What A Life? What A Show! The Meffs Stir Up A Storm In Manchester!

LIVE REVIEW | THE MEFFS | MANCHESTER GORILLA 24/01/2025 by Craig Harston

The Meffs had an absolutely blinding 2024, not only releasing one of the best punk albums of the year with their Frank Turner-produced debut, ‘What A Life’, they also helped see off NOFX on their final ever UK show and had the privilege of supporting the mighty Alice Cooper. Known for their raucous and energetic live shows, 2025 sees them kicking off the new year with the ‘What A Life’ tour. Lily and Lewis played to a packed out room full of punks old and young, all of whom had braved Storm Eowyn to be there, and the twosome showed they have absolutely no intention of slowing down!

Opening the night were support band Carsick, who struggled a little to get the crowd going with their fusion of punk and rap by way of brit pop. Late into their set, the band promised a DVD copy of ‘Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason‘ to the first person to start a pit, which did achieve the result they wanted!

But the night ultimately belonged to The Meffs. Lily and Lewis quickly got the crowd moving with the opening song from ‘What A Life’, ‘Stamp It Out’ before hammering out the excellent ‘No’, ‘Deathwish’ and their superb cover of The Prodigy’s ‘Breathe’, which has long been one of their live staples.

Lily then took some time to talk about how they’d had to make their way down from Scotland earlier in the day, travelling through the worst of the storm before dedicating next song ‘Only Human’ to everyone who had started their day badly but are now lucky enough to be enjoying a Meffs show. This was followed by a blistering rendition of ‘Wasted On Women‘, which included Lily crowdsurfing during the bridge (“Everyone get closer, I don’t want to break my back on night three of the tour!”).

Next up was an impromptu sing-a-long of ‘Happy Birthday’ from the crowd for Lily’s mum after Lily mentioned she was trying not to swear too much (or swear more!), getting the crowd to shout “Fuck Donald Trump” before she and Lewis launched into ‘Life’s Life’. The absolute anthem that is ‘Stand Up, Speak Out’ followed, The Meffs brought out ‘Frank Turner’ before ‘Think Big’ (where Lily didn’t play Frank’s guitar solo – “I don’t want to show him up”) and the band then got a Wall Of Death going for ‘Everything’s Gone’, asking everyone to keep moving for the whole of the one minute and thirty second song!

Prior to a raging performance of ‘Take Control’, Lily used her platform to talk about how much inequality still exists in the world and how it needs to change. ‘No Future’ then followed, a song that’s only recently returned to The Meffs’ set, which went down a storm with the crowd.

Eschewing leaving the stage prior to an encore, Lily went into a trance at the end of ‘What’, prompting Lewis to come out from behind his drums to tell the room that she’d only come out of it if everyone screamed loud enough for more songs! This led to the duo finishing the night strong with ‘Clowns’ and an absolutely barnstorming performance of ‘Broken Britain, Broken Brains’.

The Meffs completely owned the night and proved once again why they’re arguably the most important band in the UK punk scene at the moment. Lily’s commanding stage presence kept the whole room captivated and she was clearly enjoying herself while Lewis gave her great back up. If you’ve yet to check them out, you owe it to yourself to catch them on one of their remaining tour dates and to give ‘What A Life’ a spin!