Top Picks
Guides
What’s on
Where to go
See all

Modern Nature at Rough Trade Liverpool

Johnny James, Managing Editor

Book now

Modern Nature

Rough Trade, City Centre
2 October 2025

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

From £15.00
Modern Nature
Modern Nature by James Sharp
Book now

Modern Nature bring their shape-shifting blend of bucolic folk, free jazz and psych-tinged post-rock to Rough Trade Liverpool this October, in support of their forthcoming album The Heat Warps.

Since the end of his band Ultimate Painting in 2018, Blackpool-born Jack Cooper has led Modern Nature through a steady evolution – from open-ended studio collective to a tightly focused quartet. Alongside drummer Jim Wallis, bassist Jeff Tobias and now guitarist-vocalist Tara Cunningham, Cooper has steered the band from the abstract sprawl of No Fixed Point in Space towards something more structured and immediate. That shift defines the band’s current form – and the new material.

The Heat Warps hasn’t landed yet, but two early singles offer a compelling glimpse. ‘Pharaoh’ pairs motoric rhythms with interwoven dual guitars, nodding to Pharoah Sanders in its lyrical theme of resisting inherited authority. ‘Source’, written in the wake of the 2024 UK asylum-seeker riots, reflects on community, alienation and resilience. But despite its political weight, the song retains a strangely uplifting tone, reminiscent in spirit to the Beta Band’s ‘Dry the Rain’ or ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.

But it’s in the live setting that The Heat Warps feels poised to resonate deepest. Where earlier Modern Nature records drifted inwards – exploratory, impressionistic – this one reaches out. The new songs are built less for solitary immersion than for shared experience: music that invites you in and asks you to feel something together. It feels like a meaningful moment to catch the band – more focused, more grounded, and more attuned to the collective pulse than ever before.

Featured in

Music in the North

Manchester’s starting the new year with a run of gigs from some of the country’s best underground exports.

Where to go near Modern Nature at Rough Trade Liverpool

Liverpool
Cinema
Odeon Liverpool ONE

Located right in the centre of town, Odeon Liverpool One features a huge 18 screens with all of the latest gizmos from RealD 3D to DBOX.

City Centre
Shopping Centre
Liverpool ONE

Liverpool ONE avoided the fate of so many 1960s and 1970s large-scale shopping developments. Instead of obliterating what was already there, blocks of new-build sit alongside preserved and renovated existing buildings.

Liverpool
Restaurant
Albert’s Schenke

Albert’s Schenke is the brand new Liverpool bar-restaurant from Mission Mars, the team behind a host of top-class Manchester venues.

Liverpool
Restaurant
Aether

Dazzling cocktail bar from The Alchemist team, based in Liverpool One. Expect a rotating line-up of street food vendors taking over the kitchen.

City Centre
Bar or Pub
Hanover Street Social

At the intersection of Hanover Street, Duke Street and Liverpool One, Hanover Street Social is at the centre of Liverpool’s burgeoning food quarter

The MerseyMade building in Liverpool
Liverpool
Shop
MerseyMade West Kirby

In the MerseyMade shop you’ll find bottled gin from the likes of Turncoat Gin, Anfield Gin, Albert Dock Gin and Three Graces Gin. Yep, Liverpool REALLY likes its gin.

Mamasan Liverpool
City Centre
Mamasan Liverpool

Mamasan is a new three-floor South East Asian inspired restaurant and bar based in Liverpool One. It also has exciting cook-at-home options.

See all places

What's on: Music

Legowelt Press Image
MusicManchester
Legowelt at The White Hotel

Vintage machines, sci-fi dreams and 30 years of restless invention. Legowelt plays in deepest darkest Salford this January.

From £19.90
MusicManchester
Sorry at Gorilla

Sorry return to Manchester with a new album that finally captures the full strangeness and clarity of a band who’ve spent years ducking easy categorisation.

From £23.25
MusicManchester
Bar Italia at Manchester Academy 2

One of London’s most hyped bands of the last few years, Bar Italia are playing Band on the Wall in support of their latest album, Some Like It Hot.

From £19.45

Culture Guides

A doll with makeup peeks out of a hanging wall of butter yellow fabric. Red and black threads descend and cascade around the doll.
Exhibitions in the North

This season, exhibitions across the North West feel attuned to the world beneath the world – the forces and stories shaping how we see, feel and imagine.

Music in the North

Manchester’s starting the new year with a run of gigs from some of the country’s best underground exports.

A performer in a bright red costume sits on a snowy stage set, holding a large snowball between their legs with a surprised expression. The colourful winter backdrop features snowflakes, hills, a snowman, and a traffic light with glowing lights.
Family things to do in the North

Whether you’re after storybook theatre, museum wanderings or illusion-bending play spaces, there’s plenty to keep curiosity ticking through winter and beyond.

Textured portrait image of Jarman
Theatre in the North

Theatre across the North West splits between festive escape and sharp, urgent work exploring politics, power and resistance.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Cinema in the North

There's no shortage of great films out at the moment, whether you're looking for the latest blockbuster, that hot arthouse flick fresh from Cannes or a cosy classic.

Food and Drink in the North

Hear ye, hear ye. Take some eating-out tips from our wintertime guide to food and drink in Manchester and the North.

See all guides