GANS

College friends who threw the rules out

GANS are a post-punk duo from Birmingham, formed by college friends Euan Woodman, who drums and sings, and Thomas Rhodes, who handles bass, guitar and synths and also sings. Their own account of the band's origins puts music alongside books and art as the shared ground the two of them started from, which is a slightly unusual pitch for a group whose default live setting is somewhere near maximum.

The pair are from the Black Country rather than Birmingham proper, and they have never been coy about it. Introducing NIGHTWALKING at The Lexington in London on 9 September 2025, Rhodes told a room that had fought through a tube strike to get there: "we're just two working class lads from the Black Country. This doesn't happen to people like us without people like you." That framing — local pride sitting uneasily next to the urge to get out — runs through most of what they have written.

Things moved quickly. Within their first year the duo had a record deal and were working with the producer Ross Orton, whose previous clients include Arctic Monkeys, Working Men's Club and Amyl & The Sniffers. The label was Strap Originals, Peter Doherty's imprint, which put them in a stable with a certain amount of scrutiny attached.

GOOD FOR THE SOUL

The debut album, GOOD FOR THE SOUL, came out on 19 September 2025 on Strap Originals, produced by Orton. It was trailed by I THINK I LIKE YOU, which made the BBC Radio 6 Music playlist, and by IT'S JUST LIFE. Woodman described the latter as being about "that feeling we all have – the eternal chase for the grass being greener on the other side", which is as close as the record gets to a thesis statement.

The songs deal with acceptance, self-destruction and body image, and the band have talked about their painting, literature and poetry habits feeding into the writing as much as any musical reference point. Musically it is less tidy than that suggests: electronics, rock and post-punk abrasion sit next to each other, with synths pushed forward and brass supplied by members of Ibibio Sound Machine.

Reviews were warm rather than uncritical. Writing for Live4ever on 18 September 2025, Richard Bowes gave the album three stars out of five and called it "both ambitious and assured", noting a mix of brutality and bravado and abrupt gear changes between styles that he read as personality rather than indecision. The comparisons reached for early Kasabian and electroclash, which captures the dance-facing half of the band better than the word post-punk does.

An EP, FAR AND WIDE, followed in September 2025, giving them more material than a single album's worth barely a year into their recording life — something that shows in the way sets are assembled now, with album tracks left out rather than squeezed in.

Learning the rooms from the support slot up

Most of what GANS have built has been built in front of other bands' audiences. Their summer 2025 run took in Sonic Bloom, Garage Mu, Metal In The Midlands and Rock Herk, plus a support slot for The Libertines at the Piece Hall in Halifax. In February 2026 they went round the UK with BIG SPECIAL, taking in Norwich, Nottingham, Glasgow, Manchester and the Roundhouse in London.

Between those came the headline shows that mattered more: the packed Lexington date in September 2025, and Hebden Bridge Trades Club on 25 November 2025, where Live4ever's Dylan Llewellyn-Nunes gave them four and a half stars and made the point that separates them from the obvious comparisons — that for all the aggression, they have soul, which he argued IDLES do not.

By May 2026 they were headlining Rescue Rooms in Nottingham with Voka Gentle opening, and had quietly become a trio on stage: the multi-instrumentalist Tommy Lawther had joined on saxophone and flute. Bring the Noise's Izzy Morris scored that show nine out of ten and concluded, of Lawther's contribution, that flutes are punk. From there the band went straight into a support run with Pixies and a summer of festivals.

Autumn 2026: the busiest stretch yet

The current run is the longest they have attempted. Germany came first — Kranhalle at Feierwerk in Munich on 14 September, Maschinenhaus in Berlin on 15 September, Blue Shell in Cologne on 16 September — overlapping with Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, which runs from 16 to 19 September. France and Switzerland follow: La Coopérative de Mai in Clermont-Ferrand on 24 September, Detonation Festival in Besançon, and KiFF in Aarau on 26 September.

The UK leg is deliberately unglamorous and relentless. It opens at The Joiners in Southampton on 1 October, then Kanteena in Lancaster on the 6th, The Tunnels in Aberdeen on the 8th, Rough Trade Liverpool on the 9th, two shows in a day at Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield on the 10th, The Crescent in York on the 11th, Bootleg Social in Blackpool on the 12th, a return to the Trades Club on the 14th, The Hairy Dog on the 15th, The Sugarmill in Stoke-on-Trent on the 16th, and Future Days Festival in Digbeth on the 17th — a home fixture of sorts.

November brings The Bunkhouse in Swansea on the 4th, Hertford Corn Exchange on the 5th and The 100 Club in London on the 6th, before the biggest headline show of their career so far at the O2 Forum Kentish Town on 26 November. Beyond that, they are booked for ESNS in Groningen, which takes place from 13 to 16 January 2027, and which lists them under the heading Electronic Punk with recommendations from France Info and HUMO attached.

Publishing is handled by Notting Hill Music, whose own description of them — pounding drums, distorted basslines, deadpan vocals — is one of the few pieces of industry copy about the band that a listener would recognise from the records.

What actually happens on stage

The consistent note in reviews is that GANS treat a gig as something closer to a party they are hosting than a recital they are delivering. Woodman conducts most of it from behind the kit and then abandons the kit entirely, and the band have been known to leave the stage altogether: at the Trades Club they carried on into the adjoining bar.

Confrontation is part of the method. Supporting Pop Will Eat Itself at the Electric Ballroom in London, they opened by telling a standoffish crowd to move closer and threatening to keep going until it did, then counted to four and instructed everyone to jump, on pain of the drummer coming down to find them. The reviewer's verdict was that the initial reluctance gave way to something cathartic, which is roughly the arc every account of a GANS set describes.