BM arrived too late to see Rebekah Kirk (sorry) but did see Millie’s set – think she played Flat 0/1 during Tenement Trail… She did a good stint here, in front of a smallish audience, mainly there to see her! Mainly playing acoustic guitar, she double-tracked herself a few times (obvious KT Tunstall comparisons) and the best track (BM’s money) was the “new” track which involved an electronic drum track (she restarted it after fluffing something) and some darker guitar arpeggios – this was a bit more Johnny Cash, and it suited her bluesy voice as well.
BM first encountered The Baltic States at Mugstock last year, where they were a bit of an unexpected revelation (the best revelations are always unexpected). Based in Liverpool but hailing from several other places, a good few months later here they are headlining in Glasgow, after a gig in Edinburgh the previous night.
The three-piece comprises Jev on keyboards etc, Vadim on drums and Helen on vocals, and they have released several EPs in the past few years. The crowd is still smallish but enthusiastic as they start to go through the gears, the electronics ramping up in the first few tracks with a superb Boards of Canada cover, ‘New Seeds’. So as well as burbling, stuttering and gliding electronics and the battering drums we have that voice of Helen’s – good god! It is somewhere between early Kate Bush and Karin Driejer (aka Fever Ray), piercing and powerful like a laser.
In this 40 or so minute set we also get ‘Kontrol’ (with an amazing “bring your own device” onstage remix by Jev using some small box of tricks), earlier single ‘Boxes’ and as an encore their glorious cover of The Stooges ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ which brings things to a suitably chaotic end.
Shortly after this gig the band announced they are changing their name to Foxtrap, which was an earlier name and avoids some confusing internet links to Geopolitics in Latvia etc – good call! In the meantime let’s hope they return to Scotland soon…