Live Review : Dirty Honey + Himalayas @ Academy Club, Manchester on January 25th 2023

For all its excursions into stadiums, fields, and aircraft hangar-size mega domes, the small capacity sub-basement club is rock 'n' roll's natural habitat. It’s where it excels, it's where it shows its true colours and it's where it feels most at home. Watching four skinny lads ply their trade on a stage no bigger than a kitchen table feels utterly timeless. These moments don't belong in any linear understanding of the passage of years, and they exist outside of the perceived construct of our time stream. There is a plethora of points this evening where if you squint you could be watching Guns and Roses at the Marquee in ‘87 or The Black Crowes at the International II in 1990. Those shows share with tonight the common DNA of feeling special and feeling like you are at the start of something. And that's because Dirty Honey are something very special indeed. 

As I keep intimating, they don’t just feel like they have been plucked from another time and thrust into 2023, they feel positively timeless and undatable. Their brand of sultry rock 'n' roll is so ubiquitous and so dripped in quality that it could have existed at any point and any time. They are the very spirit of rock 'n' roll incarnate. They are the soul of those who have gone before them reincarnated into the bodies of four erudite twenty-something-year-old. Yes, they really are that special.

With so much expectation swirling around about the headliners, the Himalayas’ job as the warm-up act is thankless and be brutally honest pretty pointless. Hailing from Cardiff, they seem a nice enough bunch of lads but their Arctic Monkey-esque indie warblings come across as dramatically out of step with the raw, primal rock 'n' roll that has dragged us all out here this cold evening. There probably is an audience for their inoffensive melodic bounciness, but it certainly isn't the one gathered here tonight.

Dirty Honey have learnt from the best, and the delayed start just ramps up the heightened anticipation that has engulfed the room. The audience is a heady mix of ageing rockers that remember this all the first (and second and third) times around and vibrant youths evangelically capturing every moment for prosperity on their top-of-the-line phones. In equal measures, we have all come to be impressed and to worship at the feet of the new Lords of this domain that we call Rock 'n' Roll.

When they eventually do emerge into the spotlight, they do so with the demeanour of conquering heroes. For a band that is still technically in its infancy, they possess an air of unwavering steadfast confidence. They have a self-assured swagger that states that they belong on these boards and in front of the crowds. However, at no point does it boil over into arrogance or an overconfident disposition. It is evident that for each and every member of the band, the magic of being able to do this for a living is still very much there and they seem to be in no hurry to take it all for granted.

There are hordes and hordes of finely chiselled young things playing a variant of retro rock that existed long before even their parents were born. What makes Dirty Honey stand out from the pack is one simple word: talent. They are extremely talented performers and exquisitely talented songwriters and there is just no substitute for that level of talent. Frontman Marc LaBelle is the bastard child of Diamond Dave and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson. He possesses the larynx of the latter and the bedazzled showmanship of the former. We get all the usual lines about how long he has wanted to play our town but he delivers them with such panache and authenticity that for a second I actually believe him. 

His lieutenant and axe grinder, John Notto, possesses an extraordinary and unfathomable amount of that T word. His fingers dance up and down this fretboard in a manner that I have not seen for years. But what is most astonishing about him is he's not a show-boater, his virtuoso guitar playing is understated and you can tell that he has made a conscious decision to allow it to exude as part of a band structure. Yes, he does let himself go towards the end and widdles away with his guitar behind his head, but it is obvious that he is highly aware that he is part of a unit, and his job is to make everybody, and not just himself, look good.

There is a wonderful camaraderie to be found within Dirty Honey. The way that Marc and John wrap themselves around each other is reminiscent of Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Mick Ronson and Bowie and Axl and Slash (in the days before there was a seeming injunction in place to stop them coming within 10 metres of each other on stage). They are genuinely having the time of their lives and that joy and exuberance just tumbles off the stage. With just an EP and one long-player to their names (both self-titled), it is inevitable that the show will struggle to reach over the hour mark. But this is very much a case of quality over quantity. The faithful cover of Aerosmith's ‘Last Child’ is fun, and their version of Prince’s ‘Let's Go Crazy’ seems to be played at half speed, reimagined as a slow-burning blues number. However, the most important track that they play tonight is new song ‘Ride On’. It's important because it proves that their debut album was no fluke. It proves that there is indeed some mileage in this band. It proves that they should possess the ability to become a sustainable proposition.

They may well have come from much warmer climes, but it is obvious as the show goes on that they are very much warming to our chilly town (by track four they have even had the tenacity to remove their coats). By the time we get to the encore of ‘Rollin 7s’ the Club Academy has become a sweltering pot of raised voices and fulfilled expectations. Marc is performing vocal acrobatics that deftly shows off the magnitude of his range and John seems to be living out all his air guitar fantasies, firing off the opening riff of many a classic tune. Then there are goodbyes, thank you’s and gratitude pulsating from both sides of the barrier.

Dirty Honey are genuine contenders to go stellar and take on the world, but there is part of me that doesn't want them to. There is part of me that wants to bottle this moment and have them remain at this stage of their development and evolution. That's because I know that it’s probably never going to get better and more exciting than this. They are my (and 649 others) dirty little secret and you know what I'm not quite sure whether I’m ready to share them yet.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!

Dirty Honey, Himlayas