Announcing their formation in November 2021, pop-punk band The Lunar Year have been working non-stop. From releasing singles, a debut EP and now heading out on their first ever UK tour it’s certainly been a rapid-fire start from the newly formed band. The band may be new; however, the members certainly aren’t as they both have some very impressive accolades between them with their long-standing musical careers. The Lunar Year consists of The Vamps’ vocalist, guitarist and bassist Connor Ball and Cheat Codes’ drummer Sasa Macek who came together to form The Lunar Year with their mutual love for pop-punk music. The pair released their self-titled EP “The Lunar Year” which featured six tracks that gave a brief but promising insight into the band and they definitely put there all into this energetic record with it being that good. We were lucky enough to catch The Lunar Year as they headed out on their first ever tour as a band which included a show at the intimate Manchester Academy 3, this show would also be their second ever performance as a band! Support for the night came from the brilliant Bronnie and The Tyne.
As Connor and Sasa took to the stage the venue became filled with cheers and screams with The Lunar Year kicking off the night, and their first ever performance in Manchester with their debut single “Back for More”. The lads were on fire throughout the entire night and fans were certainly witnessing something special seeing them at such a small and intimate venue as I already predict The Lunar Year to be selling out much bigger venues as they have an extremely promising future ahead of them. Connor Ball even backed up this promising future by announcing to the crowd that the two had recently been over to LA and were in the process of writing their debut album, they then proceeded to give the crowd a snippet of some unreleased songs. A personal highlight was when The Lunar Year did a pop-punk remix/cover of The Vamps’ incredibly popular track “Can we Dance”, the venue may have been small but the crowd in attendance made it feel like an arena performance with their reaction. The Lunar Year played their debut EP back to front with tracks like “Medicine” and “Nothing” being clear fan favourites and it was a perfect show to get a glimpse of how good this band is going to be.
THE LUNAR YEAR
THE TYNE
Photos + Review by Lewis Roberts | Exclusively for Music, Why Not!