There’s never been a band from Manchester quite like The Slow Show, whose minimal but epic songs swell from gentle piano-led Americana to roaring choruses and string sections. These deeply personal songs about love and death have reduced audiences to hushed silence, even tears. Despite being under the radar in their hometown and only releasing one low-key EP, they have found champions at BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and have played in Europe to large, sold out audiences.

The band’s use of choirs and a colliery brass band gives them a distinctly northern sound, but singer Rob Goodwin’s deep, painstaking baritone sounds more like a distant relation of Johnny Cash than anything from the English North West.