It’s probably apt that this, the final Dans’ Scottish show, should start chaotically, given their reputation for joyously energetic performances that teeter at the edge of reason and erupt into good-natured audience participation events.
However, D Roy’s guitar packing in during the opener is probably a doubly apt start to the gig.
And although a restarted ‘E Numbers’ sees the band’s distinctive guitar riffs drive a exuberant beginning to the show, it’s followed by a severe deterioration in sound, with only the most familiar tunes permeating the bass-heavy din.
However, although the Dans’ tunes – especially those on second album There Is A Way – could rival any record currently garnering chart action, their live shows makes the sound problems less relevant. The funk of ‘Think And Feel’ whips the audience into a Saturday night fever as the glitter ball (the largest in Europe… or so I’m told) illuminates the throng, while ‘Muscle Memory’ – the best song Hot Club De Paris never wrote – comes through as the highpoint with its meandering guitar licks, for once, surviving the sonic wringer intact.
Meanwhile, twin vocalists John Baillie Jr and Calum Gunn prowl the stage, trading lines like the Beastie Boys, before suddenly zipping backwards and forwards like the indie Jedward – they’re up on the monitors, crowd-surfing, and during ‘The Greater Than Symbol And The Hash’, taking to the dancefloor to organise the ‘Wall of Cuddles’ (a safer, more tactile version of the moshpit).
Sadly, the disco element of the night wins over as the curfew means a short-ish set has no place for classics such as ‘Totally Bone’ or ‘Hey Giles’. So, it’s a triumphant and highly emotional ‘Some Dresses’ that sees the band draw down the curtain on their prematurely truncated career – and on an ever-entertaining evening coloured by high emotions, but tinged by disappointment, and only increased by a sense of unfinished business.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Photos by Thomas Bruin