The Little Kicks / Book Group / King Eider

The Wee Red Bar is filling up fast as King Eider start playing before the soundman has had a chance to turn off the background music, such is their enthusiasm.

Songs are dynamic and bounce along at a fair pace, driven on by some great fingerpicking, a tight rhythm section and joyful bursts of fiddle, cello and three part harmonies. It is infectious stuff that has everyone grinning ear to ear and stamping their feet in time.

As Book Group take the floor, frontman Graeme Anderson announces they are going to “bring something different to the party” before apologising in advance for any sound problems, the band having not had time to sound check. He needn’t have worried; they sound fantastic as they run through a set which culminates in the soaring ‘Victory Lap’, a song that sees Graeme singing its refrain “don’t you ever change” through a megaphone and running into crowd to take its uplifting message to the people standing at the back.

The Little Kicks are in town this evening to launch their third album ‘Put Your Love In Front Of Me’. The Wee Red Bar is packed, no mean feat given they’re from Aberdeen as singer Steven Milne notes. Playing the album from start to finish the band, completed by guitarist Andrew Corse, bassist Lewis Porter and Scott Kelman on drums, are on form and sound huge. Opener ‘Better Things’ and lead single ‘Girl’ get the audience moving with their pop hooks and deft rhythms. Later tracks like the ‘Heartbreak’ trilogy slow things down a little but you’re never far away from a melody, beat or bass line that’ll make the urge to dance almost impossible to ignore. By the end everyone has a smile on their face, a spring in their step and is absolutely soaked in sweat.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.