“For us, success is to get people really listening. We’ve had audiences fall quiet and people come up to us in tears. It’s strange, but it’s incredibly touching when people react like that”
— Rob Goodwin, singer, The Slow Show.

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 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.
Together since 2010, The Slow Show had only played a few gigs before landing their first big break the following year when they were picked by BBC Introducing to support Elbow on BBC Radio 2 Live In Concert at Manchester Cathedral. That led to another breakthrough when Dermot O’Leary’s producer heard the broadcast and asked the band to play on a session on his radio show. In turn, a European agent heard them and asked them to play some unlikely dates abroad. Thus, a band who had barely played a note in their hometown found themselves suddenly unveiling all in European cities such as Zurich and Dresden.