Category: Kiss This

House Guest Festival 2025 – Review

April 14, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

In 2024, the inaugural House Guest Festival was such a roaring success, I had high hopes and expectations for this years event. My hopes were most definitely not dashed as Scottish Music Collective & Crowded Flat pulled off another cracker of an event, planned perfectly and executed with a pinpoint precision, with timings being a major factor in events such as this, everything flowed as gracefully as as a swam gliding across water, but I’m sure this meant no end of unseen frantic exertion behind the scenes. Kudos to all involved.

Count the Days


The Sankaras opened proceedings in Sleazys, but my starter for 10 for the day was a furiously energetic Count the Days.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – February – Part 4

April 9, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

The Gorgeous Pouting Mr AR ft. Carla J Easton – Hands in the Air

Hands in the Air feels like a dancefloor smash akin to a Scottish Murder on the Dancefloor, or along the lines of a banging Moloko track, whatever the comparison I may be trying to make, the song has a huge sound, with a real (showing my age here) disco sound, and when you cap that off with the distinctive vocals of a distinguished Ms Carla J Easton, you’re onto a winner.

The Gorgeous Pouting Mr AR

Second City Sin – Morose

Morose has a strong driving rhythm with plenty of intensely ardent riffs, paired with a suitably passionate and earnest vocal delivery befitting of a song with such a title.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – February – Part 3

March 29, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

The Mushroom Club – Afraid

Trippy psych sounds abound on February single Afraid from Glasgow based garage rock band The Mushroom Club.

The Mushroom Club

Pales – Uppercut

Uppercut comes from French alt-rockers Pales latest EP, Crush. Both the title of the EP and single are appropriate adjectives to describe the sound of the band, the crushing intensity of the guitar riffs and the layering of vocals and instruments on the single coming together in a glorious melee and rising to a knockout crescendo

Pales

Self Esteem – 69

Perhaps not one to add to your workplace playlists, as Self Esteem celebrates every sexual position imaginable but draws the line at….… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – February – Part 2

March 28, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Mark W. Georgsson – Tripping With You

Mark W. returned in February with this boisterously energetic slice of cosmic psychedelia, Georgsson will play his first gig since 2022 supporting Brownbear in Coatbridge.

Mark W. Georgsson

flinch. – i heard monogamy and the patriarchy are best of friends (and Tennyson wrote that poem about his best friend)

Winning the February prize for longest song title is the always wonderful flinch. I heard… is a prime example of what flinch. do best, making their point quietly and assertively, thought provoking lyrics paired with gentle guitar riffs and sung in the familiar hushed tones are interspersed with excerpts of an interview with Avril Lavigne.… Read the rest

Three n Eights – Leopard Print Hearts – Album launch gig – Audio

March 24, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Photographs of Corrupt Intentions, Rudebeard and Three n Eights courtesy of Chris Hogge Photography

Yeah, yeah, I know the old cliche, when that gig you’ve just been to is brilliant, nay, the best ever because it’s the one that’s on the forefront on your mind. When you’re on the way home and the memories are still fresh, the adrenaline is still pumping through you and the dopamine high is real, you feel like you can take on the world. We’ve all been there, and we’d all agree that feeling is palpable. All too often though that it is a fleeting feeling, the moment is gone after a short while and, boom, you’re back down to earth with a bang the next morning as reality hits and the vagaries of life return with a vengeance.… Read the rest

The Wildhearts – Glasgow Garage – The Satanic Rites Tour

March 15, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

All photographs courtesy of Chris Hogge Photography.


My gig going has been somewhat curtailed recently, with tickets going to waste for several events due to, what’s that diplomatic phrase again…circumstances beyond my control… let’s leave it at that. I suppose there is a certain irony in that. Life has been really stressful recently and one of the things that relieves the stresses of life is the first thing that seemed to  fall through the cracks. 

I’m not gonna lie, but for several reasons, I hasten to add, none of them to do with music, gigs or The Wildhearts, I wasn’t particularly relishing going out after an infernally early start, a long day and a drive home that also meant missing both of the nights support bands. … Read the rest

Three ‘n’ Eights – Leopard Print Hearts – album review

March 6, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

I believe I once commented in a live review something along the lines of Three ‘n’ Eights being the ultimate party starters, a band that will have your foot tapping from the very first note, but more importantly by the end of their set you’ll no longer be in control of yer dancin’ feet.

I mean, part of that might be the levels of drink imbibed on occasion, but all joking aside, I challenge even the soberest of souls not to find their feet moving of their own accord, and unconscious smiles breaking out across the most miserable of faces while listening to the fourteen slices of rabble rousing anthems from this gallus group who never fail to bring the shenanigans to the shindig.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – January – Part 8

March 2, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

The bumper final part of the January singles round up… including a link to the playlist for all January’s singles.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Stitches

As another taster for their forthcoming album Death Hilarious following up last years Detroit, the Black Sabbath-esque pulsating doom metal throb of Stitches is a tempting aural amuse-bouche, whetting the appetite for what auricular delights the album will serve up.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

Ian Donaldson – Just Another Rock n Roll Song

January’s offering from the ex H2O frontman comes from his latest album, Dreams From Tenement Land, Just Another Rock n Roll Song once again focuses on a subject familiar to his solo work, with Donaldson in reflective mood once more, this joyous celebration of life and music, looking back on his love for Glam Rock, glamming away his Saturday nights, the impact and influences on him in his youth forming the basis for his career in music.… Read the rest

Hens Bens – World’s Strongest Band – Album Review

February 23, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Do you miss off the wall 70s eccentrics Devo? Do you yearn for the cartoon rave-punk of Hadouken!? Are the three Michael’s (and The Shoe of course!) of Slime City one of your favourite live bands? Do you revel in the music of Glasgow legends The Mickey 9’s? If you answered “yes” to any, or all, of the above, then your new favourite band comes in the form of the anarchic comic-nihilism of Hens Bens.

The bands genre-bending debut album is World’s Strongest Band, thirteen tracks of chaotic electro-punk pandemonium. You could equally change one of the vowels in the album title and it would be equally true, the music being so radically leftfield in its offbeat eccentricity, and with some riotously outlandish lyrical tales meaning its general weirdness causes a wide grin to spread across this listener’s face.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – January – Part 7

February 22, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Vampire Slumber Party – Polka King Of the Midwest

Part seven begins with a joyous blast of full throttle pop punk in the form of this boisterous three minute anthem from London based Vampire Slumber Party, it’s like the early noughties all over again.

Vampire Slumber Party

Gypsy Pistoleros – Whatever Happened to the Old Town

Another earnest glam punk rocker from the greasepaint daubed Gypsy Pistoleros, the lyrics initially yearning for time gone by, before the mid song tempo rise tells a different story “I ran away from the old town” sings Gypsy Lee Postolero, before the song closes out in more meditative mood as he ruminates about “home”.… Read the rest