CityLife

Glasvegas - Daddy's Gone (Columbia)

PERHAPS it was because the subject matter was so close to my own heart, but a year or so on from my first listen to Daddy's Gone (back then, on an independent wax release) and it still makes me shiver.

The love song dynamic has been explored from every angle - even odes like this to absent parents are out there - but it's the chilling power of James Allen's Glaswegian brogue that delivers the fatal body punch to the heart.

Its narrative style is borderline musical - it would, for instance, fit snugly between Teardrops Are Falling and Cherry on John Waters' 50s-inspired movie Cry Baby, crooned by a weeping Johnny Depp.

You'd lose James Allen's devastated delivery, of course, as he pushes the heartache to the limit: "O-oh, how you're my hero/O-oh how you're never here though," he laments, "Forget your Da', he's gone."

Blend all that with a studied Phil Spector-esque wall of sound arrangement and a C86 work ethic, and Glasvegas stand in the company of the great expansive indie bands of the mid-1980s, the Jesus And Mary Chain in particular.

The downside? I've been waiting for them to impress me ever since this first did the rounds in 2007; it's taken its major label re-release to get me back on board.

Released on August 25

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