Stag and Dagger, Glasgow: Take Two

Selkirk's Frightened Rabbit

May 23, 2009

Following on from successful legs in London and Leeds, with better line-ups than Glasgow, some might have you believe Stag and Dagger’s final UK stop was Glasgow (another review can be found here). With acts like Wintersleep, Evan Dando and King Creosote at both Leeds and London, you’d be forgiven for thinking they had a point. But as I briskly stride uphill to collect my wristband, I decide that anything Leeds or London can do, Glasgow can do just as well. Armed with my schedule, notepad and ink-filled vessel, the saga begins.

First stop, NME Stage at the Captain’s Rest, and I indulge in some 5pm drinking, as I will do many times before my student status is cruelly rescinded in July. I catch the last song of Over the Wall, whose mix of electronic drums, keyboards and guitar has attracted a bumper crowd despite it being early in the day.

Next up is Glasgow’s very own French Wives who since I reviewed them eight days ago, leave little new to report. Stuart’s had a haircut, they still sadly don’t count Sarkozy’s missus or that one out of the Clio ad among their number- though they are still undeniably brilliant. Deliberately detaching myself from what I generally look for in their performance, I notice drummer Jonny’s exemplary bass pedal work and Stuart’s superb lyrics. The lyrics really speak as a snapshot for the city which shaped him. Each song stands as an image as iconic as the Clyde tower, The University of Glasgow or the Kelvingrove art museum, they speak for the city, almost as well as Alex Kapranos did on Franz Ferdinand’s debut. … Continue Reading

Stag and Dagger, Glasgow: Take One

Marnie Stern

May 23, 2009

I’m not, by nature, a festival goer – too wary of getting covered in mud from top to toe, shelling out £10 for a half-cooked burger and all the other cliches/urban myths, but the idea of an indoor, city-wide(ish) festival appeals big-scale so off I trot to Glasgow on a Saturday afternoon in line with the second Stag and Dagger progressing from its first Leeds date to its first Scottish one.

The earliest shows are on at The Captain’s Rest, namely featuring multi-instrumentalist local duo Over The Wall. Rather bizarrely, they suffer a string of technical mishaps similar to the only other opening act I’ve seen at the same venue, also a local two-some (see here for more). … Continue Reading

Ross Clark/French Wives, Captain’s Rest Glasgow

French Wives

May 15, 2009

On a typical Glasgow night with shoes wringing from the skydiving precipitation one of the best new venues in the city paid host to some superb sonic nourishment. Up and coming promotion team Aerials, who operate in association with The List magazine, served up another fantastic night of Glasgow-based music. The night was kicked off by an acoustic set by Jonathan Sellar, main creative force behind My Cousin I Bid You Farewell. His set was peppered with songs from the imminent debut album and despite recent departures from the band, Jonathan appears to have kept his eyes firmly on the prize, the songs are incredibly well crafted Boss-esque tunes with a soulful charm and Jonny’s stunning vocals laced over the top.

From the honey-rich violins in the set opener, ‘Halloween’, to the stomping finale of ‘Me Versus Me’, French Wives display their frankly unfathomable songwriting talent, particularly in relation to their age as a band. Less than a year after forming The Wives have produced two five-track EPs, played every top night in Glasgow and even played at the last ever Connect. … Continue Reading

Dananananaykroyd – Hey Everyone

Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone

Dananananaykroyd take themselves about as seriously as their bizarre name suggests they might. Some have taken to referring  to their stompy, guitar-led melodic inventions as ‘fight pop’, although it’s hard to imagine fighting to this unless it involved doing so on a bouncy castle dressed as a Pokemon.  Hey Everyone! is  the Glasgow six-piece’s first studio album and predictably, it’s a little bundle of energy. Big guitars, talkative riffs, acrobatic drums (Dananananaykroyd have two drummers) and excitable breathless vocals, it’s a fairly straightforward formula from the outset – there are no surprises here.

An awful lot of Dananananaykroyd’s buzz seems to have been generated by the live experience they offer, they’re a tight-knit unit, a spectacle of unabashed crowd pleasers. It’s clear that an effort has been made to infuse much of this into the record and for the most part, a pretty convincing job is done. Gang vocals stand in for crowd interaction and a slightly unbalanced ‘live’ feel still clings to the production, despite the obvious gloss.

There’s definite tones of their contemporary British rock predecessors also, the happy-go-lucky vocal chorus of ‘Black Wax’ brings to mind A at their best, while the brash, impetuous guitar slinging is at times reminiscent of a more optimistic Hell is For Heroes or a fresher –smelling Hundred Reasons, Dananananaykroyd re-tread this ground with a distinctly post-modern dose of self-awareness and turn up all the more entertaining, bolder results as a result. … Continue Reading

Zoey Van Goey – The Cage Was Unlocked All Along

Zoey Van Goey - The Cage Was Unlocked All Along

Having been compared to the likes of The Postal Service and Belle & Sebastian (the latter justifiable in that this lot’s debut single, Foxtrot Vandals was produced by Stuart Murdoch), Zoey Van Goey have created an altogether intriguing noise for themselves. The Cage Was Unlocked All Along, is their debut album, and sees the trio proficient in creating an album spanning realms of both catchy folk-pop, and sombre yet buoyant melodies.

Opening track, ‘The Best Treasure Stays Buried’, begins on a somewhat solemn tone (the opening three chords would have little difficulty backing a scene in a teen drama), eventually picking up more of a rolling timbre that leads nicely into the succeeding track, ‘We Don’t Have That Kind of Bread’.

No, this one’s not concerned with baked goods choices; but rather the trepidation of a dozing couple that fear being abducted for ransom. It’s much more of a foot tapper, and has a gratifying, kitschy tone that will permeate a day. … Continue Reading

Hinterland – Day Two

Jeffrey Lewis

May 1, 2009

It’s Day Two of Hinterland, the Whole Foods Market to the Camden Crawl’s Sam Smith ethos, and we’ve fallen in love with Glasgow entirely by this point. But no time for rose-tinted glasses, just a simple fact that we fail to see any acts short of at least noteworthy tonight. At all.

The first is Miss The Occupier, an unsigned trio purporting to love riot grrl and Sonic Youth but actually sounding a little more like Gang Of Four. Fronted by the sublime Roz Davies, it’s a fair enough observation that they wear their influences on their metaphorical bearskins, but they do it with panache. Maybe a tad unmemorable in the long run, but snappy and enjoyable for the moment all the same.

Two Door Cinema Club combine the one syllable, one note mentality of Vampire Weekend with the propensity for stadium-fill of Editors into something more interesting than most of the post-Foals club. Lacking the time to decide whether they fall on the wrong side of the Wombats/Envy and Other Sins divide (killable/laudible, in that order), they do the trick nicely for a cheery early Friday evening.

Something a little more challenging is occurring down the road at the beautiful Classic Grand, by the name of Juno !. Easily dismissed on first glance as duff, unfilleted post-nu-rave cod, it turns out that the seven-piece (I think) are to my ears what Art Brut are to my heart. With glowsticks wrapped around their glasses, they’re all simply adorable. The two frontmen jump around in a joyous frenzy, and the rest of the band play plinky, disco-led funpop including ‘Party Music’ and successfully bring the fun back in. And it’s a bonus that Bis’ Manda Rin appears for a song, a bit of a “wow, my gosh I’m in Glasgow and it’s buzzing and I bloody love it” moment to be quite honest. What a sap.

To continue on that affably foppish note, Sheffield duo Slow Club are back at The Arches ahead of the release of their debut album Yeah, So? They manage to pull in a decent-sized crowd with their cutesy tête-a-têtes, but any more self-depreciation and they’ll get a bit too cute. ‘Me and You’ et al are performed straight-up with panache, wry glee and a hint of disbelief. At one point, they come out into the crowd and play unplugged, which causes us to temporarily believe we’re in the middle of a Dickensian scene. Nice, but could do with being a smidgeon less ambrosial. … Continue Reading

God Help The Girl – Come Monday Night

God Help The Girl

In the three years since The Life Pursuit it would be totally unfair to say Belle & Sebastian’s fanbase has diminished, as any cardigan-cocooned fop will testify. But perhaps it is fair to say that anticipation of new output from Stuart Murdoch isn’t quite at the giddy peaks it reached around the time of the classy If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Interestingly, Murdoch has chosen to stake a step away from his band of merry Scots with new project God Help The Girl. ‘Come Monday Night’ is set to be pieced into a concept album of sorts, involving grandiose strings and a vague idea of storytelling, sound-tracking a musical film of Murdoch’s own creation.

This may all sound like the makings of an insane, Prince-esque vanity project but the track itself is a slice of ’60s indebted sweet and soulful balladry, swooning over a sunny London day. From the outset the track conjures to mind very prominent reference points of Bryter Later-era Nick Drake, with bittersweet vocals that could easily be mistaken for those of Nico. Lyrically, the song is very similar to Murdoch’s previous output, revelling in the quirky reference points and clever puns that made Belle and Sebastian so popular to the romantically minded, opting for a simplistic approach to daily monotony.

“Come Monday night/the day of work is done/Tuesday morning looms/the grey of ordinariness”

Rather than a ham-fisted attempt at retro-chic this naivety creates a charming and loveable atmosphere. … Continue Reading

The Elvis Suicide – Sweethearts EP

The Elvis Suicide

Seven songs in just over 12 minutes is pretty good going and the source of my only criticism of this release – it’s too short by far.

Following a musical path not often taken by Glaswegian bands in recent years the quartet have a sound somewhere between that of The D4 and The Psyclone Rangers – energetically punky and passionate.

That’s not to say though that the songs are all action and no depth, far from it. They manage to cram quite a lot in sound-wise, particularly on ‘All I Need’ with its handclaps and organ. … Continue Reading

Frightened Rabbit, London Scala

Frightened Rabbit

April 15th 2009

It can be heartbreaking to go to a live gig and see songs that mean the world to you disinterestedly rushed through by the band that originally wrote them. Songwriters get tired of their own songs, they resent people preferring their lovely little three-minute pop ditty to their four hour long song-cycle about the Eastern European public transport system. To see something so dear to you be treated as lightweight, something to be rushed through before playing some tracks from the new album, as an inconvenience, especially by its own creator seems to invalidate our own opinions and leave us distrusting our judgement.

As one of the many people around the world with something of a large emotional investment in Frightened Rabbit, especially their album The Midnight Organ Fight (large is perhaps an understatement – if my emotions were money, I could probably contribute a large part of the G20’s bailout with that investment), I was thinking about this on the way to their live gig at the Scala. I quite liked their recent live album, but it somehow didn’t seem to pull quite the same strings, and it’s now a year since TMOF came out; what if they’re sick of it? What if they spend the whole gig plugging a new record? WHAT IF NOBODY LIKES ME? … Continue Reading

Fall-fronted Hinterland is fast approaching

On April 30 and May 1, 15 of Glasgow’s venues will be taken over for the first ever Hinterland. Headlined by The Fall and featuring an impressive line-up including Metronomy, Sons and Daughters, Sky Larkin and The Invisible, the festival is described as “an adventure in music and art”.

It’s also surely the first chance to re-see such delights as Wild Beasts and Good Shoes for quite some time, both of which will be welcomed back with open arms.

With more than 100 bands across the two days, Hinterland’s “primary aim is to showcase established and upcoming Scottish talent – as well as some of the UK’s best emerging and established talent”. … Continue Reading