Glasvegas Review

Barfly, Cardiff
Mon 23 Sept 2008

I used to relish ripping the piss out of my older brother’s taste in music during his student days, circa mid-eighties. His Bauhaus / Siouxie / Cocteau Twins t-shirts, winklepickers and bouffant hairdo were a constant source of amusement to me, a 13-year-old Beastie Boys fan. Now, as I find myself shoulder-to-shoulder in a sold-out Barfly with fellow thirtysomethings tentatively awaiting new gloomsters on the block, Glasvegas, I wonder if I’ll finally get the joke.
The sharp shoes and big hair may be absent from the audience, but as Glaswegians James Allen and co amble onto the stage in black to a deafening hum of muted feedback and build into Flowers And Football Tops, you’d be hard pressed to find a more iconic tribute to dark romanticism on a Monday night.
You’d also be forgiven for sneering that Glasvegas’s image is the result of blending the most successful conglomerate of said genre, and indeed the boxes are ticked in terms of fuzzy samples, soaring guitars and thin, barely audible beats, but the haunting result capped with sunglass-donning frontman Allen’s monotone chants is something to behold.
Most of the tracks from their debut album get a deserved airing, against blinding, pulsing lights and terrace pogoing. It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry and Geraldine are obvious highlights, but after some minor PA trouble is sorted and a few pissed punters get dealt with, set closer Daddy’s Gone sums up the Glasvegas experience: stories from street level told with utter believability and inviting you – yes, you – to sing as if it’s your last night on Earth.
My apologies, big brother, it appears you may have been on to something.

To be published in the October 2008 issue of Buzz Magazine