Live Reviews

Act: Swimming Tapes + Yakima Venue: SWG3 Poetry Club Date: 16 November 2018 When the opportunity came up to experience the Swimming Tapes live, it really was an easy sell for me. After a number of EPs, the Band are on the road promoting some of their new tracks and perfecting some of their well […]

Acts: St Paul and The Broken Bones + The Americans Venue: Glasgow Barrowland Date: 16 November 2018 “The Americans are in the building!” and that ain’t just the audaciously named support band, that’s L.A. and Alabama’s musical past; the blues and rock legends who recorded in the canyons and down in Fame Studios are surely

Hothouse Flowers: 6 November Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow This was something of a rescue job after my last experience of the Hothouse Flowers at Celtic Connections in 2013. The Fruitmarket show was a complete mess with Liam Ó Maonlaí, in particular, rambling incoherently and singing the same line of songs over and over again for

MC50: 10 November, O2 Academy, Glasgow MC5’s Kick Out the Jams is an album every record collection should have. A seminal piece of proto-punk that set the blueprint for a 1,000 other bands that followed in its wake. Hard to believe it was recorded 50 years ago or to be exact 50 years and 10

I’ll make it clear… I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Teenage Fanclub pushing 10 times over the years. My first ever at The Barras was seeing The Fannies on my 17th birthday (shh), when they were supported by Juliana Hatfield and The Posies (some real blasts from the past). Since then I’ve seen them at

The Decemberists: 5 November 2018 at O2 Academy, Glasgow The Decemberists rolled into Glasgow to promote their most recent release, the excellent ‘I’ll be Your Girl’. Always a pleasure to spend time in the company of Colin Meloy and his talented band of troubadours. Tonight was no different as they made playing great songs look

Christy Moore: 3 November 2018 at The Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow On a rainy Saturday night in Glasgow I made my way through the streets of the East End towards the Barras. The streets that had welcomed 60,000 football fans only 2 hours earlier were now quiet with only the sound of a few passing cars

Shinedown: 30 October at O2 Academy, Glasgow Shinedown are one of the few support bands in the last 10/15 years that have managed to make an impression on me.  First when they supported Alter Bridge in 2013 and again in 2017 when support for Iron Maiden. What I really liked about them, apart from the

U2: 23/24 October 2018 at O2 Arena, London It’s impossible to have any real objectivity about a band you have followed for over 30 years and have seen over 20 times so I’ll not even try. Despite entering the veteran stage U2 are still one of the greatest live acts around. Making massive arena and