A welcome and overdue double-header at The Glad, audience maybe somewhat depleted by all the other gigs on tonight (a Last Night From Glasgow album launch for Lola in Slacks at the CCA, the Mickey 9s at the Garage and Billy Bragg at the Barras to name but several) but still a reasonable audience at this Southside haven of culture and interesting programming choices.
Broken Chanter appeared tonight as a duo, with Gill Higgins giving able support on piano and backing vocals to David MacGregor’s guitar-based numbers tonight. Still perhaps a bit shaky after a long gap in gigs (although he did support Poster Paints the other week at the Poetry Club), David gave us choice cuts from the first album, a few new tracks and an oldie from his former act Kid Canaveral to boot.
The instrumental pairing worked well, although BM can’t wait to hear the full band versions of some of these new songs…MacGregor quipped that he is working himself up to a full orchestra, well one step at a time…
In between the usual deadpan patter, David’s voice and playing warmed to the occasion after current single ‘Dancing Skeletons’ got things started. A trio of older tracks ‘Wholesale’, ‘Should We Be Dancing’ and ‘Don’t Move to Denmark’ went down well, as did ‘Low Winter Sun’ from Kid Canaveral’s second album.
Previous single ‘Extinction Event Souvenir T-Shirt’ sounds more like a protest song than some of the more introverted tracks on the previous album and it looks as if this might be a direction MacGregor is comfortable taking – the new album ‘Catastrophe Hits’ is out in a week or so and should by all accounts be a bit of a belter…
Headliners Modern Studies have also been (obviously) not been playing live much, in fact at all, and the previous night’s gig in Newcastle was their first for a good while.
Some slight signs of rustiness were evident but they soon found their groove and gave us probably the most muscular set that BM has witnessed them playing. This was partly for the unfortunate reason that “cello” Pete Harvey broke some bones and can’t play the cello at the moment, but it meant that he played a very twangy and insistent bass, forcing the others to up the ante a bit in terms of the noise levels, with guitarist Rob St John contributing a couple of searing guitar solos. Emily’s voice was in fine fettle and Joe did a sterling job on drums, driving this more propulsive and hi-tempo performance from the back…
Material tonight was drawn mainly from albums ‘Weight of the Sun’, ‘Welcome Strangers’ and ‘Swell To Great’. The songs are a curious but effective blend of English folk to the fore (Fairport, Incredible String Band) and Krautrock beats at the back. There are also definite Fleetwood Mac influences going on here, no bad thing at all!
After one “encore” (they didn’t leave the stage, it’s hard for the drummer to get off and back onstage at the Glad anyway) they were on their way, leaving BM for one very entertained and keen to check out some of their more ambient lockdown material again (two EPs recorded in the past year)…