Hometown shows are always the best, and possibly worst, stops for a touring band. But the Burning Hell get, as it turns out, the best (but not the worst) of both worlds in their Glasgow leg.
Weirdly, the support tonight are Pocket Knife, seemingly like their headliners, Canadians, but on closer investigation, from rather closer to home.
The duo deliver songs of dating and frustration – ‘Custard Creams’ apparently a metaphor, and are charming and self-effacing, their simple rhythms and meandering songs over a sampled backing an entertaining start to proceedings.
They throw in a cover of Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up’ which is perhaps the most coherent part of the set – although their Christmas tune might well have been left in the practice room, not because of its shambolic under-rehearsed nature, but because IT’S NOVEMBER.
The Burning Hell are actually Canadians – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they were decidedly local. Probably more au fait with the Scottish regions than most born and bred here – it would appear friends made on their last tour in places like Stirling, Drumnadrochit and Knoydart are here tonight – they’ve returned to what is almost their Scottish bolthole, having appeared at this packed Glasgow basement venue three times in little more than a year.
In return, they have absorbed some of the local culture while constructing new album ‘Revival Beach’. Opening with an instrumental, and then quickly offering up the introductory ‘I Am Mathias’, the titular singer addresses the other side of his audience, with several Canucks in the crowd pleased to hear newie ‘Canadian Wine’. Of course, Mathias is a primarily a storyteller (albeit one with a talent for tunesmithery) as evidenced on 2015’s ‘Public Library album’.
This theme continues on the new release, with ‘The River (Never Freezes Any more)’ showing their trademark black humour in “we’d go skating on the river near the famous drowning of ’72”. Ariel Sharratt helpfully explains the song’s “Kurt Browning” reference, as something of a teenage fangirl of the Canadian ice skating hero. However, he needs no introduction to small pockets of the crowd. like her bandmates, Sharratt excels on multiple instruments – guitarist Darren Brown offers at least one bouzouki solo – but so rammed is he venue that I somehow miss out on one seamless hotseat drum changeover.
But it may be that the band, given their lengthy UK tours, may be developing an Anglo-Scots personality split. Following ‘Public Library’s ‘On The Road’ – the tackle of a breakdown on the way to a 2015 Edinburgh show – the band’s fantastical mix of fact and fantasy manifests itself in ‘The Babysitter, where a Scottish spy ‘takes care’ of the offspring of Hitler and a Mitford sister.
And the final piece of crowd pleasing for the locals is surely ‘Fuck The Government, I Love You’, resulting in a mass singalong, with Mathias expressing some mock surprise at the Glaswegian dislike of Steven Harper’s Canadian Tories.
Overall, it’s another triumphant sellout show for this nomadic band, who will be welcome back here any time. Though given the sold-out crowd, it may be that they need to find themselves a new home.