Hot tickets: 4 unmissable Manchester gigs for your diary ft. Elbow at Night & Day Cafe, Royal Blood & more

There’s a mystery and an unsettling darkness that dominates the heart of SKYND – a band described by one journalist as “Skynd and her two gimps” for their determination to maintain their anonymity and who pretty much every critic reckons were cheated out of their “time” by the events of 2020. They’re very possibly Australian. Or Swiss. Or French. Or possibly transported here from some dark astral plane… Whatever their roots, their position right now is on the front line of the latest industrial goth invasion – running with scissors and taking their cue from dark electro and lyrical inspiration from true crime. Skynd’s obsession, in fact, is serial killers – and not in that cute ‘middle-class girl who watches every true crime series on Netflix’ way; no gig of theirs is a walk in a park, but it’ll certainly never leave you.

Remember when The Black Keys found their disco groove and it all went arena level? Since Royal Blood last played at the AO Arena, they’ve also summoned up a sound likely to make that a permanent elevation – one honed under the watchful eye of Queens of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme that throws the spotlight at the glitterball and showers it in sparkling disco textures (check out their Boilermaker video – directed by Liam “United States of Whatever” Lynch – for the fiercest evidence of this new musical angle). It’s a colossal new vibe capable of shaking even the biggest spaces to their bones; that they have released something as endlessly surprising as their latest LP Typhoons in their 10th year as a band confirms how special they are, too.

Fastest fingers first isn’t going to bag you a ticket for this one, the latest announcement in support of Passport: Back to Our Roots – the initiative creating a fund to support independent live venues through the COVID emergency. Elbow have a long legacy with Night & Day Cafe, the Oldham Street venue that has been supporting new bands for 30 years, and the deal is this: you enter the prize draw to win two very limited tickets for the show, and there’s a suggested minimum donation of £5 for putting your name in the hat (obviously, you can donate more if you’re able). The draw is a total game of chance but we’ll certainly be rolling the dice to get into this – because remember: if you don’t get in, you’ll have helped to save these critical venues and be able to see new bands there long into the future.

A new one from Now Wave, who are bringing over the much lauded hip-hop producer for a pretty intimate basement show. A Kansas kid with a now infamous line in networking hustle, Bourne (aka Jordan Jenks) has cemented his reputation via extraordinary production credits for the likes of Playboi Carti, Young Nudy, and 6ix9ine (he’s even crossed creative paths with Kanye West). But it’s in support of his own latest album that he’s shipping over to England, in celebration of his second record The Life of Pi’erre 5.