There comes a point every year when Manchester Psych Fest releases its stage times and any pretence of having a relaxing Saturday disappears. Suddenly, you’re comparing walking times between venues, negotiating clashes like an international peace treaty and convincing yourself that, yes, leaving one band four songs early to sprint across Oxford Road is a completely reasonable way for an adult to spend their weekend.

Manchester Psych Fest returns this Saturday, September 5th, once again taking over venues across our city for a day of psychedelia…in the loosest and best possible sense of the word. Because despite the name, Psych Fest hasn’t really been *just* a psychedelic festival for quite some time. Look through this year’s bill and you’ll find post-punk, garage rock, no-wave, indie, electronic music, folk, grunge and several bands where attempting to identify the genre probably misses the point entirely. We’ve narrowed done some of those for you into this handy festival guide…

TY SEGALL

There are prolific musicians, and then there's Ty Segall.

Trying to neatly summarise the Californian's output is a fairly thankless exercise. Across countless albums, side-projects and collaborations, Segall has bounced between scuzzy garage rock, psychedelia, glam, punk, acoustic songwriting and whatever else has interested him that particular week.

The connecting thread is that it usually sounds enormous. For a festival built around music getting fuzzy, loud and occasionally a little strange, Segall feels like something approaching the ideal booking. Expect riffs. Expect distortion. Expect at least a few people walking out afterwards wondering whether they've permanently damaged something important.

ALLAH-LAS

At the opposite end of the psychedelic spectrum sit Allah-Las. The LA outfit have spent well over a decade perfecting their hazy mixture of '60s psychedelia, surf rock and garage pop, creating music that somehow sounds permanently sun-bleached. There is something wonderfully unhurried about them. Guitars jangle, harmonies drift past and everything feels as though it’s been discovered on a forgotten record sitting in the back of a Californian shop since 1967.

Manchester in September might not provide the appropriate weather.

Close your eyes and pretend.

MODEL/ACTRIZ

There will be plenty of opportunities to gently nod your head at Psych Fest. Model/Actriz won’t really be one of them. The New York band combine industrial noise, post-punk and dance music into something sweaty, confrontational and occasionally genuinely unsettling. Their songs are built around pounding rhythms and guitars that sound less played than attacked, while Cole Haden presides over the whole thing like an increasingly unhinged master of ceremonies.

WHITE DENIM

White Denim have spent the best part of two decades making the idea of standing still seem faintly ridiculous. The Austin gang pull from garage rock, psychedelia, blues, prog, soul and jazz, often within the space of a single song. On paper, that could be exhausting. In practice, they make it sound completely natural.

If you like your psych with serious musicianship but without the self-importance that sometimes comes attached to it, they're an easy addition to the schedule.

WORKING MEN’S CLUB

Few bands on this year's lineup feel more naturally suited to Manchester than Working Men’s Club. The Todmorden group emerged from West Yorkshire with post-punk attached to their name, but quickly developed into something much more interesting: cold synths, acid-house pulses, industrial electronics and flashes of indie all feeding into music that feels equally at home at a gig or at 2am in a club.

It’s dark, repetitive and relentlessly danceable.

FREAK SLUG

Manchester’s own Freak Slug has always occupied a slightly strange corner of indie music. Her songs can be woozy and intimate one moment, distorted and playful the next, pulling together slacker rock, bedroom pop and ‘90s alternative influences without ever becoming particularly interested in staying in one lane.

There’s a scrappiness to it all that feels deliberate rather than unfinished, and with Psych Fest bringing bands into Manchester from across the world, it’s worth making some time for one of the city’s own.

BILLY NOMATES

Billy Nomates has never seemed particularly interested in fitting neatly alongside anyone else.

The Leicester-born, Bristol-based artist - real name Tor Maries - has moved between post-punk, electronics and indie while writing about class, work, relationships and the general indignities of existing in modern Britain. The songs are personal without becoming inward-looking and political without sounding like someone has handed you a pamphlet.

Most importantly, they’re built to make you move.

AUTOMATIC

Los Angeles trio Automatic make music that sounds like it has been stripped down until only the essential machinery remains. Bass. Synths. Drums. Repetition. Drawing from post-punk, no-wave and synth-pop, their music has a wonderfully detached quality while remaining almost impossibly rhythmic. There’s something hypnotic about watching it happen live: grooves lock into place, synths hover overhead and suddenly you’ve been listening to the same bassline for several minutes without wanting it to stop.

At Psych Fest, that feels entirely appropriate.

THE KVB

If you're after something darker, The KVB should be firmly circled.

The British duo operate somewhere between post-punk, shoegaze and electronic psychedelia, building songs from icy drum machines, distorted guitars and vocals that appear to be arriving from the other end of a very long corridor. Their music has always carried a cinematic quality, but live it becomes something more physical.

You get the idea.

GHOSTWOMAN

GHOSTWOMAN sound like they’ve discovered a box of psychedelic records from the 1960s, dragged them through several decades of dirt and decided recording things too cleanly would ruin the fun. The Canadian outfit favour an analogue, stripped-back approach, leaving enough roughness around the edges for the music to breathe.

Psych rock that actually feels a little unpredictable?

Always welcome.

MAQUINA.

Lisbon trio MAQUINA. make repetition feel like a threat. Krautrock, punk and psychedelia provide the foundations, but rhythm is really the thing holding everything together: pounding percussion, hypnotic bass and riffs repeated until they stop feeling like riffs and start feeling like some kind of instruction.

Live, they’re relentless.

LOWERTON

Brighton’s Lowerton are another name worth digging out from further down the poster. There’s a looseness to their indie rock that recalls the stranger corners of ‘90s alternative music, balancing melody against moments where everything threatens to come slightly unstuck.

LAEL NEALE

Lael Neale’s music feels like it belongs somewhere outside of time. Raised in Virginia, the American songwriter began with sparse, minimalist songs before gradually expanding her palette into hypnotic drone-pop filled with organs, synths and wonderfully repetitive melodies.

There’s still a simplicity at the centre of it. Nothing feels unnecessarily crowded. Sounds arrive, linger and disappear again.

BLEECH 9:3

Dublin’s Bleech 9:3 arrive carrying plenty of the noise and fuzz of ‘90s alternative rock with them. Heavy guitars, charging basslines and powerful vocals form the basic ingredients, but it’s the energy around the band that's made them particularly interesting.

They’re loud, young and seemingly in a hurry.

GROUP A.D.

The full name is The Group For Action & Dance. Consider that your instructions.

Leeds’ Group A.D. pull from dub, no-wave, psychedelic post-punk and assorted points in between, often making music that feels like several different eras have collided in the same room. It’s difficult to pin down, which is precisely what makes it interesting.

ROSCOE ROSCOE

For something a little dreamier, there’s Roscoe Roscoe. The London six-piece make neo-psychedelia built around winding guitars and soft, ethereal harmonies, creating songs that seem to gently unfold rather than announce themselves. It’s lush, melodic and occasionally transportive.

After several hours spent having your ears rearranged elsewhere, there are considerably worse ways to spend part of your afternoon.

HONK

"Trash can country." That's Honk’s description, not ours. The Manchester-via-Dublin group take country as something resembling a starting point before wandering enthusiastically into whatever other genres happen to be lying around. The result is playful, scruffy and difficult to predict; a quality which carries into their live performances.

RENNY CONTI

Not everything at Psych Fest needs to involve a fuzz pedal. San Francisco songwriter Renny Conti offers one of the gentler propositions on the bill, pairing acoustic instrumentation with warm, story-led songwriting.

His songs draw closely from lived experience, finding charm in small details rather than reaching for enormous statements. Your ears will probably send a thank-you card.

AND THEN THERE'S THE ABBEY...

There's also a secret set at The Abbey.

Who?

No idea.

Useful preview, this.

But the unknown is part of the appeal. Manchester Psych Fest is a festival built around moving between spaces, changing plans and occasionally abandoning the carefully constructed schedule because something happening down the road sounds considerably more interesting. So leave a gap somewhere.

Go and see Ty Segall. Dance to Working Men’s Club. Get battered by Model/Actriz and MAQUINA. Drift off with Allah-Las and Lael Neale. Take a chance on a band you've never heard before. Just don't expect your carefully planned schedule to survive the day.

It never does.

Who To See At Manchester Psych Fest 2026