For the uninitiated, WU LYF were the cult Manchester band who, in the early 2010s, emerged from the shadows with a debut album that sounded like it had been written in the ruins of a chapel and shouted into the void — which makes sense, given that it actually was recorded in a church. They shunned industry support, self-funded everything, and somehow still ended up on the Letterman show in the States (which gets a subtle nod tonight as Tom McClung revealed the very same t-shirt as the temperature rose). They were clearly on to something. Something that feels impossible in this day and age, and only believable if you were on the bandwagon first time around. If you’re wondering who they are, they wouldn’t want us to tell you — that’s for you to uncover. The trail exists, if you care to look. In true WU LYF fashion, cryptic posters and whispered clues have been spotted in recent weeks around Ancoats — all of it leading to this moment, this gathering, at the understated entrance to the Kings Arms in Salford.
On a glorious Saturday afternoon, you could’ve walked right past the Grade II listed pub without knowing that in just an hour, the doors to only the third WU LYF gig in over a decade would open to a small, blessed crowd. The street outside gave little away aside from a few posters, but inside, the air held something different. Groups of friends gathered around pub tables in the lounges, chatting enthusiastically, casting occasional glances toward the staircase, clocking each other — wondering who else had made the pilgrimage. It might have looked inauspicious to a passer-by, but there was a quiet electricity building. Something was about to happen. And not on just any weekend either — this was a resurrection that began on the eve of Good Friday and wrapped just before Easter Sunday.
Inside, the 100-or-so punters packed into the upstairs room felt more like a mosh-ready congregation than crowd. A room full of true believers and unanimous goodwill the likes of which you rarely experience these days. The decade of disillusionment under the belts of most attendees contrasted with a few wide-eyed newcomers grasping onto myth turned moment. Tickets had been harder to find than a coherent WU LYF interview, and everyone knew it. The vibe was reunion-meets-revival, hearts in mouths and pints in hand.
What made this resurrection all the more powerful was its prelude — the release of A New Life is Coming, WU LYF’s first new track in over thirteen years. Unannounced and unhurried, it landed like a lit flare in the dark, reintroducing that signature mix of apocalyptic scale and wounded beauty. If the original songs were fire-and-brimstone, this new offering felt more like a hymn — the kind that reaches you slower, but stays longer.
So when they opened with A New Life is Coming, it felt like prophecy fulfilled. A track we never expected to be delivered to us, let alone deliver us. As with all the new material played on the night, it felt cleaner — and dare we say more accessible — but it throbbed with that same chest-beating intensity that once made Go Tell Fire to the Mountain sound like a broadcast from another realm. One of the new tracks has already been jokingly dubbed ‘WU2’, thanks to an opening riff The Edge himself would be proud of. Another was jokingly introduced as being a take on a Field of Dreams type movie anthem. Ellery Roberts’s voice, still rough as scorched velvet, tore through the mix with no regard for syllables or softness.
CAVE followed and saw the room bounce into familiarity. Those cascading organ stabs and disjointed rhythms felt like finding your old bedroom untouched after years away — jarring, moving, eerily intact. In what could be considered a display of growth the band actually shared something new about this classic, that the original lyrics were penned as “I am Nick Cave“. Whether it’s true or not is another matter.
By the time DIRT hit, the crowd had shed its caution. That scorched-earth rhythm, named “Hottest Track in the World” back in 2011 by Zane Lowe, still slapped like gospel in a burning cathedral. But here, in a tiny pub theatre lit like a séance, it felt even more urgent. Every throat screamed along with Ellery’s — not that any of us knew the lyrics in full — but that was never the point. WU LYF have always communicated more in mood than message. You don’t sing their songs, you holler them into the dark and hope something hollers back.
Mid-set peaks came in ALL IS FORGIVEN and SPITTING BLOOD. The former, rich in reverb and redemption, felt almost ceremonial — a kind of group exorcism of the years since they vanished. The latter, full of the old fire, confirmed they hadn’t mellowed completely. There’s still grit in their gut, still blood in the wine.
And then came the closing stretch. LETTING GO marked the emotional pivot — not mournful, not euphoric, but freeing. It eased us into LYF, a song that once felt like a mission statement and tonight, sounded like a homecoming. Then HEAVY POP, that cacophonous cathedral of a track, rang out like a benediction. And finally, WE BROS — a closer so fitting it felt predestined. The crowd didn’t just sing along, they shouted every battered syllable, they hugged their neighbours, they let the spirit in and accepted that maybe miracles do happen.
The band stood together at the end, half-smiling, half-shocked and actually not quite sure how to end this three-day family reunion. The crowd mirrored them. Because for the first time in thirteen years, it really happened. No mystery, no cryptic letter. Just five men on a stage, older now, maybe even better. And 120 of us trying to process it all, grinning with the sort of stunned joy that only comes when a myth steps off the page and into your lap.
WU LYF’s comeback didn’t just stir nostalgia, it stirred belief — in music, in myth, in the ridiculous idea that some bands are too strange, too vital, to stay buried forever.
And maybe that’s WU LYF’s enduring alchemy: not just the music, but the myth. From masks and secrecy to cryptic websites and sudden disappearances, they’ve always felt more like a cult than a band. And yet, when the music starts, all of that mystique burns away. What’s left is raw, rapturous feeling — defiant, communal, uncontainable.
This wasn’t just a comeback. It was a reminder that some things — some bands — don’t need constant presence to matter. Sometimes, it’s enough to disappear for a while, then return just when the world needs you most.
And at the Kings Arms in Salford, in the year of our Lord 2025, we bore witness.
Go Places Do Things 