The sun may be breaking out sweats across the central belt, but April’s traditional promotional push means gig a hefty month of gigs ahead.
This week Glasgow has a strimash of genres to have punters missing the first enjoyable sunsets of the year.
On Monday, Essex’s dustiest sounding songwriter Tom McRae brings his prolific decade of work to The Arches, backed by a string quartet. The new angle on a host of old songs, through his five album catalogue would be worth the entry alone.
Thankfully McRae holds a unassuming ability in emulating the spoken-sung style of many of his American heroes, clouded by a folk sound that many of the recent cross Atlantic imports (Beirut, Andrew Bird, Fleet Foxes) choose to rest on.
The stripped back basis, since his eponymous debut in 2000, will add credence to an already enthralling solo show – proving worthwhile attendance for old fans and new followers alike.
After the postponement of I’m From Barcelona’s midweek appearance, it’s up to Australia’s Architecture In Helsinki to bring some springtime multi-instrumental indie to Glasgow’s West End, on Thursday at Òran Mór.
Whilst new album, ‘Moment Bends’, is their first full release in since 2007 the zesty mixbag of artists have been plodding through tours with everyone from David Byrne to local heroes Belle & Sebastian.
The Wee Review first encountered the Melbourne outfit in a dark Edinburgh basement with 50 folk in 2005 in which a dizzying, kit swapping performance was restricted to the early efforts of their first two LPs.
The upcoming performance will open their sound to the more methodical, thinking mans twee of the new album, relased Monday, breaking songs down onto an electro plinth, before building their equally adept instrumentation over it.
With such intelligent tunes, comes equally smart support – Canadian indie-electro cavalier The Russian Futurists providing the kind of value on the ticket price you’d be paying half the ticket price to see solo crammed into a much smaller venue. We’ll see you there at 20:00!
Ending the week will be a gig on the cards for some time, the behemoth of nu-prog …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead crashing skulls with the revival of cult rockers Rival Schools.
On one hand, Trail Of Dead have provided a consistency to their live performances that LP releases has fallen short of matching since the talisman efforts of 2002’s ‘Source Tags and Codes’. In the near decade that has passed, glimmers of promise in some songs failed to fit into a body of work with the leanness in 2011’s ‘Tao Of The Dead’ sweeping a dozen crisp nuggets of songs into a fluid album without the faff around the edges recent efforts have been laboured by.
Littered with blossoming bombast with the majority of tracks landing around the three minute mark and possessing, in songs like ‘Pure Radio Cosplay‘, the kind of swagger most 90s UK brit-pop would have stuggled to maintain, only album title closer seeing the Texans slump into the comfort of the prog-rock they’ve recently been accustomed to.
However, support from Rival Schools has been the excitable talking point of the gig.
Lead by 90s New York music veteran Walter Schreifels and releasing the post-grunge classic ‘United By Fate’ in 2001, departure of drummer Ian Love led to the critical promise of the LP being floundered.
After a much rumoured (and leaked) second album finally coming to fruition last year, the band are embarking on a tour riding shotgun with a band that have done exactly what Rival Schools missed out on over the last decade.
Reassuringly the sophomore release ‘Pedals’ doesn’t take any slack from the downtime since the ferocious debut, whilst still dispensing any of the leaked early recordings of the ‘Divided By Fate’ effort which has been salivating fans until now.
If all of this wasn’t enough to weight on The Garage’s pillars, opening is entrusted to New York’s Asobi Seksu. Scything elements of shoe gazing with joyful rock to the tune of three LPs – most recently with this years ‘Fluorescence‘ delivering a clearer and accessibly gripping venture. Pre-gig pints are now rendered pointless, get there for these guys when the doors permit you!