GIG REVIEW: HEAVY SALAD and Turnip at The The Grayston Unity, Halifax - Saturday 12 October 2024

Words: Richie Yates, Photos: Adrian Wharton/Richie Yates

Hi ho, it’s off to Halifax we go. The Grayston though, what a great small venue. Snuggled in the near as damn it, centre of Halifax, great music, fantastic range of refreshments, decent prices. What’s not to love. The gigs take place downstairs, a small but well provisioned room with a good PA setup and a stage decorated to look a little like a living room (maybe a dated one but a living room nonetheless).

Turnip bring their funky post punkiness to the stage first. Its a good time sound, not disco funk but containing equal measures post punk and groove. They told me they had continual Talking Heads comparisons and whilst I can understand it, they don’t have the clinical coldness that sometimes emanates from Talking Heads music, theirs is a more danceable and almost friendlier sound in a way that doesn’t detract from their serious moments. Memorable melodies, cool stage manner and banter and with infectious rhythms.

Heavy Salad are a favourite of Last Stop Sounds, we’ve been involved in bringing them to Liverpool in the past (and hopefully will again!). Tonight they are slightly slimmed down from last time, the core bass/vox, guitar and drums have two of the Priestesses on vocals. The sound however is as big as ever. To describe them is difficult. They border on some 90s Brit Pop meets a psychelic groove via occasional Zappa-isms and much more thrown in. They have a unique funky sound that can soar and hit the rafters with full on chorus’s one minute and the next is hitting subdued jazzy vocal harmonies. Constantly unpredictable and perplexing in the best of ways. One of the best live bands around and they present (in their own words) some of the weirdest of the weird shit around.