Wanna feel old? This is how bis look now.
Actually, the trio are in pretty good nick, though the fact they started their thirty-year career in pop while still at primary school (or so it appears) means they have a head’s start on some of the more grizzled members of the audience (present company not excepted).
As Amanda points out, tonight sees three bands celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. Openers Lung Leg are also looking good on the years though they have co-opted in a couple of new members who may or may not be second generation, as well as Paul Thompson out of The Yummy Fur on drums, swelling the band to a five-piece.
What is apparent, is how tight all the bands are tonight especially given, if memory serves, some pretty chaotic shows back in their heyday. Lung Leg included, though it’s not as if they have reformed for the occasion of course, having played a few gigs since reuniting in 2021. And with Sleater Kinney and Bikini Kill having visited Glasgow in recent weeks there may be something in the air.
‘Kung Fu On The Internet’ is angular but also proto riot-grrrl, as well as offering punkish hints of Kleenex, while there’s even a very jiggy new song, ‘New Gremlins First Batch’ (someone may have that wrong) with wonky Fall-style keyboard. Which is well-received by the already busy hall though most applause is saved for the closing triple-whammy of ‘Theme Park’, ‘Lust For Leg’ – somehow I’m just realising there’s an Iggy Pop nod in there somewhere – and with closer ‘Maid To Minx’ even garnering whoops of recognition from the crowd. A welcome return.
Also rolling back the years are The Yummy Fur, who have not really been away, aside from a few breaks for other projects and an assortment of line-up changes. Maybe I’m doing the band a disservice to suggest that they have become tighter over the years but even on opener ‘Kirsty Cooper’ it’s more of a rock onslaught than lo-fi guitar scrapings.
High points this writer at least are always ‘The Canadian Flag’ and ‘Department’ though when McKeown says “this is a new one, sorry!” no apology is needed, as it offers another instalment in a back catalogue that will surely have new recordings added soon. The unnamed new tune is on a par with anything in the band’s considerable canon, though as we’re honouring the past, the set closer has to be the bass chug and spiralling guitar of ‘Roxy Girls’.
For some, Art Brut may be the curveball on this lineup. Mere striplings at just 23 years old, not from Glasgow, but most certainly especially selected for this gig by its organisers. The feeling is mutual – “It’s like being inside my record collection” says frontman Eddie Argos, and you can bet that anyone who frequented the same indie discos as bis will immediately recall Argos’s dulcet tones bellowing “Look at us, we formed a band” in the opener – real, not fake, DIY. It’s followed by a rip-roaring ‘My Little Brother’, who is “now 42 and a teacher”.
Anyone who knows Art Brut knows Argos doesn’t really sing, as such – their new compilation album title “And yes this is my singing voice” is a lyric from the opener – but what I don’t really recall from previous live outings is Argos’s crowd interaction, and after a couple of “hits” – ‘She Kissed Me And’ and ‘St Pauli’ – he’s making his way into the audience as the rest of the band thump out a backing groove for ‘Modern Art’ in the vein of Half Man Half Biscuit to act as a soundtrack to an extended monologue as Argos hollows out a circle pit for himself, and tells the tale of his relationship with Art, Brut or otherwise. This at some point morphs into a surreal tale which Ken Campbell would be proud of, about how 18 years ago he had only visited two art galleries, in order to meet girls, and now, he’s been to a third, Amsterdam’s Van Gough, which pays tribute to the inventor of the fridge magnet, and where, after licking an electrically-charged ‘Starry Night’, a security guitar removes him to the basement since he’s improvised himself into a corner.
You had to be there, and we most certainly were, as Argos counts up to 270 and just about leaves two minutes for the band – for whom the term “long-suffering” could have been coined – to return us to reality with the news that ‘Emily Kane’ – the titular old flame from his schooldays – heard his paean to her and the two are now pals. Possibly the only “normal” thing of an exhilarating, exhausting and mind-expanding set.
If you remember ‘New Transistor Heroes’ you’ll remember the intro by Marky P. And like so much about tonight’s anniversary bash, Mark Percival (grown-up Sunday name) is here to roll back the years and reintroduce the band before they launch straight into ‘Tell It To The Kids’. They’re a band on a mission tonight, promising us little in the way of chat (Eddie has, they concede, done all the chat already anyway) before an early high point, a euphoric ‘Action and Drama’.
The setlist for this career-spanning (so far) event – offers hits (2) and, the band self-effacing as ever, a dozen or so non-(but should-have-been)-hits.
Like all their guests this evening, the band sound bigger and better than their former selves. 2018’s ’Sound of a Heartbreak’ is more muscular, more rambunctious than most of their older material, though when, maybe 20 minutes in we get ‘Kandy Pop’ delivered with the energy of an encore, you know that age has not diminished the band’s capacity to put on a memorable live show.
The setlist is of course mainly driven by nostalgia for that debut album and the ‘Teen C Power’ EP that made their name, with ‘School Disco’ and ‘Kill Yr Boyfriend’, despite their youthful themes, not sounding out of place three decades on.
We’re in full-on party mode now (there are balloons; not sure if there’s cake, though) and Amanda – to use Manda Rin’s more grown-up name as befitting her years – points out that “the best venue in Glasgow” is a bigger space than the band ever played in their heyday (and as John Disco points out The Garage audience consisted largely freeloaders). “Fuck the Bootleg Beatles and the Barrowland” Sci-Fi Steven adds, though quickly, backtracking, just in case they do at some point decide to play the legendary venue across the road which is, yes, currently hosting a derivative though similarly nostalgic night.
The “coolest festival ever” – handpicked of course by the headliners themselves – is bolstered further by the appearance of Lora Logic on sax for a version of X Ray Spex’s ‘Germ Free Adolescents’ which bis covered as the b-side to ’Action and Drama’. That will probably have been the evening (and possibly career) high point for the band but it’s a sign of the development that the only song that could close the set isn’t the shouty debut single, but instead the uber-sophisticated slice of dance pop that the crowd are waiting for. “Don’t sing ‘Here we, here we, here we fucking go’, pleads Sci-Fi. Instead the chant is a chant for “Euro, Euro, Euro-fucking-Disco”, and the band happily oblige – a sweaty, bouncing party anthem to end all parties. Same time in 2054?
Photos by Catching Light Photography