Stagetime. The venue’s a sellout, and promoters Peenko and Aye Tunes (bloggers Lloyd and Jim, respectively) are excitable if a little nervous as the capacity crowd filters downstairs for the opening act.
But wait! There’s still a table onstage with a discarded plate and cutlery still on it, presumably a leftover meal rider (don’t say they don’t treat the artists well here).
And the band’s coming onstage. and the drummer’s sitting down.. at the table… and gamely ignoring the offending piece of furniture, instead beating out a beat on his floor tom with… a pair of comedy chicken-head drumsticks?
All this shouldn’t detract from the music from the Glasgow-based three-piece. Although… well, despite the band’s appearance on a few bills, this is my first time seeing them live, so I’m surprised that they throw in a Neutral Milk Hotel cover version as their second tune. This follows an opener which with its towering keyboard backing and lusty, thickly-accented vocals, puts them (apologies for the easy pigeonholing option) in Twilight Sad territory.
Not that it’s not impressive, but it does set song #4 – a pretty faithful cover of Frightened Rabbit’s ‘Square 9’ – in some sort of context.
At this point it’s hard to ignore the drummer who has added a mysterious box to his artillery and is kicking it, bass drum-style, with machine-gun sped and precision. He’s also visited the venue’s kitchen it seems, a modified egg-whisk adding to the canon which gives a sound remarkably like an 80s rhythm unit, though way more entertaining to watch. And his propelling along of the closing tune which (after some digging in the cerebral recesses) brings to mind Coatbridge’s finest post rockers Kasule. No bad thing either.
So, one down, and despite the lack of original material (which I know exists as I see I reviewed their 2008 EP for a magazine called The List), definite pass marks.

Drummers seem to be (for want of a better one) a common thread between the bands on the bill tonight. Mitchell Museum have one too. A singing drummer. And one skilled in the art. I’m always impressed by percussionists who use non-traditional implements, and even more so when they take on their kit bare-handed. Raindeer (not the name given to him at birth I’m quite sure) does just this on a few numbers. And given the fact that the band’s set is – comedy interludes aside – a pretty solid set of tunes, and as big on the beats as the infectious tunes, this is quite impressive.
In fact, the hooks are simply relentless – a swaggering ‘Tiger Heartbeat’, a lolloping ‘Warning Bells’… they’ve been compared to Mercury Rev and Pavement, but they they have in addition to these bands’ qualities, that bouncing, indie disco dancefloor-filing beat running through every tune. itm? encountered them several times in the past 18 months or so and the common consensus was “very promising”. It looks that they are fully living up to the (newly-awarded) epithet of Next Big Thing.

Kid Canaveral are a band who I do seem to see live quite often. However, they for some reason always seem to be breaking in a new drummer every time I encounter them. Fortunately, Scott McMaster seems to have slotted in perfectly, providing the propulsion required for some of the best singalong pop you’re likely to hear anywhere.
Ok, the opening effort, a semi-acoustic lovelorn ballad about long-distance relationships, isn’t exactly what we expected, but the band have the confidence, and the backing of their adopted hometown crowd, to carry it off. From then on in, it’s wall-to-wall TUNES – all the (Smash) Hits are here, with Dave McGregor trading vocal parts with Rose and Kate to great effect on ‘You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night’ – though the guys later find themselves outnumbered onstage when joined by Laura for some backing vocals and vogueing.
We get the belated Xmas download gift ‘Good Morning’, and all too soon, the closing tune, ‘Left and Right’ whose massive chorus at once brings both joyous and a slight despondency that it’s not being heard over airwaves and in stadia the world over. For now they’ll have to make to with the internet. And our blogging chums will have something to say on that score.
http://peenko.blogspot.com/
http://ayetunes.blogspot.com/

closeAuthor: Stuart McHugh Name: Stuart McHugh
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