Ashnikko: Manchester Academy – Live Review

Ashnikko | Amelia Moore
Manchester Academy, Manchester
13th February 2026

Ashnikko brought her Smoochies tour to Manchester Academy, a kaleidoscopic, surreal spectacle that’s become one of the most theatrically ambitious propositions in contemporary pop. She occupies a volatile space in hyperpop – too abrasive to commodify, too self-aware to dismiss as novelty. Sex, power and grotesquerie aren’t aesthetic garnish but blunt instruments, used to drag private conversations into the light.

Outside Manchester Academy, amid chants of ‘lesbians! lesbians’, the exchange of little trinkets and some of the most inventive and wonderful outfits the venue has likely ever witnessed, there is already the sense that this is a gathering, a congregation rooting for a new kind of idol. The venue zips with that electricity, which only arrives when a performer has convinced their audience that the rules do not apply tonight, that shame can be suspended, that excess is not only permitted but required. Ashnikko has built an entire career out of that suspension of gravity, pushing femininity, eroticism and absurdity so far beyond polite boundaries that they cease to be provocative and instead become an act of liberation. With Smoochies, the follow-up to the feral dystopian world-building of WEEDKILLER, she pivots not towards autobiography filtered through maximalism, the hyper-cute, hyper-violent, hyper-aware persona she forged in adolescence now wields like a neon machete. Ashnikko said that her new record was “an exercise in eroticism, in power, in mischief, in grotesqueness!! Smoochies is the tiny door you find in the club bathroom that you crawl through on your hands and knees into a parallel dimension ruled by rat princesses.” I think that’s something we can all get behind.

Before the exorcism proper begins, Amelia Moore arrives with the self-possession of someone who has already rehearsed a dozen futures and selected the strangest one. Georgia-born and now Los Angeles-forged, she carries the aura of the homeschooled theatre prodigy who refused to stay within the proscenium arch. Her set moves with a tight, almost mathematical precision, beats elastic and slightly askew, her voice gliding between choir-trained clarity and conversational aside. Song subjects include teaching a robot to love, and he’s just not that into you. Lineage unfolds like dispatches from someone who has already understood that vulnerability and irony are not mutually exclusive states.

I’m in Love with the Boy Next Door lands as a highlight, an elastic groove greeted by an already passionate and vocal crowd. She pauses to salute the astonishing outfits before her, furry leg warmers, all colours and manners of fishnet tights, LED emblazoned dresses, cowboy hats, glitter, beads, animal ears, tops emblazoned with reclaimed slurs worn defiantly. “If you take anything away from tonight, I want it to be this,” she said, before moving to the piano for a dramatic rendition of Crybaby, phone lights rising across the Academy in soft constellation. An unreleased track from her forthcoming debut album, City of Angels, follows, euphoric and full of longing.

As Amelia disappears, our superstar Ashnikko appears through a teeny door. At the rear of the stage sits the miniature portal promised, cartoonishly small and absurd. It creaks open, and from it emerges Ashnikko and her two dancers, squeezing through the Looney Tunes–style entrance as if stepping out of the bathroom cubicle of her imagination and into a universe entirely of her own making. The set is part funhouse, part fever dream: a giant papier-mâché head of Ashnikko looms above the crowd, signage promises “free full frontal lobotomy here,” and the now-significant small door sits at the back like a portal waiting to be activated again.

When the music hits, it does so with industrial force, cartoon-bright but built for impact, early hyper-pop futurism retooled into something heavier and unapologetically physical, bass ricocheting around the Academy as the theatrical conceit locks fully into place. Working Bitch, delivered whilst sat in a low-budget theatre-style pink picture frame, is followed by a declaration that after the last album, ‘we are going to think clitorally’, celebrating desire as something sacred rather than shameful, something to be concealed. It’s a non-stop cycle of bangers and slightly odd low-budget theatre props, Microplastics and Lip Smacker are augmented by some intense and wonderful choreography, courtesy of Ashnikko and her dancers, Marlene and Danny, who help to push the Academy’s decibel levels into the red.

While queuing for the gig, a fan gave me a friendship bracelet reading “goonable material,” part of Ashnikko’s trinket-swapping ritual. (thanks, I think) Fans trade small items and throw them onstage during Trinket, with a huge box of random offerings set up by the merch stand as a conversation starter. The merch itself was just as chaotic – including a diamanté IUD keyring for sale. Trinkets ranged from plastic boobies and a giraffe to a bean beanie, doll-chain charms and, in Poland, an allegedly unused but “suspiciously crusty” buttplug. A handmade journal drew raucous cheers – though some still stick to the classic bra toss.

The song is staged from within a giant golden locket, a knowingly extravagant flourish that nods to her musical theatre instincts, flanked by dancers dressed as crows. What follows is a brief costume interlude in which she experiments with jesters trousers, ill-fitting outfits and even a fish balanced improbably on her head, trying on personas in full view of the audience. It plays for laughs, but there is something more deliberate underneath. It becomes an oddly moving meditation on identity; in this room, it feels as though everyone is exactly who they wish to be. Skin Cleared, one of the emotional pivots of Ashnikko’s Smoochies, arrives as a kind of glitter-slicked exorcism. The dancers brandish a gargantuan lip gloss, applying it with ceremonial seriousness as she sings the now-infamous refrain about her complexion improving post-breakup.

Heartbreak follows without allowing the temperature to drop, its production all blunt-force bass and ricocheting percussion. If Skin Cleared is the afterglow, Heartbreak is the bruise pressed hard. She renders the emotional rupture physical, each beat landing like a pulse under the skin, the choreography tightening into something almost combative. Then comes Invitation, and the mood shifts without losing its edge. Written after her own experience of assault, it dispenses with metaphor and meets the subject head-on. The cartoon grotesquerie falls back just enough to let the message cut cleanly: a blunt, unflinching assertion that desire is not access. From here, the night tilts decisively toward high-octane chaos, surreal humour and weaponised sexuality. Chichinya detonates with feral glee, all twitching energy and absurd, grotesque imagery. The title is a mischievous pet name Ashnikko uses for her dog, repurposed here into something far less domestic: a metaphor for unleashed dominance and gleeful disorder. It’s ridiculous and confrontational in equal measure, complete with immortal lines about her disbelief at having shaved her “hairy Hobbit toes” for a date, only to be disappointed. She then suggests we should be paying good money for the privilege to floss with the trimmings.

Manners reintroduces an older playful aggression from Ashnikko’s catalogue, originally released in 2019. It’s a sexually charged anthem of defiance, a bold proclamation of self-importance where she makes it clear she doesn’t care for anyone else’s judgments or expectations. Similarly, STUPID is a track rooted in the repudiation of immature romantic dynamics. Originally a viral hit for Ashnikko, it channels refusal and mockery of a dismissive partner: “stupid boy think that I need him” – positioning her own agency and independence at the forefront. Full Frontal becomes a camp, body-horror spectacle, a deliberately ridiculous celebration of letting go. On record, the track sees Ashnikko gleefully reject cerebral seriousness, with lyrics about wanting a lobotomy and “Botox on my frontal lobe” that twist ideas of beauty culture into gleefully mischievous excess. It’s built around a throbbing beat and distorted, almost robotic vocal flourishes that sound like a warped techno banger, inviting the listener to stop thinking and start feeling.

Onstage, the track’s absurdity is realised physically: dancers perform a mock lobotomy with oversized prop syringes, turning the grotesque into laugh-out-loud levity as chants of “Botox on my frontal lobe” shake the floor, giving the crowd a release from the emotional weight of the earlier set. I Want My Boyfriends to Kiss earned perhaps the loudest reception of the night, the literal roof threatening to lift as the entire venue jumped in unison. A playful and cheeky queer anthem, the repeated chants of “kiss, kiss, kiss” and its carefree manifesto made it feel at once communal and mischievous, prompting ecstatic sing-alongs and cheers.

Liquid glimmers like a club-ready incantation, its lyrics retreating from metaphor into tactile, corporeal imagery, “I wanna wear your skin,” the hook insists, and the production riding on squelching synths and slick, liquid bass. Ashnikko described the track as “a little paying homage to Britney Spears” during a livestream reveal, and it’s not hard to see from the choreography and tune. Another strangely touching moment is the ‘Smoothie Girl of the Night’ competition, won by Emily, who stole the show with a stunning outfit, complete with a crow-smoking-a-cigarette hat. Itty Bitty closes the main set in bratty glory, perhaps the clearest wink toward the pop maximalism that has dominated the genre, before Slumber Party and finally Daisy bring proceedings to a thunderous conclusion. Another unusual tradition is Ashnikko being presented with flags. Tonight, she receives one with a Union Jack and what looks like her holding a giant baked potato. I have no idea what to make of that.

What makes all of this cohesion possible is Ashnikko’s unique position within modern pop music. Though her work is difficult to pin to a single genre, critics and music platforms generally describe her as an alt-pop and electro-pop artist with deep roots in hip-hop, punk energy and experimental electronic sounds, a fusion that reflects both her influences and her refusal to be easily categorised. Her music blends polished pop hooks with abrasive production, rap flows, punk attitude and glitchy, hyper-energetic elements that sit adjacent to the broader hyper-pop movement but are unmistakably her own.

Glitter-smeared and leather-laced, the crowd isn’t performing for each other; they’re arriving as themselves. It feels less like a gig and more like a safe-house rave smuggled into a student union building.

What stays with you after the gig is not the heavy bass ear-ringings or the outrageous vaudeville props, but the atmosphere of permission. In a climate that feels increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community and the marginalised, Ashnikko chooses expansion rather than retreat, constructing a parallel world where being “too much” is not an insult but an ethos. All are welcome here on this stage and surreal evening.

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All words by Thomas Sidwell, his author profile is here.

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