According to legend, Glasgow can be a tough place for a support band a crowd do not warm to. Therefore brotherly duo Faux Real were perhaps taking a risk when they elected to bound into the audience during the first number in their Wet Leg support slot. It was greeted with mostly puzzlement from early attendees, but when they repeated the trick 30 minutes later - finding space and sprinting towards each other before jumping into the air with high kicks - the reaction was much more enthusiastic.
The pair had mixed up synth-heavy pop of varying quality with relentless, hard working stagecraft, using lights, dance routines and contorted posing. The effort earned a deserved warm reaction, particularly when they delivered a song to match, as on the towering 80s motivational pep of Walking Away From My Demons.
By contrast, Wet Leg's set was shorn of most of those dynamics. They arrived with such smoke and quickfire flashes of lights that it was hard to even see the quintet as they rolled through the sharp catch these fists. Now officially a five-piece, the 70 minutes that followed felt like a mission statement - past images of a duo begone, this is a serious rock band now.
This was evidenced in the simplest way, through an onslaught of noise. If the band were not exactly quiet before then there is now added muscle and heft present, on both material old and new. It was terrific stuff at times, with a Queens of the Stone Age style riff charging through pillow talk, and the heavy crunch of Being In Love felt like it was enveloping the entire crowd.
Barely a word was uttered all show, with singer Rhian Teasdale instead letting her own muscles - flexed, pointed towards the crowd- doing all the talking, on the second gig in a two night stint in Glasgow. Clad in hotpants, she writhed around, looking every inch the rock star, while her fellow founding member Hester Chambers was for more hidden - placed further back onstage, she was in darkness regularly.
Yet such a no fuss set was so pummelling that there felt a disconnect between crowd and band too. All the playfulness has been lost from their songs in a live setting, and replaced simply by thudding noise. On Ur Mom, the usual mid song instruction for everyone to scream along was done so hastily that the reaction was underwhelming, and with no audience interaction the gig felt like it could be any night of the tour, in any city in the world. Live music is best when it feels unique, something experienced by only those there, and that vibe did not exist here - no matter how much smoke was billowing across the stage.
Still, the songs were mostly good. u and me at home was a hip shaking slice of danceable rock, Chaise Lounge was as hyperactive as ever and the set closing mangetout is one of their best ever tunes, sweet pop and acidic indie wrapped together. And then they were gone, with another flash of lights and nary a glance backwards.
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