As the city recovers from another Tramlines Festival, we're back at work as per normal. We did manage to catch a few things over the weekend though, so we thought we'd take a bit of time to write this new blog post to cover the awesome bands we managed to see.



Friday - After managing to miss The Kate Jackson Group, team Alt Store arrived just in time to stand watching Heaven 17 on the Nokia Sheffield Showcase Stage in the rain. One of our number is a big 80s fan, so their renditions of '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang' and  the obligatory 'Temptation' went down very well. They even did a version of The Human League's 'Being Boiled', though it was arguably their song all along...




After that, we headed along to The Washington for Mixed in Sheffield's Rock and a Hard Place night. A showcase for some of Sheffield's best new bands that reside on the rockier end of the spectrum, we hit our first queue of the evening here. Once inside we found that we'd missed the hotly-tipped Stooges-esque Oblong so we retired to the beer garden for a while. Later on we made our way back inside for what one of our highlights of the evening: Dearne Valley metallers Steel Trees, a three-piece who blasted their way through their grunge-inspired set with glorious abandon. The kings of the night as far as we were concerned though were Sheffield's mighty indie-garage two-piece Drenge. Brothers Eoin and Rory Loveless are the latest in a chain of duos from Steel City that are causing a significant stir. They recall to mind the finest moments of The White Stripes and succeed in being one of the most exciting live prospects we've seen in ages.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our Tramlines 2011 adventures...