Joshua Mannie AKA Barry Can’t Swim spent his late teens studying at Edinburgh Napier University, working in jazz bars and fishmongers and hopefully uploading tracks to SoundCloud. Now, two years after his first EP, his recent Ninja Tunes debut album When Will We Land? has been very well-received, he has a track (Dance of the Crab) on the Radio 1 playlist and this gig was upgraded to a larger venue. The Scotsman’s unusual moniker is already causing affectionate amusement and some wag has brought miniature inflatable life rafts to wave over the crowd.
The show starts like the album, with the title track’s arpeggiating keys and swirling pocket symphonies, before an hour-long set segues from deep house (Sonder) to jazzy afrobeat (Dance of the Crab). Mannie’s influences range from Fela Kuti to the Beatles, but there are echoes of the ethereality of 90s Moby. Live drummer Jim Molyneux brings texture and an edge, while trained pianist Mannie lays glorious keyboard runs over propulsive programmed grooves.
Mannie – or “Barry” as the audience call him – is possibly connecting because in these hard times his music is warm, uplifting and hugely danceable: music to, as Bryan Ferry put it, dance away the heartache. Named after a 1999 rave documentary, the blissful Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore is effectively a hymn to the culture. However, there’s more here than just escapism. The likes of God is the Space Between Us are unusual affecting and emotional. Sparkly dressed singer Holly Lapsley AKA Låpsley comes on for Woman, a feminist anthem with lines such as “When the people got the power / You see a human, I see a God.”
Mannie chats to the audience and is visibly overwhelmed when they chant along with keyboard riffs or sing along with a dip into Junior Senior’s 2002 hit Move Your Feet, where Mannie temporarily turns rapper. There’s minimal stagecraft, but when he breaks off from playing keyboards to dance with arms outstretched as colours blaze behind him, it looks undeniably iconic. He exits to chants of “Barry! Barry!” and leaves in triumph, holding a tiny inflatable in the air.
• At Strange Brew, Bristol, 22 November. Then touring
• This review was updated on 20 November 2023 to correct the name of the drummer, Jim Molyneux, which was wrong in a previous version due to incorrect supplied information.
