Constant Follower / Withered Hand

Cottier’s Theatre is a beautiful if slightly underused former church venue deep in Glasgow’s leafy West End. It was a pretty perfect setting for the launch of Constant Follower’s new album ‘The Smile You Send Out Returns to You’.

First up however we had Dan, aka Withered Hand, playing a shortish solo set. There were songs oldish (‘No Cigarettes’, ‘King of Hollywood’) and newish (the last one was completely new, on the subject of beauty). Things that stood out tonight were how strong his voice was, filling up the large space with just the acoustic guitar backing it, the still very strong religious imagery of the lyrics (death, sin, the devil all feature strongly) and actually a weird comparison with Counting Crows (who had a big hit in the 90s with ‘Mr Jones’) – maybe it’s the slightly skewed Americana of the narratives… Anyway it was a good experience for Dan, who referenced his only previous gig at Cottier’s as being a complete disaster…

After the break the headliners came on to an almost full venue, great result although a certain proportion of the audience were blow-ins from Stirling! Playing as a five-piece (McAll on lead vocals/acoustic, bass, guitar, keyboards and female vocals) tonight, what followed was an hour of atmospheric and at times sublime beauty and warmth.

The new album was played almost in its entirety but punctuated by older material from mainly the first album. The blend of voices and instruments was, as ever, subtle, heartfelt and gorgeous – probably the only comparison BM can make is maybe Lambchop but that’s about it… New songs ‘All Is Well’ and album closer ‘It’s Only Silence’ went down just as well as better known oldies, and McAll was chuffed enough for the band to do a two-song encore – slightly unexpected but as he said, it just felt so great to be playing on that stage. So overall an unmitigated success, and the result of a lot of work that has roundly paid off…