The quickest way into sundots’ new record is through the song that nearly missed it. Drew Collins thought On the Quay was finished when he started playing around with what became ‘Someone Else’s Song’. It came out short, fast and with barely a pause for breath. The thing going round his head when he wrote the words? James Joyce.
“Lyrically, I was very inspired by ‘The Dead’ by James Joyce,” Collins says. “I had recently finished Dubliners and had a ton of imagery from that floating around in my head.” If you’re planning to spend Friday night in a room full of guitars, that’s about as much homework as you need.
On the Quay, out since 6 November, is the first sundots album written and recorded as a five-piece. Collins had been putting music out under the name on his own. The band got much of this one down in demo form over a weekend in a rented place in Vermont, then made the record with Kevin S. McMahon. There’s room in these songs for the guitars to drift, and five people on hand when they need to kick into gear. If you like the haze of Duster or the way Karate can put a bend in a song just as you’ve settled into it, start here.
Sharing the bill are lots of hands, whose Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden met on a music course in Newcastle at 16. Their album into a pretty room took shape in Woodhouse’s bedroom studio, where small folk songs and scraps of electronics found their way onto the same record. It’s worth getting in for both sets.
The Pink Room is the live room at YES, the former auction house on Charles Street that Manchester promoters Now Wave turned into a four-floor venue in 2018. There’s a basement club downstairs and a terrace on the roof. On Friday, head for the room that’s exactly the colour it says it is.
sundots + lots of hands play the Pink Room at YES, 38 Charles Street, Manchester, on Friday 13 November 2026. Doors 7pm. 18+. Tickets
Header image: sundots (Eve Alpert)
