Sonny

Manchester · Daniel Critchley · b. 2005 · FARA Records

Sonny (Daniel Critchley, b. 7 August 2005, Manchester) has been “Sonny” since before he can remember — his nan started it, and it stuck. A Manchester kid raised on grey skies, red brick and the city’s bottomless musical mythology: older relatives’ Stone Roses and Smiths records, Oasis on every taxi radio, the ghost of the Haçienda and Factory Records hanging over the place like the drizzle. Working-class, wry and quick-witted, he learned early that in Manchester you don’t wait for the weather to improve — you put your coat on and go out anyway.

Music started with a cheap guitar, his uncle’s Rickenbacker jangle, and a teenage realisation that the songs he loved were really just Manchester talking to itself — the rain, the buses, the Friday nights, the swagger. He writes baggy, jangly anthems about his own city, in his own accent, with the wry northern humour he grew up surrounded by; his influences run the whole Madchester-to-Britpop lineage — the Stone Roses, the Smiths, Happy Mondays, Oasis and the Charlatans.

On stage he’s pure northern swagger softened with a grin — cocky, funny and conversational, a frontman who talks to the crowd like they’re all in the same pub. More cheeky local hero than untouchable rock star; he can turn a wet Tuesday into a singalong, and he maintains you’ve never properly heard a chorus until you’ve heard one sung by a queue of people with no jackets on, in the rain, at eleven. Wry, cocky, warm.