 | | Daywalkers (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
Any doubt about the age of the audience was gone as soon as Daywalkers stepped on stage and the explosive front man Tonn Piper is met by the question, “where’d you get your trainers?” Sadly, it was far from sold out and, confronted with such a small crowd, some bands would have simply run-through their songs and fled. Not Daywalkers. Ripping into their ever-improving material, they proceeded to bash, rap, riff and bounce their way through a thriller of a set.  | | Daywalkers (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
With due respect to the rest, central to Daywalkers’ power is the whirlwind MCing of Tonn Piper. Prowling the stage like a caged lion during the songs and finding time for some smiling freestyling in-between, he managed to make the Hall sound full from the cheers of those present. And those trainers, they were from Oldham Street. Much as they have a sound that would easily fit the stages of Donnington, Reading, Roskilde and Lollapalooza, the band are Mancunian right down to their feet.  | | Polytechnic (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
Polytechnic took a different tack. They enter with a complete lack of charisma and burst straight into what sounds like the zeitgeist by numbers. Yet hidden somewhere inside their lacklustre stage presence are a selection of unstoppable toe-tappers, the kind of tracks that are causing storms in a million indie discos at the moment. Still, there’s a school of thought that says you should play every gig like its Wembley and one day (if they ever finish it) you’ll headline there. Polytechnic approached this as nothing more than a rehearsal, and as a result, it was only their sound that won them through.  | | Polytechnic (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
It’s a paradox but in reality, for all their shoegazing and boy-lost refusal to speak to the audience, they were as successful as Daywalkers simply because they make music that is as hopelessly infectious as measles and as desperately pop as a sherbet-fuelled lemonade. Two very different bands making very different sounds and yet somehow succeeding to achieve the same result – if this show proved anything, it proved just why Manchester is so exciting musically at present. | 
