The June bank holiday weekend is always something of a crush, with bands playing all over the city and W&H usually adopting a 'dive in and absorb' mentality and trying to sort out a schedule ekeing out space for luxuries like food and sleep. This Monday night climax is no exception as we forego The La's comeback to get here early for what promises to be one of the indie pairings of the year.
So it's not unfair to say expectation runs high inside Cyprus Avenue tonight, and in terms of first impressions, it looks as though Glasgow's SONS AND DAUGHTERS will truly deliver. I mean, they look magnificent for a start: no jeans and trainers for this lot, it's all silky black cocktail dresses for the ladies and shirts, waistcoats and slicked hair for the gents and in terms of sartorial elegance, SAD have got it cracked before they play a note.
Initially, when they start it seems the promise may be fulfilled, too. Their new album "The Repulsion Box" comes with rave advance notices and they start with the malignant folk of "Choked" from it, which sounds roughly akin to The Ramones wielding mandolins on Sauchiehall Street in the heart of Saturday night. Ace. Trouble is, it's also pretty much the sound of Sons And Daughters shooting their load.
Because, frankly, most of the rest of the set is the sound of a regulation indie band trying their damnedest to be different, and they just can't hack it. Yes, elements of their oeuvre seem to work individually: Scott Patterson's militant, junior Andy Gill guitar splatches cut through with a clean kill, and his sexy and effervescent co-leader Adele Bethel is capable of whipping the laddies down the front into a frenzy whether she's shaking a tambourine, sawing at a Telecaster or simply pulling shapes, but despite the stagecraft, Sons And Daughters never sound like they're half as dangerous as the psychopaths their songs gleefully describe.
There are a couple of exceptions, certainly. "Ramalama" genuinely sounds enigmatic and murderous and finds Scott and Adele actually complementing each other in call and response terms rather than shrieking against each other as they seem to do most of the time. "Blood", too (I think this is the title, though guts, larceny and skullduggery seem to top the agenda all the time anyway) finds them making a decent stab at a cresecendo-seeking grand finale, but somehow it's all too little too late, and when your reviewer finds the small things irritating him - like the way the bassist glugs snottily from her beer during EVERY intro - then he knows a band ain't cutting the Colman's.
Suitably disappointed, then, we back away to regroup, but the preparations for BRITISH SEA POWER'S set again begin to pique our interest and we begin to sniff good things in the air. Literally, actually, because their road crew's first job is to festoon the stage with all manner of trees, pot plants and foliage in general. The aroma of geenery soon pervades the room and when BSP guitarist Noble himself swings around the speakers constructing an awning of twigs over the stage, you get the feeling this will be a night to savour after all.
And once again first impressions are magnificent. The Brighton boys troop on with their junior Dad's army-in-civvies image all present and correct and bassist Hamilton wearing a crown of ...well, twigs rather than thorns, really, but suffice it to say he looks fantastic. Meanwhile, in brother Yan, the band have a literate, charismatic frontman, admittedly one with a slightly maniacal gleam in his eye.
All extremely good, but from the ear-splitting scree of the opening instrumental, it's clear BSP don't want to give us an easy ride. Oh,OK... I hadn't been expecting that. Imagine the drone and headrush that permeates epic new album closer "True Adventures" drawn out for what seems an aeon and you're getting close. Hmm. The second coming of My Bloody Valentine wasn't something we'd bargained for tonight.
And it's all the more frustrating when you consider that BSP are sitting on arguably one of the year's very best albums in "Open Season": a record they seem to reluctant to plunder tonight. This seems a perverse state of affairs to say the least, especially when they do reluctantly lay into its' best moments they DO truly sound like world-beaters.
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"It Ended On An Oily Stage", for example, comes early on and perks things up considerably, with the whole band playing a blinder and Yan's throaty, keening vocals flowing beautifully over the top. The song's storyline, with its' images of finding "God in a Wiltshire field" are more than enough to get me onside immediately. I could also love them to bits for the way the song blasts into life to the sound of roaring waves.
It's a trick they repeat to great effect several times, with the distant cries of gulls heralding the arrival of a magical "Be Gone": surely the greatest song ever to mention the words "ventricles" and "iridescent sheen" in its' lyrics. It's at times like these when the breathless advance notices of BSP being deserving of mention in the same exalted company as the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen or Joy Division actually appear warranted.
It happens again with a tremendous "Please Stand Up", where all the elements click to perfection. The band build the song with a delicious precision, Noble's guitar work is nigh-on Godlike and Yan and Hamilton positively luxuriate in that gorgeously sad and defiant chorus. It's followed by a demonic "Spirit Of St.Louis" where Yan relieves himself of his guitar and suffuses himself in the spirit of Iggy Pop to deliver the song from the speaker stack stage left.
Inevitably, though, the evening's pinnacle arrives courtesy of "Oh Larsen B", when BSP pull out all the stops. Spinning into life around shimmering cymbals and Hamilton's snaky basslines, this vast, melancholic love song to a collapsed ice shelf in the Antarctic sounds like an unlikely premise for one of indie rock's 2005 highlights, but when played with this much power, precision and attack, it sounds utterly astonishing. Indeed, when Yan delivers that line "You've had 12,000 years and now it's all over", your reviewer's heart melts as easily as the pack ice he describes.
So, it's frustrating beyond belief to reveal that just as BSP have it in their grasp, they perversely feel the need to throw it all away. The fact they feel it necessary to parade inferior earlier material over the likes of "Like A Honeycomb" and "Victorian Ice" is criminal enough, but when they lurch into a ghastly improvised affair with Yan barking like a performing seal down his mic and Hamilton wandering around with his mic actually in his mouth, it's more than W&H can take, especially when it goes on for what appears to be approximately 10,000 years. Guys, c'mon: if I'd wanted to go see Einsturzende Neubauten, I'd have been at the ICA in 1984 when they got the concrete mixers out.
It's a woefully disappointing conclusion to the night and W&H exit in disgust. Yeah, we could've missed a treat with the encores, but with our brains already scrambled, it somehow didn't seem right to wait around as British Sea Power attempt to further desecrate their good name. Your reviewer is irked this morning: he felt he should have been bigging up a dreadnought-sized indie flagship but instead he's scuttling a rusty corvette. And he's no intention of going down with the ship either.
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