Review: Tegan and Sara Live

Tegan and Sara – O2 ABC – 09/06

 

Tegan and Sara have always enjoyed cult status; after a decade of creating bittersweet pop songs fused with everything from folk to rock, however Heartthrob, the latest album from everyone’s favourite Canadian twin pop duo, peaked at no. 3 on the Billboard Top 200, signalling a significant mainstream breakthrough after years of cultivating a fiercely loyal fan base. Previously celebrated predominantly by the LGBT community (both twins are lesbians), their emotional but infectious music has begun to be embraced more widely, and their recent gig at O2 ABC will have undoubtedly won over a legion of new fans.

Review: Status Quo Live

Status Quo, The Treatment – O2 Academy 10/03

Which band do you think have had more hits on the UK chart than any other? The Beatles knocked ‘em out at the rate of a classic record per year. U2 have been battering out blustery anthemics for almost three decades. Queen delivered everything from stone-cold killers to camp cod-opera. But if you’ve taken the time to read this review you might well know that the group with more charting tracks (61!) than any other is actually a bunch of three chord blues-rockers better known nowadays for cameoing in Coronation Street than tearing up the Official Top 40. Before the main event however, Cambridge rockers The Treatment are intent on causing a stir. Channelling Def Leppard, Poison and Motley Crue, they treat Glasgow Academy as if they’re headlining Wembley Stadium with stadium rock poses, cocky attitudes and low-slung riffs aplenty. They’re all good musicians but, perhaps deliberately, their songwriting is pretty generic hard-rock stuff. You could run a sweepstake on how long it takes until vocalist Matt Jones tells the audience to ‘let the good times roll’.

Review: Olly Murs Live

Olly Murs, Loveable Rogues – SECC, 16/03

Concerts based on acts who have made their name through reality TV programmes are not very cool. I, however, am also not very cool, so it was with much excitement that I made my way to the SECC. The first support act, a wee girl call Tich, has a great voice and performs a cover of Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’, but the downside to a concert in which most of the audience a) are under 16, and b) have forked out a fair bit, is that support acts rarely get a rousing reception; everyone’s waiting for the main act.

Review: Mudhoney Live

Mudhoney, Meat Puppets, Metz – O2 ABC – 05/06

 

Tonight’s openers, Metz, could well be the hardest working band in showbiz; though they hail from Toronto this is their fourth Glasgow show in under a year, coming hot on the heels of two solo performances and a support slot for fellow Canadians, Fucked Up. On the strength of this evening they might also be the best punk band in the world, delivering their two minute bursts of fury with an intensity you wouldn’t expect from singer Alex Edkins’ gawky glasses. Merging post-hardcore sludge with thundering hard-rock drums, they’re a visceral live project; stretching out the fuzz bass throwdown of ‘Wet Blanket’ into a twisted thrash that sounds like Fugazi duelling with My Bloody Valentine for who can go one louder.

Album Review: Saturday Looks Good To Me, One Kiss Ends It All

Saturday Looks Good To Me is, in my eyes at least, a totally pathetic band name. Band names should be punchy and memorable. Take the ‘Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ for example. A great name that rolls off the tongue as three affirmative monosyllabic beats. However the name Saturday Looks Good To Me is just some inane bit of arrangement making. They may as well have called themselves “Sorry I Can’t Do Thursday I’m Working” or “How About I Just Text You Next Time I’m Free”.

Album Review: Major Lazer, Free The Universe

It only takes a quick look at Diplo’s instagram to deduce that he knows everyone who’s someone, and with his alter-ego Major Lazer’s latest album, Free The Universe, it shows. Featuring a star-studded list of collaborators including Santigold, Shaggy, Tyga and Peaches, he’s created an album that is still very much his own; that, and really fucking danceable. The album’s starter, ‘You’re No Good’, rumbles and hisses, with classy and proud marching-band style drums and production that perhaps lays back from the prior album, but suits the new sounds Diplo is engaging in.

Review: Bob Mould Live

Oran Mor – 18/5/13

Ex-Sugar and Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould has enjoyed a resurgence in recent times, touring heavily on the back of his excellent 2011 album Silver Age and the re-issue of Sugar’s alt-rock classic Copper Blue. Tonight he’s supported by North Atlantic Oscillation, a three-piece who make squalling shoegaze-y noise over programmed keyboard sounds. Though they’re devoid of stage presence, the closer ‘Hollywood is Ended’ lurches into life with the lysergic verve of Hawkwind. Nonetheless they’re easily forgotten in comparison to the fiery fretwork of tonight’s headliner.

Review: Bioshock Infinite

After two games submerged in the watery ruins of Rapture, BioShock Infinite takes the series skyward into the gravity-defying world of Columbia. As disgraced private eye Booker DeWitt, you are tasked with liberating the mysterious Elizabeth from a city in the sky in exchange for having your slate wiped clean. Unsurprisingly, events in the heavens turn hellish rather quickly. Thrust into the middle of a civil war, relentlessly pursued by a giant mechanical bird, all the while trying to deal with fissures in the space-time continuum – vertigo is very much the least of your troubles here.

 

Single Review: Dinosaur Jr, Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know

Dinosaur Jr have been going long enough now to have become Dinosaur Senior. J Macsis’ thinning hair has a distinct silvery grey hue, his glasses are probably a higher prescription, and bassist Lou Barlow enjoys nothing more than a sit down and a rich tea biscuit. Between taking the grandkids to school they still find time to rock though. ‘Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know’ doesn’t indulge the band’s usual penchant for huge slabs of overdubbed guitar, instead  filling up the sonic space with organ drone and a twinkling piano. Their past selves would be pulling their still thick hair out, but the result is a pleasant indie feel, low fi and relaxed but with a punch to lift into the chorus . You still can’t really tell what the fuck Macsis is singing about, although it’s probably about chicks as usual, but it’s not important anyway. You won’t rock to this like ‘Freak Scene’ or ‘The Wagon’ but it’s perfectly enjoyable, although Lou Barlow still reckons Rich Tea’s are better. Not with a brew though, oh no, not with his bladder.

[Theo Wheatley]

Album Review: Emilia Mitiku, I Belong To You

The Voynich manuscript is a very old book, from around the 15th century. It’s all about plants and herbs, with big illustrations and written descriptions, but all is not as it seems. Firstly, the language the writing is in is a total mystery. Nobody knows how to speak it, or where it came from, let alone what it says. It’s possible it’s some kind of encrypted script, but as yet none of the experts who’ve put their minds to it have managed to crack it. Yet the weirdness increases, as the majority of the plants drawn do not correspond to species of plants we know, nobody has any idea what plants they are supposed to be. The drawings aren’t crap, they’re highly detailed, yet what real life plants they are is an unclear as mud.