A brisk fifteen minute walk from Bristol city centre sits Old Market Street in the Old Market area. At one end is The Stag and Hounds, one of Bristol’s oldest pubs and currently an established small music venue. At the other end, The Trinity Centre and (if you can find it) Wiper & True, a brewery in a small industrial estate hosting bands curated by Left Of The Dial, arguably the Dutch version of this festival that one or two of us are now tempted to check out ourselves one day.
The Trinity Centre is where we all start as this is where the wristbands are provided and boasts the largest venue that we can view bands in today. The stage is located in the garden of the church, a masterstroke by the organisers on this beautiful warm day. There’s a large 650 capacity venue inside the church, but we’re now at the time of year when being outside is more preferable. Food stalls, a bar and small merchandise stalls alongside some pleasant shrubbery and a large poly tunnel hint that this would be a great place to visit anytime during the year for gardening enthusiasts. Today, seven bands will grace this venue and, such is the strength of the line up for this multi-venue event, it’s a location we decide we may return to if we ever find ourselves giving up standing inside of any of the small venues spread up and down the road.
Outer Town Festival boasts nine other (small) venues that are all very close to each other. Uniquely, the festival doesn’t really boast any headline acts. The whole line up is worth seeing, and many of the fifty or so bands will probably be seen at some other stage of our lives, if not today. We have a plan A that we imagine, as we wander around the area for the first time, may need alternative names involving a few more letters of the alphabet once it’s decided that cramming ourselves into hot packed venues may be too much. Fortunately, this is another event that sticks tightly to its schedule. Turning up to see a band twenty-five minutes after the advertised stage time in the hope that they’ll be running late isn’t an option.
Dreamy guitar-driven tunes from Alphabet and prog rock sounds from Plantoid provide the soundtrack to our last-minute schedule decisions.
A three-piece Welsh Punk Rock band playing inside the tiny Ill Repute venue leads us to the middle of the festival site and we are not disappointed with our findings. This venue holds about eight people deep and the same number wide. The sound desk leans against the front of the tiny stage and the walls are decorated with hanging scooters, TVs, and the odd Elvis doll balancing precariously on the windowsill. Lacross Club are jumping around without a care in the world whilst making a great racket covering The Dead Kennedys’ Too Drunk To Fuck alongside a selection of their own compositions, showing that young people who look like they’ve just finished their paper rounds are better at providing this stuff than those who should be tending their allotments. Lacross Club are wonderful because they don’t look as though they’re too bothered about what they’re doing. No sound check, no shirts, the guitar gets put to one side for a song or two whilst the man who should be playing it is removing his trousers, shoes and socks (glasses fall off also if you have that on your punk rock bingo card) whilst all the time he’s jumping around and sharing his mike (because obviously, he’s already broken his own) with the bassist as they scream and shout in unison. We listen to the band’s output on our return home, and it’s enough to convince us that they do care about the right things and their level of entertainment, as we prepare for the long day ahead, is top notch. Chaos on a stage is always great to watch.
Our visit to this venue begs us to question how Yorkshire six-piece (with loads of equipment) Adult DVD will fit into the space allocated for them to perform later. They would have been our number one choice for the day if we ever really needed to fabricate our own ‘headline act’.
We alter our plans for what will be about the tenth time and wander back over to Trinity Gardens to find that Mould, with their bass-driven Fugazi-inspired gritty onslaughts, and local heroes Knives will certainly guarantee us a couple of hours in the fresh air and provide enough loud and thrilling entertainment to help pace ourselves for the relentless hours ahead of us. Knives, of course, need little introduction for those here today (recent London show reviewed here). This Bristol outfit will be a household name for many of the gig-going public before the end of the year, especially once the band’s debut album is released to the public in a few weeks’ time. We’re already picking our favourite band members as they line up in front of us, standing side by side, waving to their mates in the crowd, punching the air, kicking the air, screaming in unison and causing mayhem in front of them courtesy of those willing to jump around without a care in the world. This band are more chaotic than Idles, rowdier than every other band we’ve been falling in love with the past five years, they’re exciting and they look fucking great. Huge stages and big raucous crowds are not too far away from this band now.
Slate at The Exchange (The Great Hall) are playing inside the darkest room some of us have been in since our last trip on the Alton Towers ghost train. This matches the Cardiff band’s music that is driven by vocalist Jack Shephard, whose compelling delivery we can just about see being provided from the silhouetted figure in between us and a couple of red lights coming from the rear of the stage. Ain’t and Man/Woman/Chainsaw manage to pack the punters into the same venue, who by now are entertaining themselves in between trips to the bar by queuing up to also be entertained by the quirky Youth Sector in the ‘Dungeon’ and the thrilling electronic Industrial Noise that Dublin trio Yard are always guaranteed to provide (recent London show reviewed here).
Adult DVD succeed in cramming themselves and equipment inside Ill Repute (along with about sixty people who managed to get there earlier than we did) whilst a dozen or so of us are content hearing the banging sound of Dogs In The Sun from the comfort of the pavement outside. This song in particular sounds massive even from the wrong side of a wall. We’ll very soon be in the same room again for sure (recent London review here).
Rearranging our plans for the twelfth time, we find ourselves being entertained by Dutch Indie stars Pip Blom at Trinity who have the crowd shuffling their feet. Meanwhile,Tramhaus are providing a raucous end to the proceeding at Wiper & True and CLT DRP at The Old Market Assembly are entertaining feet tapping and fists pumping attendees who will remain here for Feet in the same room or even move on to see Yard (again) as the after party down the road that starts at about the same time that our beds are ready to be occupied.
Outer Town Festival is unique due to the number of small bars and clubs located in such a small area of the city that host the gigs. The strength of the line-up of emerging acts is such that alternative options are available only a few feet away if your first choice is full. Planning events such as this and making days like this run as smooth as we’ve experienced takes a lot of people’s time and effort. Perhaps we were lucky, but catching as many decent bands as we did during the day makes this yet another event that we’ll do our best to return to in twelve months’ time.
Tickets are already available for 2026. Looking at past Outer Town events you can see that many of the bands that have performed at this festival haven’t simply disappeared soon after. If you enjoy seeing some of the best emerging acts inside some of the smallest venues, then this is the event that can provide it. There’s a good chance that whichever path you travel on will be worth it and we’ll hopefully all make an effort to see many of the bands available again sometime.
Which is all some of us ever ask for.
Huge fun.
Information regarding future events can be found at the Outer Town official web site here.
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