It’s time to face the strange – that time being 1pm, so we’re a bit discombobulated to be attending a gig when lunch has been barely digested. But one of the great plot devices in film and fiction is that of time displacement… ok, less so for music reviews, but this has to start somewhere.
When Roz Davies advises us that Miss The Occupier have been on the go for 22 years however, some of us feel that we may have dozed off on a fast-moving bus while the theory of relativity did its work in advancing the rest of the world by a couple of decades in the blink of an eye.
There are a few ‘tells’ that the band are not the one that formed in the early noughties – a new keyboard player (and indeed a different drummer since last time this reviewer encountered them) but they still have the same way with a spiky hook and a singalong chorus as ever, whether it’s one of the clutch of new tunes or, where it all began, a thumping set closer in ‘External Male’. What’s more, they don’t look two decades older either… more Dorian Grey than Time Machine, no pictures of the original lineup exist.
The audience participation shoutalong part of their set is as much as for the little kids in this matinee’s audience as their parents, and surely they will be taken by the mid-bill Nanobots, a band melding The Jetsons with Man or Astroman?.
Shona and Jim (the latter an occasional Rezillo) hail from “Planet Glasgow” and, decked out in full astronaut gear, are here to transport us to a retro-future where spacesuits and fluorescent goggles are as de rigueur as their thrilling brand of cosmic punk. Highlights include new single ‘Blue Sun’ and (if memory serves) ‘Why Robot’, available as a 3″ CD in the foyer despite not being recorded until 2058.
If Nanobots took us to a near-future, then Scunner’s mission has landed them in… 1901. Or so Paul Puppet tells us, and who are we to dispute this? After all, their vaudevillian sound could surely soundtrack Shelley and Byron’s gothic writing retreat as reimagined by Roald Dahl, as well as boasting songs concerning folklore, Doric witches, and the Glasgow International Exhibition which took place at the start of the 20th century.
Puppet is an engaging frontman, distributing sugary treats (vegan) for the kids, later realising that he should maybe have asked permission (the 1900s were different times to be fair) and ponders whether perhaps fruit should have been on the menu. It seems that guitarist and co-founder Iain Mutch has retired into a behind-the-scenes, Brian Wilson-esque role, meaning that MtO’s Magnus is on guitar, and at one point coping admirably with five strings, while JJ Mills (Peeps Into Fairyland and Idlewild) is on four – bass, as well as something that looks like a Chinese banjo.
All of which adds to Scunner’s mystique, which isn’t lessened when Puppet removes his mask, then his hat, to reveal the trademark blue streak across his left eye. Their set is a sinister waltz through a haunted fairground, except this time those pesky kids content themselves with burning off their sugar rush, leaving our wild-eyed hosts to race towards set highlight ‘Downfall’ followed by the denouement, the tale of a murderous goblin that is closer ‘Redcap’.
With all said and done, we step out of The Glad Cafe, and into the broad, late afternoon daylight of a 21st century Glasgow.
Now that’s weird.
Also chief newshound at Jockrock
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