Sunderland band's record shop seeks new home after closure

Pop Recs Ltd was originally meant to be open for a few weeks, but the band kept it going

A record shop opened by indie band Frankie and the Heartstrings in their home town of Sunderland two years ago has shut after the premises was sold.

Pop Recs Ltd hosted in-store gigs by acts from Franz Ferdinand to James Bay.

It also earned the group an award for Britain's hardest-working band from the Association of Independent Music.

Drummer Dave Harper, who runs the shop, is now looking for a new site. "We need to be somewhere else," he said. "Not existing is not an option."

The band opened Pop Recs Ltd to sell their own album in 2013 after realising there were few bricks-and-mortar stores left to sell it.

Housed in the city's former tourist information office, it was originally only meant to be open for a few weeks.

But the band kept it going and their DIY attempts to buck a music industry decline gained support from other independent artists.

It also became a community hub, hosting regular music tuition plus poetry, stitching and toddler groups.

Now, however, they have moved out after Sunderland City Council, which owned the building, sold it for student flats.

Pulled Apart By Horses played the shop's final gig on Saturday.

'Important role'

Harper said he was looking at one possible new premises, and that comments from the shop's regulars had made him realise it was important to reopen.

Things like the poetry group, which has 40 members, and the Saturday morning "stitch and bitch", will "stop happening here", Harper said.

"That's absolutely terrifying because, if you walk around this city, and if you don't want baked pastry goods or go to a charity shop or cash a cheque or put a bet on, I don't know what people do.

"I'm standing here with grease on my hands and I hadn't cried for years until I realised this place was done, and people were saying pleasant things about it. It's really driven home so acutely what this place has meant to people."

Members of shop's the regular meetings have told him that the groups help with their mental health problems, he said.

Council finances

"They feel comfortable here and they don't feel comfortable anywhere else that's state sponsored or medication related," he said. "I didn't know we were doing this.

"People have just come and told us recently, and that was infinitely more upsetting, yet satisfying, that we were achieving things we didn't even realise under our own noses."

The band have always known the council was trying to sell the building, Sunderland City Council's cabinet secretary Councillor Mel Speding said.

"That has now been secured with its development into student accommodation.

"This is in line with council objectives to see more people living and working in the city centre and, in the interests of council tax payers in these financially challenging times for local authorities, it secures a capital receipt.

"Naturally, with the success and popularity of Pop Recs, the council and others have been looking at ways and means of continuing and securing a similar venture elsewhere in the city centre."