Back to Back Festival 2027

Brudenell presents Back To Back Festival 2027 at Brudenell Social Club on Saturday 23 January 2027 as part of Independent Venue Week. Starting as an event showcasing bands who call Leeds home, the festival has progressed into welcoming upcoming acts from across the UK, while still committing 50% of the line-up to local acts, with Home and Away stages.

The first announcement for 2027 includes Bristol power-pop quintet The Cindys, Leeds DIY rockers Normal Village, the alt-folk of Oscar Browne, the jazz infused folk soundscapes of Rhiannon Hope, Brighton post-rock/folk outfit Ladylike and Leeds mystery Laughing making their debut live outing.

The Cindys: following the success of their self-titled mixtape, The Cindys return with their full length debut Love Century, released via Breakfast Records on 19 November. Rooted in the DIY mythology of 80s indie, it is a love letter to the power of the major label debut, finding a balance between pop sensibility and tape aesthetic. Full of hooks, Love Century focuses on melody, friendship and rock and roll, and the power of stripping everything back to find the signal in the noise.

Normal Village: Normal Village are a Leeds DIY band with a knack for chaos, charm and coordinated brilliance. They are shaped by the community around them, spending the last few years bouncing between Leeds DIY stages, tightening their songs in real time and figuring out their sound by playing it a lot. Rising out from the chaos and community of the city’s DIY gig scene, Normal Village’s debut EP feels lifted from a dark, sweaty and crammed basement somewhere off Hyde Park. Fusing a mix of punk, indie, math rock and post-hardcore, Normal Village go through 20 minutes of slanted time signatures and raging volumes, guitars sparking off each other.

Oscar Browne: hailing from North London, Oscar Browne is a twenty-five-year-old multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, whose style of meticulous alt-folk is a contemporary force. Building a world out of pine trees and finger-picked mortar, and nesting within the branches of Stephen Fretwell, Nick Mulvey and John Martyn, Oscar Browne’s roots lie in the intricacy of golden-age songwriting. A founding member of the London based folk collective Broadside Hacks, among other ventures, Oscar Browne’s creative capability is a range of ideas as he continues to develop as a live artist.

Rhiannon Hope: from Leeds via Liverpool, Rhiannon Hope has found her footing in Yorkshire's grassroots scene, collecting a band of multi-instrumentalists along the way. Together, they create textured, jazz influenced folk soundscapes which act as a bed for Rhiannon's experiences of womanhood, identity and the working class.

Ladylike: Brighton’s Ladylike inhabit a particular kind of quiet. Natural, controlled and brimming with a subtle energy. Delicately treading the tightrope between folk and post-rock, their sound rolls and retreats. Like an ocean’s patient flaking of landscapes, Ladylike tracks speak to renewal, growth and repair.

Laughing: sad, vaguely gothic cowboy pop, featuring slabs of sound dissipating into eerie interludes, broken 80s inflected keys and rangy dual guitars reaching to the crux of things.