December, 2009

Tonight’s show is opened by locals Suplex the Kid and their ambient indie, followed by the one man band that is Miaoux Miaoux, but these are just warm up for the main act, the musical experimentation that is BEAK> .

The band is a side project led by Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame, who uses BEAK> to create sound in a different way to that of the former trip-hop frontrunners. This makes tonight show not only fantastic but also like a lesson in music appreciation. Combining the regular equipment with distorted effects the band create a unique sound and style that really connects with this Tut’s crowd.

After a minor technical difficulty and the misplacement of Matt, whose double keyboard and guitar combination are needed to start the opener, the band take to the stage in a most relaxed manner. However, the music soon takes over and the opening track’s eerie, atmospheric feel fills the already packed out room and drawing rapturous attention from the audience. The second track picks up the pace, its upbeat bass line getting the crowd nodding along although the echoing vocals keep that mysterious edge that makes BEAK>’s music wonderfully different from your average band.

The next few songs give the listener a mixture of beautiful, melancholy sounds combined with a powerful bass and a drum beat that would get even the least musical tapping their feet, and by the penultimate song energetic dancing broke out in the front row. It’s hard to believe that BEAK> came up with their album in twelve days, as every song has something different that keeps the crowd entwined with the music. Even in the lapses between songs few people move from their spots, with many standing on benches to catch a good view of the group. The band’s final song starts off slow and steady but builds power until the whole room are moving in unison to the beat, and then continues to grow. The passion behind the music is evident in its delivery and the crowd’s enthusiastic cheering and applause demonstrates their appreciation.

BEAK>’s refreshingly different approach to making music has impressed many and tonight just continued to improve their standing. Their chilled out performance and their distinctive sound make them a fascinating band to see and really encourage the fans to think about the concept of modern music.

Words: Katherine Haig
Pics: Bart Photography

It’s twelve days before Christmas and everything in this small corner of Glasgow is adorably twee. Tonight Mono is packed full of rimmed speced, wooly jumper and cardigan wearing kids without so much as a checkered shirt in sight.

Mono is truly unique venue and is perfectly suited for this kind of event; the vegan café bar just exudes twee quaintness. People sat around tables or browsing through records in Monorail soaking up the atmosphere and eagerly awaiting the treat in store. It is not hard to believe that Stephen Pastel, Glasgow’s indie pop hero and front man of the band partly responsible for this delightful genre of music, The Pastels, works here. Indeed Stephen is in attendance tonight and he is not the only recognisable indie pop face. Camera Obscura vocalist and friend of Victoria Bergsman (Taken By Trees), Tracyanne Campbell is here spinning records before the performance, (just don’t ask her for a song!) for which most of the equipment has been leant by Camera Obscura.

Before the band take the stage this is already the most lovely setting; girls performing pretty little dances in open spaces, burning incense in every corner and people posing for photographs with heart shaped biscuits just add to the beautiful atmosphere.

It is well gone ten when Taken By Trees take the stage but no one is complaining about the wait. The Swedish singer, tonight backed by a four-piece band, seems slightly timid as she speaks to the crowd in front of a charming backdrop of footage including kittens, snow leopards and red pandas. It is hard to imagine how this setting could be any cuter but then the band start playing, producing some of the most charmingly quaint tracks to have come out in recent times. If you look though the window behind the band you can see two bicycles tied to a lone tree, which combines with the projection to conjure just the cutest image.

Still with all this twee-ness it seems ridiculous that her most famous song is almost universally known in the English-speaking world. Not just for it being in the latest John Lewis ads aired during the X Factor, but also for it being a cover of Guns N Roses’ hit ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’. Still this cover is nothing like the brash, loud hair metal of Slash and co., she has very much put her own slant on the track. Gone are Axl’s crude yelps and the harsh guitars, instead we have chirpy keyboard lines on top of sweetly delivered vocals, indeed if it weren’t for the lyrics this would be almost unrecognisable as a cover.

Arguably the standout track of the night is also a cover, but a very different one. This time the former front woman of The Concretes has stripped Panda Bear’s (who features on her latest album, East of Eden) superbly pop, layered ode to his wife and daughter ‘My Girls’, which featured on the last Animal Collective LP. The track has not only been altered to ‘My Boys’ to give it a more feminine edge but the pretty simplicity of her version make it almost as irresistible as the original and in a live setting it is hard not to won over by its grasping beauty.

This show is quite possibly the most twee event to happen in Glasgow in a long time; the setting, the act, the people just all add to overwhelming cuteness of the whole night. At the finish of the show you are left with that overwhelming warm feeling inside that everything is lovely, just the ticket for this festive season all that’s needed is a bit of cinnamon, maybe there was some in the biscuits.

Words: Iain Dawson
Pics: Tomas Hermoso

2010 promises to be a great year for Two Door Cinema Club. Having performed at Les Inrocks festival, toured Japan, released their limited debut single ‘I Can Talk’ and signed to the ultra-cool label Kitsune; Two Door Cinema Club have this week been named as one of the fifteen acts on the BBC Soundpoll list.

Hailing from Bangor, Northern Ireland, Two Door Cinema Club’s music fizzes with invention and sparkling tunes – undeniably pop while drawing on electro, rock and Afro-beats. The 2010 UK tour is set to be their big entrance onto the mainstream music scene. Already having a wide fan base, accumulating nearly a million listens online, their debut album is due for release early next year.

A date for your diary. They play King Tuts on March 14th 2010. Tickets go onsale here from 9am on Friday 11th of December. I think it’s safe to say this will sell out so better get your skates on!

Fyfe Dangerfield is ringing in the New Year with the release of his debut solo album ‘Fly Yellow Moon’ on Geffen UK, January 18th, 2010. The classically trained and ever the mercurial Guillemots front man flies solo for the first time with the greatest of musical mastery. The uplifting new single ‘She Needs Me’ precedes the album’s release with its inaugural appearance on January 11th.

Having found a minutiae window of opportunity following Guillemots 2008 album ‘Red’, Fyfe hit the studio with acclaimed producer Adam Noble (Coldplay, Guillemots, Paul McCartney, George Michael) to record his entirely self-penned debut in all but 5 days. ‘Fly Yellow Moon’ startles from start to finish, magnificently eclectic, warm and uplifting, haunting and melodic – it sounds like a classic upon its first listen.

Drawing inspiration from an eclectic mix of acts from; The Doors to The Smiths; to Jeff Buckley and Donna Summer and offering a truly diverse mix of musical delicacies, from full-on pop to stripped-down balladry ‘Fly Yellow Moon’ flows with highlights including the beautiful ‘So Brand New’.

“A good time was had by all,” notes Fyfe.

Fyfe will be one of the highlights of the Celtic Connections Festival at Glasgow’s ABC on the 20th of January, tickets are here

London Blackmarket return from the darkest corners of Essex with ‘The Hardest Stone To Throw’ (check out the video below), their second release for Fiction Records. Recorded at Toerag studio with Liam Watson (White Stripes, Holly Golightly, Thee Headcoatees).

In February the four-piece released their debut single Checkmate, so what happened? Single two would have followed hot on its heels, but in the Spring gravel-throated singer and peoples’ poet Nicholas Long suffered a serious “late night fall”, fracturing a vertebrae in his lower back - an injury which could have left him unable to walk. Luckily, after months recuperating he’s now back on his feet with renewed vigour and vitriol.

London Blackmarket released new 7” single & digital download on Fiction Records on 7th December, next week they are in Scotland:

16 Dec Dundee @ The Doghouse
17 Dec Edinburgh @ Sneaky Petes SOLD OUT

Midlake make their long-awaited return in February 2010 with “The Courage Of Others”, their extraordinary third album…

It’s ironic that Midlake’s new album is titled “The Courage Of Others” because, if anything, the courage is all theirs. Namely, the courage to do what feels right and stay true to the spirit of artistic independence whilst ignoring any pressure to conform to expectations. The result is the Texas quintet’s third album, their most complete and beautiful body of work yet, best appreciated as a whole in the old-fashioned sense of an album.

So what’s changed since The Trials of Van Occupanther, their second, hugely loved breakthrough album? Just as that record was in part inspired by the soft(er) rock of the early-to-mid 1970s – from Neil Young and America to Fleetwood Mac – so Midlake’s new album turns to a slightly earlier, and definitely British, trad-tainted folk sound. It may share the same gorgeously analogue-warm electro-acoustic template as Van Occupanther but it’s a slower, darker and more carved record, both eerier and dreamier.

Neither do the new songs feature any hermit-scientists like Van Occupanther, or the mythical Roscoe. The songs that constitute ‘The Courage Of Others’, Tim says, are closer to his heart than those of their first two albums because, “I don’t feel I’m looking at the songs through someone else’s eyes. I’ve tried to keep it as true to myself as I could.”

I almost died of exhaustion criss-crossing Manhattan on July 4th 2007 to try make their set at Battery Park. I arrived in time, to catch the last chords, of the last song!

I’ll be criss-crossing Glasgow on 15th of February to catch them at the ABC, tickets are here.

Usually when a band reaches a certain level of fame, they either stop caring or get too self-absorbed to appreciate the position they’re in. Not Yeah Yeah Yeahs, ever since first playing Glasgow back in 2002 at the QMU the band have well established themselves as a group that don’t care what people think of them. Emerging for the New York scene in the wake of the momentum build up by The Strokes, there is plenty to suggest that the YYY’s now hold the crown for the best indie rock outfit in the city. This was perfectly evident through their live show at the O2 Academy on Friday, and made all the more entertaining through Karen O’s range of costumes, which warranted a tour van of their own.

The only people who wouldn’t have enjoyed the show were Greenpeace, who would’ve had more than a word to say about the confetti output through the night. Carbon footprints aside, no one could say a bad thing about the bands performance. After storming onto the emotive ‘Runaway’ from their most recent album ‘It’s Blitz’, the crowd were given a fairly accurate taster of what the night had in store. Despite such a strong start, it took a couple songs for the crowd to kick properly into gear but that was short lived thanks to the likes of ‘Zero’, ‘Soft Shock’ and ‘Skeletons’ also from ‘It’s Blitz’. The trio continued the night in typical Yeah Yeah Yeahs fashion, producing a range of tunes stretching from head-banging rock to danceable electro-pop; each song was packed with more passion than the last. While this was perfectly routine for the band, they clearly had more than their fair share of enjoyment, and the crowd could tell.

Just like at Glastonbury a giant eyeball watched down on the event, while Karen O herself was quite the spectacle, leaving the stage several times to come out in even more unpredictable clothes than before. The gig was like an exhibition of the visible spectrum, and was one which left the fans dazzled.

The true highlights of the night came in the form of fans favourite and built-for-sing-a-longs ‘Gold Lion’ from 2006’s smash hit album ‘Show Your Bones’, which also had a selection of songs on display throughout the night including the climactic archetypal alt-rock tune ‘Cheated Hearts’. Showing them to be the pioneers of female-fronted indie-rock, the encore proved to be the real hit of the night. Sporting ‘Y Control’ and closer ridiculously sexy ‘Date With the Night’ from debut ‘Fever To Tell’, the trio showed their true versatility in contrast to the acoustic melody of defining song ‘Maps’, which proved to have the biggest effect on the crowd.

YYY’s live shows show just how underrated they are, not just for their music, but for their attitude to having as much fun as possible. Their SOLD OUT UK tour continues South all this week and ending with a headline slot at the 10 Years of ATP at Minehead Butlin.

Words: Hamish Gibson
Pics: Bart Photography

There’s a surprising baron feel in the Captain’s Rest this evening, especially when considering the praise tonight’s headliners Neon Indian have had heaped upon them for their superb debut album ‘Psychic Chasms’. Still, at this point the night is young and it does pick up somewhat for the band taking the stage (albeit not the full house expected), the quiz upstairs takes the majority of the blame for the late crowd.

The bulk of the crowd are lucky in their lateness as the stage times are running way behind and when the Texan four-piece take the stage they are greeted with a big enough reception. The face of Neon Indian, Alan Palomo, sways around delivering vocals and bleeps drawing large proportions of the crowd into rousing sing-a-longs. However, it is not the vocal hooks that will bring huge success to this band, it is the brilliantly catchy keyboard lines, courtesy of the lovely Leanne Macomber tonight, which could easily leave anyone humming them for the next week.

It is Macomber who indulges in the most crowd interaction, encouraging the audience forward and making weak yet appreciated jokes about her very questionable Scottish decent. Still, the real genius behind this band is Palomo, the album is pretty much all his work, he is Neon Indian and for evidence of his talents you need to look no further than wonderfully catchy, ditzy pop single ‘Deadbeat Summer’. The track doesn’t necessarily stand out in the set as almost every track tonight drips with brilliant retro pop, but if you don’t yet know this band there is no better place to start.

Neon Indian’s first visit to Glasgow and indeed only UK stop on their debut European tour may have been plagued with time troubles but this will certainly not knock them of track. Back in their native US they have just sold out a two night run at Lower Manhattan’s famous Mercury Lounge. This band are destined for bigger and better things, don’t be surprised to see them selling out much larger venues both back home and in the UK in the not too distant future.

Their debut album ‘Psychic Chasms’ is out now of Lefse.

Words: Iain Dawson
Pics: Lucy Knott

Marina and the Diamonds, AKA Greek/Welsh 24 year old Marina Diamandis, is proud to announce the release of her debut album ‘The Family Jewels’ on February 15th through 679/Atlantic Records. The album will be preceded by the release of her new single ‘Hollywood’, out 1st February 2010.

What a whirlwind 2009 has been for Ms. Diamond! Having spent the year building experience & raising her profile through a succession of brilliant singles & EPs (’Obsessions’, ‘The Crown Jewels EP’ and ‘Mowgli’s Road’), creating one-of-a-kind music videos, not to mention playing practically every festival date this summer, Marina is now perfectly poised to step into the limelight with the release of her beautifully crafted debut LP.

Marina comments: “I am really proud to finally release my debut album, ‘The Family Jewels’. It is a body of work largely inspired by the seduction of commercialism, modern social values, family and female sexuality. Each song was intricately produced and written by myself and my only hope is for it to be enjoyed and consumed as a story and theory that encourages people to question themselves.”

Marina and the Diamond’s will be on lots of who’s going to be big in 2010 polls but we thought you might like a wee look at her video before she goes massive, news of tour dates to follow soon.

After a summer that saw the band release their debut single ‘The Great Disruptors’ and self-titled album, Sweethead are back in the UK this month.

Having already spent most of the year out on the road with the likes of Snow Patrol & Eagles of Death Metal the band have been invited to join super-group Them Crooked Vultures on their upcoming UK tour.

Best known for his participation in QOTSA, Sweethead guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen is joined by Serrina Sims, Norm Block, and Eddie Nappi. Named after a Bowie B-side Sweethead are like a night out on Hollywood Boulevard with a Jack & Coke in your hand.

If your lucky enough to have scooped a TCV ticket you can catch them on the 15th December at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange.