Glasgow
Miranda Heggie
Celtic Connections, Scotland’s annual festival of folk, world and fusion music, has been brightening up dreich Glasgow Januaries since its inception in 1994. Originally proposed partly as a way to fill a scheduling gap in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s post-Christmas period, Celtic Connections is now a major event in Scotland’s cultural calendar. 2020’s festival incorporates over 300 events across multiple venues throughout the Glasgow. Programmed by Artistic Director Donald Shaw - a founding member of the folk supergroup Capercaillie - the festival sees artists from across the globe come Read more ...
India Lewis
Published in the year following Orr’s death at the age of 57, Motherwell is an analysis of the author’s childhood in Motherwell, on the outskirts of Glasgow, and her first steps into adulthood. However, while this book is ostensibly about Deborah Orr the child, it is as much about her parents, John and Win, and about Deborah Orr the adult. Everything seeps into everything else, just as Win seeped into Orr’s life, claiming her daughter’s whole being as her own. As Orr recognises in retrospect, “I realise now that my mother’s main trouble was her pathological inability to understand at all that Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As the number of sweaty bodies increased towards the front of the Barrowland stage, IDLES singer Joe Talbot had a direct message. “Keep safe” he implored on several occasions, like a concerned dad warning his kids, or perhaps a shepherd guiding his flock. For all that IDLES are a rowdy, raucous live band, there is undoubtedly a caring side too, evidenced throughout a night that was part rock gig, part good time party, and occasionally a wayward turn into a karaoke club.For all that there is tedious debate regarding the band’s authenticity (a decision earlier this week to launch their own beer Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Grimes, the Canadian art pop performer, made headlines last week when she predicted the end of musical performance as we know it on a podcast interview with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. Live music, she said, would be “obsolete soon”, while she gave a window of a couple of decades in which artificial intelligence would become “so much better at making art” than human creatives.I suspect that Björk, who has been incorporating cutting edge technology into her music since before Grimes was born, would have a few opinions on live music’s purported obsolescence. Her Cornucopia tour, which Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There was something fitting about the Lumineers entrance in Glasgow. As “Gimme Shelter” blared around the SSE Hydro, lights pulsating over the crowd, it was drummer Jeremiah Fraites who took the stage and started the opening beat of “Sleep On The Floor”, an array of phones quickly whipped out to act as a welcoming committee from the crowd. The rest of the band followed in due course, but this is a group for whom the drums are at the heart of their stomping songs, no matter what.The other key element is, of course, the voice of Wesley Schultz , an unassuming and laid back frontman, who Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Time moves fast in the music business. It has only been a matter of months since Fontaines DC were playing the far smaller confines of King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, and here they were at a sold out SWG3, celebrating the success of debut album “Dogrel”. If that record is one of the finest released this year, then this gig was not quite the victory lap hoped for, albeit still a show that displayed evidence of their quality.The record itself is rich in thoughtful lyricism, the nuances of which were somewhat lost in a live setting. That was not particularly problematic, because the sheer Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Considered logically, releasing an album as heavy on guest features as Charli XCX’s newest should present particular logistical problems when it comes to recreating the tracks on tour. Charli’s approach is the opposite: no gimmicks or trickery, just minimalist techno hedonism powered by nothing but strobe lights and sheer charisma.Charli XCX is the full package: MC, singer and her own hype man; number one, to butcher the title of her 2017 mixtape, in a hall full of angels on hand to contribute additional vocals when needed. Latest album Charli, released just last month, is both a party record Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Familiarity evidently does not breed contempt, at least in the case of Hot Chip and Glasgow. This was the band’s third appearance on Glaswegian soil since April, and what a glorious, life-affirming evening it was. They arrived with a fine new album to promote in the shape of “A Bath Full of Ecstasy”, and both new and old songs alike were imbued with fresh energy here, aided by a crowd evidently buzzing on Saturday night adrenaline (and in some cases, quite possibly certain other substances).The band themselves were hardly reticent either. They still look a mild mannered bunch, albeit ones Read more ...
Richard Hawley, Barrowland, Glasgow - black clad crooner's songs remain full of atmosphere and heart
Jonathan Geddes
When Richard Hawley arrived onstage, he had a confession to make. “I like to talk”, he declared, before adding “and play rock n’ roll”. Both were delivered in ample supply during the ensuing performance, the black clad quiff wearing troubadour a natural fit for one of Scotland’s most famed rock n’ roll locations.Yet if the Sheffield native’s persona of a somewhat bruised crooner can flourish in his songs, then his regular chatter tended towards the lighter side. Anecdotes regarding his manager being asked if he had Viagra outside the venue, declarations that he fancied a move to Scotland Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Foo Fighters are an unlikely candidate for one of the biggest bands in the world. There’s nothing workmanlike about the sheer joy with which Dave Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins approach playing live. They’ll play the hits, sure, but they’ll stick a 10-minute long jam session on the end of each one, and they’ll also play the 22-year-old deep cut that you used to sing 'Pat Smear backing vocals' along to with your first boyfriend. And you, the audience, will love every minute of it.Here’s what a two-and-a-half hour open-air headline set from the Foo Fighters gets you: a selection of songs from Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With their claustrophobic melodies and cryptic lyrics, The National are not the most obvious of choices for a summer evening. But then, The National of 2019 are not the same band. On recent album I Am Easy to Find, frontman Matt Berninger’s signature baritone is often on the periphery, while female voices take the lead. Three of those collaborators - Mina Tindle, Eve Owen and Kate Stables of This Is The Kit, fresh from her opening set - joined the band’s seven-piece touring line-up for two shows in Glasgow, performing their own parts from the album as well as standing in on parts originally Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: The Piano Quartets The Primrose Piano Quartet (Meridian)Schoenberg complained that performances of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet never pleased him (“the better the pianist, the louder he plays and you hear nothing from the strings”). You suspect that he’d have approved of this recording, the Primrose Piano Quartet’s John Thwaites using an 1870 Viennese piano made by Johann Streicher. Brahms owned and loved an identical instrument. Plus, the other players use gut strings, easier to balance against a lighter-toned keyboard. This is a thrilling, volatile performance: historically Read more ...