“Got your Celtic Connections tickets yet?” asked a friend.
Which is a bit of an odd question. Scotland’s annual winter music festival is hardly T in the Park, but it seems that nowadays, people will buy up briefs for it regardless of what’s on.
A mark of quality perhaps, or an indication of now far it’s entered the mainstream public’s consciousness – I’m not sure.
But to attract regular punters – those less interested in traditional folk music or Americana, CC’s twin USPs in the past – it has diversified of late. Celebrating the Scottish diaspora with African and West Indian acts has been a regular feature of the programming in recent years.
However, the inclusion of John Grant, and now 90s indie pop duo They Might Be Giants could be regarded as… well, you decide. Let’s go for a chance to see the New York duo in Glasgow in front of a sell-out crowd, something that might not have happened otherwise.
And, with no disrespect meant, openers BMX Bandits will seldom play as big an arena as this. And they are a good choice of support – simple catchy songs plus mainman Duglas T Stewart in entertainingly chatty mood.
But the band have come a long way since their early says as shambling (c. every music mag) C86ers. ‘Your Class’ is, remarkably just bass guitar and vocals, but has a lush and frankly unexpected layering of sound.
Duglas is in romantic mood, revealing that ‘Your Class’ is a response to Steven Stills’ ‘Love the One You’re With’. And there’s ‘Sailor Song’ – co-written with “the Beethoven of Uddingston” Francis Macdonald – it’s another paean to the healing properties of love and music. And with such a large turnout a good few new flames must be losing their hearts to the Bandits.
By the time they take the stage I’m still searching for a link between the Brooklyn headliners and dear old Alba. Maybe it’s the fact that they performed a matinee aimed at youngsters (new album ‘Why?’ is deliberately child-friendly, though most of the lyrics are still less daft / more intellectual than the bulk of the charts). “The kids show fucked me up,” declares John Linnell” before launching into ‘Can’t Keep Johnny Down’, a high-paced tune from 2011 which sets the scene for the rest of what will be a mammoth set. The duo (plus three hired hands) promise a mix of “beloved and under-rehearsed” material, and we definitely get the former.
As well as their children’s releases (four in total so far) the band have also embarked on a variation of their old ‘dial-a-song’ project, committing to writing a tune a week. Thus there’s a good selection of new material in their set, plus some advice for up-and-coming bands: “Don’t write 52 songs in a year.”
The two Johns’ patter is as entertaining and at times as surreal as their lyrics. We get the entirely plausible news that they are building a 140 story casino and entertainment complex with a revolving rooftop arena where they will perform to a select audience, kept in place by centrifugal force. The one-song set will consist of a version of ‘Bills Bills Bills’, although this will force the band to change their name to Destiny’s Child’s Child, and the one that’s not Kelly Rowlands or Beyonce will be invited to join.
Aside from that (and a good deal of other discourse) we get over two hours of highly energetic, entertaining and all-out fun takes on their own back catalogue (sadly nothing from ‘Nanobots’ though) and a clutch of covers – including Jonathan Richman’s ‘Dancing at the Lesbian Bar’, and an unexpected detour during a rumbustious ‘Particle Man’ into Dolly Parton’s ‘Here You Come Again’.
However, amidst all the fun and games there’s still time to better ourselves intellectually. So, ‘James K. Polk’ informs and educates us about the 11th US president, Jeffrey Lewis-style (apart from the cartoons). The slaveholding warmonger is summed up as “a bit of a douchebag”, although, we’re advised, worse may be on the way.
With the curfew well and truly broken, the band fill in the catalogue gaps with ‘Istanbul’ (Birdhouse In Your Soul’ dispatched much earlier in the set) and we’re left still calling for more. But still pondering just what brought the band to Scotland on a damp and cold January night. As John Flansburgh puts it, “our Celtic Connection is that we’re playing at Celtic Connections”.
And to be honest, for tonight’s crowd, that’s more than enough.