Glasvegas

Let’s kick things off with two points. First of all, any band that has the lyric ‘My name is Geraldine, I’m your social worker’ as one of their key singalong moments deserves respect. Secondly, tonight this Glasgow lot cover the greatest song of all time™, and they play it well. ‘Be My Baby’, for anyone wondering. But this writer suspects anyone who has remained unconvinced by Glasvegas over the past two years (of which there are many) will not find much solace in this performance. The faithful seem to think of them as some sort of second coming, for everyone else, the glossed-up Mary Chain musical stylings will test the patience after an hour. They have the odd tune or two, and singer James Allan occasionally comes over like a close approximation of Joe Strummer, but overall, their music has well and truly disappeared up its on arse. Bit too bombastic. Tonight, they do a fine, if not spectacular, job. They’ve replaced their lady drummer with an identikit (the quite adept Jonna Loffgren), and each beat is still indebted to that Moe Tucker style of mantric simplicity. On bass, Paul Donoghue still has the look of an 11 year old dressing up as a teddy boy. Guitarist Rab Allann is a man-mountain and still shows little deftness on his instrument. If you’re looking for change, you will find it with the frontman. The Ray Bans are in place, but the all-black get-up has been replaced with a white outfit advertising album number two Euphoria /// Heartbreak \. This isn’t mere sartorial note-taking. With the new look comes a new attitude. If you’re being cruel, you’ll think of Johnny Borrell. Being slightly kinder, you’ll be put in mind of a fledgling Glaswegian Bono. Naturally, he doesn’t play guitar anymore. Instead, he keens in that distinctive voice of his, holds his head like he’s lost in some religious moment of rapture, falls to his knees and hugs female fans in the crowd. To be fair, he seems a good sort – every bit of audience interaction is an apology – for feedback at the start, for playing too many new songs. But it all seems a little forced. As for the new stuff, it slots in nicely with their slender back catalogue. On record, the wall-of-sound guitars will wear you down, but live they do amount to something quite special. The grandeur they’re going for is nearly achieved, Allan sounding like a man singing against an oncoming avalanche. Still, dangerously close to being just another earnest band. Being contrary, plus points are admittedly not too hard to find. Mainly in the older stuff. ‘My Own Cheating Heart’ stirs up a mass singalong, the aforementioned ‘Geraldine’ will forever be a truly great song, and the closing ‘Daddy’s Gone’ still plucks the heart strings in just the right way. The real disappointment is in thinking back to their pre-fame days, when they had yet to adopt their Spector default mode and played heartfelt songs with real dynamism and verve. They’ve settled into a mould now, and it seems they don’t fancy breaking it. Glasvegas may have an ‘ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude, but it’s not working for this writer, A decent, if vaguely disappointing, gig.