Milltown Brothers roll back the years with sold-out Hebden Bridge Trades Club gig

The band, who shot to fame in the early 1990s with debut album Slinky, rolled back the years with a set of crowd-pleasers spanning their full career.

Interest in the band piqued earlier in the year when Slinky – which received a rare five-star review in Q magazine – was picked by Tim Burgess of The Charlatans for a Twitter Listening Party where fans listen along in real time and members of the band share stories from the making of the album.

The gig at the Trades Club – which featured a mix of ages from those who remember the first time to a generation of new fans – came 34 years after Milltown Brothers first played at the venue.

Crowd favourites such as Apple Green, Sally Ann, Here I Stand and Which Way Should I Jump had the famous old venue bouncing while the band also took the opportunity to play tracks from their most recent albums The Long Road and Stockholm.

Milltown Brothers, who formed in Colne, first shot to prominence in 1989 with an EP entitled Coming From The Mill but it was their debut album which really introduced them to a crowded post-baggy indie scene.

Appearances on TV shows such as Pebble Mill and Blue Peter helped to catapult the five-piece to a national audience and they were once supported by a then-little-known Manchester band called Oasis.

A second album Valve followed but didn’t reach the commercial heights of their debut offering and the band went their separate ways.

They worked together on 2004’s Rubberband and over the last decade have released two further albums – 2015’s The Long Road and 2020’s Stockholm.

Last year, a compilation of independent singles and demos from 1987-1990 was released titled Tongue-Tied Mesmerised.