Cabbage

In late 2015, the Mossley quintet Cabbage burst onto Manchester's storied music landscape in England, infusing the local circuit with renewed energy via their cheeky wit, raucous performances, and gritty neo-post-punk approach. The disorderly lineup featured vocalist Lee Broadbent, guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Joe Martin, guitarist Eoghan Clifford, drummer Asa Morley, and bassist/producer Stephen Evans. Their opening single, "Kevin," delivered a rowdy fusion of the Clash, the Fall, and early Nirvana, while the jangly guitar lines and frenzied vocals framed lyrics exploring existential dread alongside questions of human purpose.

Early 2016 brought the D.I.Y. Le Chou EP on Evans' Play & Record label, which added the strutting single "Dinner Lady"—a crude depiction of lunchroom behavior that doubled as social class commentary—to the tracklist alongside "Kevin." Critical praise and heightened regional attention followed from this mix of irreverence and craft, yielding summer festival slots plus endorsement from the Charlatans' Tim Burgess. Building on the surge, Cabbage secured a tour alongside fellow Mancunians Blossoms and Declan McKenna later that year, after issuing the Uber Capitalist Death Trade EP ahead of the dates.

In 2017 the band delivered Young, Dumb and Full Of..., which gathered their prior singles and EPs, then followed with the mid-year The Extended Play of Cruelty EP. That set centered its words and concepts on deceit and material obsessions, most pointedly in the lead track "Celebration of a Disease," drawn from performance artist Cosey Fanny Tutti's essay on the abrupt pivot from artistic impetus to pure commoditization in pornography. Late in the year the group tracked its debut album at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios with James Skelly and Rich Turvey (the Coral, Blossoms). Nihilistic Glamour Shots surfaced at the start of 2018, spotlighting the singles "Preach to the Converted" and "Arms of Pleonexia" while fusing the band's anarchic streak with political observations and pop hooks. On November 12, 2021, the outfit declared its breakup, closing the chapter with a final run of shows and a B-side collection.