Twenty two years after initially storming the UK Album Charts with his “bare, white hot wit” and tales of daring debauchery, Mike Skinner of The Streets is set to perform the seminal album, ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’, at Manchester’s Sounds of the City. Across the 10th and 11th of July, Skinner is set to delight sold out Castlefield crowds to his second release, an album, which until this year had never been played in its entirety.
Hailed by critics as operatic in its lyrical output, ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’ served to cement Skinner as one of the country’s finest city poets. Across eleven tracks, he narrated the tormenting hellscapes of the urbane mundane with a comical catchiness. From the coy ‘Could Well Be In’, to the honest, drug-filled heaviness of ‘Blinded By the Lights’ and the laddish bravado bottled in ‘Fit but You Know It’, Skinner deftly weaved humour with a profound sense of dismay. Yet, perhaps as an obvious but irrefutably excellent choice, the album’s pinnacle is found in the tenderness of ‘Dry Your Eyes’. As The Streets’ most successful single, the track was a stirring peak behind the curtain, where a vulnerable Skinner bared all.
Not only was 2026 monumental for The Streets’ sophomore release, but this year similarly marks the twentieth anniversary of ‘The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living’. Notwithstanding the album’s thirty-seven-minute run time, the album packs a loaded, eye-opening punch, detailing the ups, but more so the downs, of seemingly exponential fame.
In spite of declaring that The Streets are a “cult classic and not bestseller” on ‘Original Pirate Material’ single ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’, this summer’s sold-out dates may be evidence for the contrary. Skinner, supported by Manchester-based Antony Szmierek and renowned rapper and producer CASISDEAD, appears to have a vivid, swaggering evening up the sleeve of his Birmingham City jersey.
Sounds of the City, held at the revered Castlefield Bowl, has played host to the likes of Sam Fender, Chic, Pixies and Manchester stalwarts New Order, is also set to house the Sex Pistols, Johnny Marr amongst others this summer. Tickets can be found here.
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