So on Friday, as opposed to the traditional Monday (Arab Strap album title, kids, look them up), BM goes to the Hug and Pint, one of Glasgow’s more homely and intimate basement venues, a wee cellar on Great Western Road which always smells great due to the lovely dishes being served on the ground floor.
Due to usual Friday night work duties (what is about high court judges at the end of the week, deary me?) Betty completely missed the David McGregor (of Kid Canaveral) solo set, never mind, will catch up with them soon and arrived just in time to hear newcomers Acrylic playing their last tune ‘All Of Me’.
Rodger me in the back scullery with a traffic cone, it was a belter. A long track, maybe 10 minutes, of shimmering riffage, chiming guitar figurements, strident and individual vocals and an 80s prog vibe (someone said “Blue Nile” afterwards, well high praise indeed!) which certainly did it for this listener. BM was thinking The Chameleons… and this track has not even been recorded yet – ones to watch, for sure.
The place was quite crowded already and things got even sweatier when guitarist/vocalist Gav Prentice, bass player Matt (in a lovely shirt, what a look!) and drummer Roy took the stage and played the debut album in full. So having heard the album there were no surprises songwise, but some of the versions, the recorded intros and the sheer passion made this a gig to remember.
With Gav yelling out the words and emoting on the guitar, ‘This Is Where I Fall’ was dispatched with vim and vigour. ‘Napoleon’ was majestic in performance, the drums ‘n’ bass holding their own in an almost sold out melee of friends, well-wishers and fans.
Richard Burton’s recorded voice featured quite heavily “on the perils of drink”, especially before ‘You’re a Foul Mouth John Barleycorn’, the words again being spat out with venom by Gav. There was also electronic backing, beats and vibes, adding to the atmosphere of these tales of urban desolation, peppered with some hope, occasionally! ‘Stepping Out’ is a complex song, almost a wee short story, recalling Arab Strap via Irvine Welsh, two of the very best Scottish influences anyone could possibly have…
There was a lot of humour onstage between songs, Gav’s quips about the day’s election results being just one instance. In anyone else’s hands a song like ‘Team-handed”‘ could be pretty depressing, and yes it is anyway – see you at A&E.
Things really hit home with the “right-wing” song ‘Britannica’ – again this sends shivers up the spine (the spanx are a bit of a godsend here for BM, keeps everything in place) – but it is very bleak, just the way we like it in Scotlandshire… Following on, “‘Royal Names’ is just sublime, and by this time the band is joined by other former Over The Wall colleagues, the history of this band lost to BM but many in the audience remember them. “No one comes down to the Crown anymore”, as Britannica references.
‘Royal Names’ may just be the one – dripping sarcasm, spitting the names, the alienation palpable, och, BM is tempted to get all socio-analytic here but it is just a good song that people identify with and the chords are genius – there is however a pervading cloak of oppression which in mid-2017 we are facing again so maybe Eurovision 2018? Authenticity is all, we are told, so here it is!
Things continue and holy cow, or ‘Holy Cross’, this is another breamer, really ramping the riffs with the extra personnel onstage – this is a glorious performance, and things only calm down towards the end – but ‘The Path To Getting Paid’ comes in the way, completely in yer face, a song of desperation and hope, with that completely necessary four letter word, so much more relevant now we have them back in Ferguslie and Shettleston, and the Fairfield Cran line just jittering with meaning – Gav you are a poet, and a pretty good guitar player as well!
By the last track BM was pretty pummelled, having sidled down the front by the speaker stacks, and ‘See Blood’ was quite a welcome relief to be honest, but it was earth-shattering nonetheless (and a rare love song, maybe?), and ended the gig, no encore, they had played all they had, and this band had proved themselves – in the game and then some, with menaces.