Ever since I Don’t Know How But They Found Me (or iDKHOW) came to be, the project – led by Dallon Weekes – has attracted an intense, committed following. Two albums in with steady audience growth, he’s working his way up the Glasgow gig venue ladder at a respectable pace.
A queue still snakes along Eastvale Place as Mancunian support band Balancing Act take to the stage. The four piece are unmistakably northern English, with a comfortable indie rock charm akin to peers like Overpass and predecessors like Catfish and the Bottlemen. Heavier, more trans-atlantic influences also shine through, though, in their punchier live sound.
Singer Kai looks like a recent graduate from the Adam Lazzara School of Stage Presence as he shimmies around the stage, microphone cord flailing. He locks eyes with the front rows and crouches as close as he can without tumbling into the pit.
After their set, the crowd undertakes its own form of warm-up, with a game of ‘Smash or Pass’ conducted via phones held aloft.
iDKHOW’s mercifully early stage time is a Sunday night blessing, and their prompt 8.30pm arrival is greeted with jubilance.
Though casually dressed, Weekes’ on stage persona is a sort of strange caricature – like a spooky, gaunt Greatest Showman. Drawling theatrically about ghosts and church, he articulates every word like a Haunted Mansion voiceover.
When he lists through various personal and band-related dramas that have genuinely happened in recent years (and been well-documented on Twitter), it sounds more like the recital of a Grimms’ fairy tale than real life.
And is it supposed to be sinister or something else when he keeps repeating to the relatively young crowd, “Don’t forget who’s in charge”? …
A diverse setlist covers not only the two iDKHOW albums but older material, too, from Weekes’ prior outfit The Brobecks. Each era offers its own gems – the bouncy ‘Downside’ stands out from latest record ‘Gloom Division’, and the encore offers the finest of Weekes’ earlier material – and a kazoo solo to boot.
The band put in a lively performance as they work through the night’s tunes, supported occasionally by backing track when instrumentation deviates too far from the touring setup.
At times, crowd participation is requested – raising hands or sing parts – like on the mesmerising ‘A Letter’. It’s an interactive and engaging hour and a half of indie glam rock genre-straddling toe-tappers.
During ‘Visitation of the Ghost’, Weekes poses a series of questions about boundaries – conditions for his now-standard Red Sea-style parting of the crowd. No touching, no selfies, and other such reasonable-yet-unusual requests. The total cooperation is a shining example of how social etiquette at gigs and beyond is changing.
Post-parting, the tune segues into Sophie Ellis Bextor’s ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ – a fun deviation that lends itself both to iDKHOW’s spooky vibes and 90s British indie pop sensibilities.
The encore is, refreshingly, not made up of iDKHOW’s biggest hits (or the more modern metric of top tracks on Spotify) – but is still an absolute highlight of the show.
During the tongue-in-cheek ‘Nobody Likes The Opening Band’, Balancing Act’s Kai Roberts returns to the stage for an added verse about how “Nobody Likes The Headline Band”.
Then The Brobecks tune ‘Boring’ wraps things up, sounding like it belongs on a ’90s ‘Shine’ compilation alongside early Travis, Supergrass, Spacehog, The Supernaturals … It sparks a counterfeit feeling of nostalgia that overshoots the tune’s real age by a decade or two.
The song reaches a giddying climax, then drifts out; the ringleader and his fellow performers throw stage souvenirs to the crowd as they depart.
Perhaps iDKHOW’s biggest strength is in their genre- and generation-straddling sound – shapeshifting from one song to the next, hung together by Weekes’ gripping showmanship. No doubt he’ll be back to do it all again in a slightly bigger venue in good time.
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