The Stranglers

Manchester Apollo

Oct 18th 2025

Live Review

Something Better Change!

51 years in and the Stranglers are still moving like a ninja. Louder Than War were there dressed in black. 

More than half a century in and The Stranglers still have an ability to surprise. At this stage of the game, the band are very much the curators of their own idiosyncratic museum dusting down the exhibits and reframing their own hallowed discography.

This year’s annual tour has seen them juggle their set list and explore lost corners of their b(l)ack catalogue with some deep cuts that somehow seamlessly fit in with the now.

Tonight is a celebration of one of the most idiosyncratic and influential bands of the last fifty years but there is also still a forward motion with White Stallion from 2021’s Dark Matters album, still one of the high points, combining a willingness to fuck with their own sound and yet still create something new that very much fits into band’s playlist.

Of course, they still dish out the classics and the big hits like their punk period aggro anthems, Something Better Change and Five Minutes and the timeless No More Heroes. There are also run outs for the apocalyptic Straighten Out and the blunt and angular Dead Ringer with Toby Hounsham delivering the late and great Dave Greenfield’s Dracula vocal perfectly. 

It’s the focus on these moments that celebrate the band’s off kilter discography, putting part of the focus tonight on 1981’s La Folie, a much overlooked album that was about to tank in the charts until the waltz time huge hit Golden Brown, played tonight, soared up the charts and saved the band. 

The album itself, though, was a fine work and a return to the sharp, tough pop that had been their calling card in the early days. It may have been only four years since their first 1977 heyday, but 1981, with a shift in the pop culture, many of the punk period bands were shunted aside and a new aesthetic dominated. It was sink or swim for the class of 77.

The 1981 Stranglers were a long way away from the then current whims of early eighties pop culture and reeling after the semi rejection of the prog fused quark, strangeness and charm of their previous Meninblack album – a record of warped, drug fiend influenced genius but with little commercial appeal, although it would somehow still top ten in the charts. Tonight they showcase the alien disco of Thrown Away from that album – the closest those times got to a single and it still haunts with its world weary lament. 

The band then decided to go back to their knack of gnarly baroque pop and La Folie was the result. Often overlooked it’s perhaps the sound of the record that knocks the edge off it and does miss that warmth of the Rushent era productions but this is only marginal. The songs are great and tonight they play not just the aforementioned Golden Brown but the single that never was, Tramp with its soaring chorus and everyone playing lead at the same time, guitar and bass runs of the verses and Pin Up, which is perhaps the high point of the evening with its off kilter prog pop and haunting chorus.

This micro spotlight on the semi forgotten album of yore is part of a shake up in the band’s live set. There are also surprise run throughs of the barnstorming pub rock aggro of Mean To Me – the band at their most Dr Feelbad and a song unplayed for decades. There is also a shivering Instead Of This – the flipside of their latter day hit cover of 96 Tears and a barn storming take on Was It You from the same period, proving that yet again the songs were still there even at the coda of the Mark One version of the band’s career. 

These days the touring machine Stranglers have their sound perfectly Stranglerfied and the past few years have seen the bass faithfully restored to its classic gnarl which lifts older hits like Skin Deep, played tonight, moving it away from its eighties sheen and back into the Stranglers’ own distinctive sound without losing any of its perfect futuristic melodic drive.

Like a hydra, the Stranglers keep regenerating new body parts when old ones depart and still remain faithful to their mission. Where they go next is still up for grabs but despite tonight’s evidence of the strength in depth of the big back catalogue surely a new album is due at some point this decade to give the dark energy plot another twist…