour of Britain's, erm, caves.
"Ultimately, what we write about is pretty dark and depressing," ponders vocalist/lyricist Ian Lawton. "We've all had our fair share of setbacks and frustrations, and making music is like our form of therapy. The thing is, the best music is usually made by people when they're depressed. If you're happy and jolly, you're out with your mates having a good time; you're not sat at home writing a song."
Guitarist Joe Wilson adds: "The feeling in our music is that same feeling you get when you're really f****d off with life. When you're fed up, and you want to self-destruct, so you just drink yourself into oblivion. The music we make is a real release."
1913 have plenty of setbacks and frustrations to draw inspiration from. As a group, they may be less than a year old, but the four members have long and chequered histories on the Manchester unsigned band scene. Guitarist Joe and drummer Lee Thompson played in anthemic indie types The Cardinals, whilst vocalist Ian and bassist Laurence once plied their trade in dad-rockers Frame of Mind. The latter group's biggest claim to fame was a support slot with none other than Status Quo ("I think playing with Status Quo surely signalled the end," grimaces Ian).
Funnily enough, The Cardinals and Frame of Mind were both rival bands on the Manchester unsigned scene, and were openly hostile to one another.
"That's the strange thing – The Cardinals and Frame of Mind absolutely HATED each other," smiles Ian. "We were like arch rivals. They used to steal stuff from our website and go around saying bad things about us. It's pretty mad that I'm now in a band with half of those guys."
But there's nothing to unite warring enemies than the power of great music. When both bands ended 12 months ago, Ian and Joe became drinking buddies and eventually started jamming in a cheap rehearsal room in Sale. The results were immediate and striking – pouring their angst, anxieties and frustrations into their music, the four united members were finally making the honest, open-hearted epic gloom-rock they'd long dreamed of.
Marrying epic miserablism with epic stadium rock sensibilities, songs like signature anthem 'Heaven Help Me' have put 1913 on the brink of the big-time. A mere three gigs into their career, and major record labels are hungrily sniffing around, whilst The Charlatans' frontman Tim Burgess has become one of the band's biggest cheerleaders.
Their debut single – as mentioned, currently being recorded at The Charlatans' residential studio in Middlewich – promises great things, and should surely entice the rest of Manchester over to 1913's ghoulish, spook-ridden dark realm.
"We're an ambitious band," declares Laurence. "We're like those guys in the film Ocean's Eleven – we mean business and we're pretty ruthless about the way we do things. We see ourselves as being a big stadium rock band. The term 'stadium rock' is a bit uncool 'cos people immediately think of bands like Bon Jovi. But 1913 are gonna make stadium rock cool again."
And no doubt the spirits from the Ouija board would agree.

David Sue
Manchester Evening News - Manchester Evening News

LOOKING to break out of the basement clubs of Manchester fast? Better make your debut a killer piece of anthemic misery rock, then - the tougher the beat the better. Certainly, it seems to be the theory behind 1913's first release, a record that stinks of ambition (which is neither a ringing endorsement or a critical sticking point). It's a lightning exit from the blocks, then, but let's hope they haven't gone too early.

Sarah Walters
Manchester Evening News - M.E.N