Another (stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before…) great night at The Glad – five acts, starting with Dunbar’s answer to Jimmy Shand (and possibly Ultravox) Callum Easter, who did his usual magic with his accordion and analogue box of percussion tricks, another captivating performance in BM’s local music venue, what could possibly be better?
After a fairly mellow start he fairly blasts into the electronic beats, with tracks from his album ‘Here or Nowhere’ like ‘Fall in Love’ and his current tour de force ‘Feelings Gone’, a warped mutated slice of Scottish country dance mixed with big beat which has to be experienced live, a transcendent moment…
Next up is Pictish Trail, aka Johnny Lynch, a long time BM fave, playing tonight as a stripped down version of Pictish Trail (vocals/keyboards/guitar) along with foil Suze Bear (keyboards and bass). He offered us up several new songs from his forthcoming 2020 album and a couple of recent classics. For all the joking and certain amount of arsing about, they absolutely know what they are doing. Haunting and delicate melodies, wig-out moments and weird conjunctions of electronic – and more! JL has been a pusher, a doer and an influencer on the Scottish music scene and beyond for a while now but don’t forget he is also an excellent act in this own right, and BM looks forward to bigger and more realised shows next year…
Modern Studies have a local link (Glad manager Joe Smillie is their drummer) and tonight they played all new material, from forthcoming recordings. It all sounded great, although BM got the impression singer Emily was a bit nervous – only natural but this now almost full venue was a sympathetic audience of friends and neighbours (and a good few musicians, BM will not drop names but some Glasgow indie royalty in the room….). Again BM looks forward to more, bigger shows and a new record.
As said above, the night continued with two other great acts and many more over the weekend, another collaborative triumph for the Glad and partners…