Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

at the
HMV Institute 07th May 2011

I'm slightly perplexed and mildly surprised. Glasvegas haven't sold out here at the HMV Institute tonight. For why? Anyway this is not an imponderable that I need to fathom and reconcile as I skulk into the darkness of the auditorium and find the darkest corner of all in which to hide.

Support came in the form of three blokes with drums, bass and guitar, and a gal with a mic called FOE (or Hannah Clark). Live FOE came over like nothing more than indie writ large. The sort of fodder that only a tiny clique of indie bloggers, indie blaggers and indie music journalists could disingenuously purport to love. Or am I being unfair? Anyway though FOE didn't do enough to totally shake me from my sleeping slumbers (even after 5 Red Alerts) they did do enough on onstage at the Institute to make me listen to their stuff HERE. It may have been more out of desperation than anything else but still they'd forced me to take an interest.

You see with the slow, certain and deeply disheartening demise of my generation of women I sometimes wonder whether there are ever going to be woman like Ari Up, Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux, Gaye Advert or Pauline Murray ever again. Or whether we are destined to only have a female perspective in music from those who talk dumb whilst jiggling about half naked. Listening to FOE's stuff online made me like them slightly more, it's apparent that they are not yet fully formed and they've not got a fully functioning compass either, but there's certainly enough going on here to make me believe that the struggle for FOE is definitely not futile.

Now since we saw Glasvegas last they're new album EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\ has been pulled off the shelves of the virtual music stores of this nation and placed into the mits of music loving bods, in enough numbers to get them briefly into the Top10 UK album charts. As far as I'm concerned EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\ is certainly not any of the following. It's not a soformore follow up to the Glasvegas debut. I read a review online the other day where the reviewer (twat) described it as such - EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\ is about as far away from a soformore LP as you can get. Also EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\ is definitely not an awkward second album - it's a well conceived stand alone piece - a classic album that people will be listening to for many years to come. But still James Allan & Glasvegas don't seem to be brimming over with spit & swagger, in fact self deprecation and self effacement seem to be the order of the day. Tonight midway through the set Allan said to the packed in punters "We're going to do a track from the new album now so you might want to go to the bar and get yourself a drink". Let's hope these introspective moments of old buck soon pass cos with the introduction of the new from EUPHORIC Glasvegas now have got a much more rounded and solid set list.

Tonight it was almost an equal measure from both albums "Pain Pain, Never Again", "The World Is Yours", "It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry", "You", "Lonesome Swan", "Shine Like Stars", "Whatever Hurts You Through The Night" (see clip), "Ice Cream Van", "Geraldine", "Euphoria, Take My Hand", "Go Square Go" - Encore - "Flowers & Football Tops", "S.A.D. Light", "Lots Sometimes" and "Daddy's Gone" - or something like that. There was also a brief snatch of "Heartbreaker" written by the The Bee Gees (and made listenable by Dionne Warwick), prior to the heartbreak found in "Euphoria, Take My Hand". Folk oscillated to the bits that needed oscillating to, sung along to the bits that needed to be sung a long to, and then begrudgingly vacated the Institute in the teeth of a huge monsoon like deluge engulfing and drowning every part of Birmingham. Once back in the damp serenity of my car I shoved on the EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\, it got me part the way home, through the darkness and into the light, so? Where to next?