CityLife

Glasvegas

ANOTHER Glasvegas tour; another cleaned-out box office.

Tot up the odds that a group that sounds like The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine free-freebacking songs about absent parents and sectarian stabbings on the Jock Stein end of Celtic Park should become the buzz band of 2008, and you certainly wouldn’t have wagered any vital limbs.

But Glasgow’s brooding four-piece have hit a nerve. Perhaps it’s the inclement weather, or more likely it’s because the remaining record buying public (male 30 and 40-somethings, and here in force) are exactly the sort of people who are drawn to the Phil Spector-esque, wall of retro sound that Glasvegas have made their own.

Bathed in a flickering grey glow, Glasvegas ease in to Flowers And Football Tops, blinding the crowd with backlights and strobes before plunging us back into the swampy gloom for the track’s heartbroken closing bars of You Are My Sunshine.

Powerful

Lonesome Swan’s icy cymbal positively shivers and **** You It’s Over, from their new Christmas album A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like A Kiss), proves frontman James Allan to be quite adept at irony: "The next song’s called **** You It’s Over," he says. "It’s lovely."

It’s a mercy they sound so dense and powerful because they’re far from a visual treat.

Caroline McKay is the most interesting spectacle – a standing drummer who pounds her minimalist kit with palpable zeal – while Rab Allan and Paul Donohue keep the sides busy, twisting in ever-decreasing circles beneath strings of red bulbs (pleasingly, as if a deliberate statement on the band’s fragility, not all the bulbs work).

But it’s their enigmatic singer that draws the eye. Without his trademark Ray-Bans, he stands rigid and stares confrontationally through the dry ice, as if to say, ‘I’ve written this ****, now you do your bit’.

Attitude

The crowd do, hollering their way through Geraldine – the band’s breakthrough single, which sounds infinitely more vital than its recorded cousin.

Risking it all, they throw in Allan’s solo number, Ice Cream Van – a mass of untethered feedback and attitude – before jerking the place back into action with a thumping version of early single Go Square Go.

Kept for the encore, Daddy’s Gone finally gets the crowd bellowing like they’re in the terraces.

"He’s go-an, he’s go-an, he’s go-an, he’s gooooo-an, woo-oh-oooh-oh," they chant in their best Glaswegianese, leaving Allan beating his chest in mutual gratification.

It’s a line that’s destined to become the response to a red card down Celtic Park. I might even put my right arm on that. 

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