Category: music

Our lovely friend Jude gave an outstanding jazz performance at Mono last month as part of the weekly mon jazz residency. She is back performaning in the excellent Dundee Rep production of Peer Gynt which opens in the Barbican in London soon.

I was reminded of why Glasgow is such a great city for live music tonight, as we caught a couple of random bands after work, both of whom were incredibly polished – especially for all of our five pounds.

Both bands screamed Glasgow School of Art, down to their cardigans and converse shoes but that didn’t stop them putting on an entertaining evening.

First up we caught the second half of Belle & Sebastian-esque miabeane & the asthmatic scene, with beautiful multi-instrumental band members and a lush pop-folk lilt,
Hidden Masters followed with a tight melodic rock set, they were missing their keyboard player which may have added another dimension to their sound however they have definitely perfected their stadium rock moves for when they break the big time.

A very brief summary of some of the music we have been to see over the last few months:

Our friends Jamie & Ryan played a series of Liquid Ship gigs, including some with Jamie’s brother Andy. Jamie also played a ‘proper’ gig at the atmospheric City Halls (with another one to come in January I just noticed) as he started promoting his (as yet unreleased) album ‘Cold But Bright’
We saw Jenny Lewis, of Rilo Kiley fame, in a very country set at the Queen Margaret Union.
Then band du jour – Fleet Foxes, played at ABC 1 – they were fantastic, with ethereal harmonies and fantastic shambolic cardigans although they did take a little time to get into the swing of things.
Finally in a last minute boss had a spare ticket moment we caught the very loud and straight up and down Kiwi rockers The Datsuns playing a packed gig at the tiny King Tuts, we hadn’t heard of them since they were big on triple J in 2004 & I didn’t even realise they were still playing.

A mad Saturday catching Robert Forster of the Go Betweens fame , in an epic (and early) performance at local venue Oran Mor. His new albumn is excellent and for some reason we had been listening to the back catalogue in the last few months and the live set didn’t let us down.

Emerging just after 10 pm a feeling a little bored we popped into town for the opening of the Tryptich replacing Tennant Mutual ‘concept’ at the ever interesting CCA. Findo Gask were the highlight with their exuberant electro-rock.

On possibly the wettest night of an exceptionally wet summer we popped into Nice’n’Sleazy’s to catch friends of the Zebra’s Je Suis Animal, whom we had missed at indietracks. We were expecting twee scandinavian pop (and them to be headlining) but instead walked in toward the end of their interesting somewhat noisy set. They were followed by solid local boys Wake the President before the proper headline act: A Sunny Day in Glasgow hailing perhaps from one of the ten versions of our current home town in the US of A. They were quite delightful if sometimes a little erratic, however definitely not as rare a sound as their eponymous event in scotland.

We caught the very hirstute Iron & Wine at the ABC last night. It had been a good 4 years since we last saw him supporting Cat Power and while his beard may not have got any bigger his band definitely had with at least 7 members – including an intriguing percussionist who played at least twenty different instruments over the course of the evening – including something that closely resembled a sports trophy, as well as what looked suspisciously like christmas decorations!

Unfortunately all this extra texture detracted from the simplicity that attracted us to him in the first place and the highlights were when he played by himself with only vocal accompaniment.

We checked out Adam Green at Oran Mor a few weeks back. It was a great gig – he is totally nuts – kind of how I imagine the rat pack to be if they had access to today’s hard drugs. He obviously watches way too much pornography while creating his spun out dirty folk, as well as casually throwing in a hipster rock tune every now and then as though to show all the new rockers how easy it is.

There was a fantastic classical concert by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the City Halls last night. Despite missing the first piece we caught a brilliant delicate performance of Beethovens Violin Concerto in D by Canadian James Ehnes, followed by a more rousing Symphony No. 1 which was perhaps overly cinematic but whose minimal first movement I particularly enjoyed.