One of Manchester’s most quietly influential bands is back. The Durutti Column, led by guitarist Vini Reilly, has released their first album in 16 years, and with it comes a rare chance to hear from the people who helped shape the sound of post-punk Britain.
Vini Reilly is not your typical rock musician. Softly spoken, deeply introspective, and responsible for some of the most delicate guitar work to ever come out of England, he has spent decades operating just outside the mainstream. But the stories he carries are anything but quiet.
Asked about rumours that he once ran with a violent Manchester street gang in his youth, Reilly is quick to put things in context. “Gangs then had a different meaning,” he says. “It was just their lot and our lot. We’d sling insults at each other, then you’d play football in the park and realise you were playing with the local thugs. They were actually very funny.”
But behind that lightness is something much darker. Reilly admits he was struggling badly at the time, dealing with recurring depression and feeling completely out of place at home. “I wanted to end my life so I decided to go to Moss Side, where the gangsters would shoot me,” he says plainly. “Of course they didn’t.”
He traces a lot of his pain back to losing his father while he was sitting his O-levels. But rather than let it define him negatively, Reilly has found a kind of peace with it. “The really bad things gave me more than they could ever take,” he says. “How can you know happiness until you’ve known deep sadness?”
Drummer Bruce Mitchell, who has been alongside Reilly for much of the band’s history, offers a slightly more grounded perspective. “Vini does kick off, though, properly battles,” he says with what sounds like fond exasperation. “We had to section him once, and six people had to hold him down.”
The Durutti Column came up through Factory Records, the legendary Manchester label that also gave the world Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays. It was a scene full of enormous personalities and, sadly, enormous tragedy. Reilly knew Ian Curtis well, the Joy Division frontman who took his own life in 1980 at just 23 years old.
“Ian Curtis didn’t have a chance,” Reilly has said, a line that speaks volumes without needing much elaboration. The weight of that era, the creativity, the chaos, the loss, runs through the Durutti Column’s music whether they intend it to or not.
Factory Records was famously eccentric, run by the larger-than-life Tony Wilson, who treated music as art first and commerce a distant second. The label became notorious for things like releasing records in sandpaper sleeves that would scratch the other albums around them. It was that kind of place. Nobody was doing things the sensible way, and the Durutti Column fitted right in.
Over the years the band has picked up some unexpected admirers. Harry Styles is among their fans, which Reilly seems to take with good humour. The band has also had a long connection with Morrissey, the Smiths frontman who got his start helping to promote early Durutti Column shows and who has spoken warmly about Reilly’s influence on him.
Musically, the Durutti Column carved out something genuinely original. Reilly’s guitar style, built on classical technique, jazz feeling, and electronic texture, did not sound like anyone else in post-punk Manchester. While contemporaries were going louder and more abrasive, he was going the other way, finding beauty in space and restraint.
The new album arrives after a 16-year gap, and for fans who have been waiting, it represents a genuine event. Reilly is now in his 70s and has faced serious health challenges over the years, making the record feel even more significant.
Manchester has never been short of musical legends, but the Durutti Column occupy a particular corner of that history, one that rewards patience and attention. After all this time, it turns out they still have something to say.