BM had not been at this venue for quite some time (maybe not since The Fall in 1993 or something) but it has a great sound system and good sight lines, although that promise of cheap student beer has clearly become history… anyway…
This gig had two excellent supports but it required an early attendance, so BM only caught the last few songs of Scottish act Fauna – they sounded pretty good though, intend to check them oot in future and fair play to headliners and promoters to squeeze in some new acts…
Further support Sorcha Richardson is from Dublin and is with the headliners on the tour, again very talented and ones to watch out for, they seemed chuffed to be in Glasgow for the first time and as the crowd built up (not quite sold out) they were very good – intelligent pop/folk and then some…
Headliners Honeyblood appeared tonight as a three piece, with Stina on guitars/vocals, with a female drummer and bassist.
She scorched through something like 18 songs, from all three released albums – there were a couple of false starts but when they got into their groove it sounded great.
They started with latest track ‘Bubblegun’, then a couple of oldies from the first album…
Things started kicking off (and there was dancing) with ‘The Third Degree’, a song from the recent third album, followed quickly by the sparse, sick and sophisticated ‘Tarantella’, which is the biggest sign for BM of the moving on from album 2 to album 3, a real development, along with ‘Glimmer’, another song of modern witchery…
But BM was also yearning for material from ‘BND’ and of course we got the best of that, the title track along with a glorious ‘Sea Hearts’ and ‘Walking after Midnight’.
By now the crowd was completely won over and the last few songs were met with abandon – this band (ok, Stina!) has accomplished so much to date, transcending genres of noise rock, indie, riot girrl and whatever else, while always giving us great tunes and a great performance.
There was an encore, another old song ‘No Spare Key’, but they had at that point really slayed us… nothing more to say…