Indie - The Ginger Quiff

Pizza Crunch, Vansleep, Tina Sandwich & Static – Summer Sessions live in King Tuts

August 28, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

I used to be a regular visitor to Tuts, but my visits now seem to be few and far between. I first ventured there when it was still called Saints and Sinners for a 40th birthday party, attended the opening night as King Tuts Wah Wah Hut (before half of last nights audience was born probably…) and I’ve been to some pretty special nights there over the years – Suede, Radiohead supporting Kingmaker, Scamheads (secret Skunk Anansie show), Trashcan Sinatras, Fatima Mansions…the list goes on. I’m what you could call a long in the tooth gig goer now, or just old, but that doesn’t mean I just go to gigs by what i hear called ”heritage” acts (who makes these things up?)… Read the rest

Collars – Clyde – album review

August 26, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

I’ve been a fan of Collars since the came to my attention with their 2021 single Over You, their fourth single. With each single since, they have piqued my interest more and more, honing their sound and creating a series of indispensable and compelling releases in the process. I’d been crying out for an album full of these addictive songs, so when I received the email with the forthcoming album, Clyde, attached I downloaded it at breakneck speed with an irascibly skittish exhilaration. Well, as speedily as my aging laptop would allow at least…

I’ll come back to that stirring and vivacious music shortly.… Read the rest

Sloan Brothers – System Update – album review

August 24, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

I made a rash statement about Sloan Brothers earlier this year after hearing the first single from this album. I said that if the rest of the album was as good, it was destined to be one of my favourite albums of the year. Turns out my radar was on point, as System Update has become one of my most played albums of the year, so it has been extremely remiss of me not to have featured it in some way before now. Time to redeem myself.

Athens, Georgia is already responsible for one of the most successful bands to come out of the USA, which just so happen to be up there with my most beloved bands, and is home to R Sloan Simpson who, having documented and recorded music over the twenty years previously, suddenly had nothing to do during 2020/21 following the decimation of the live music scene.… Read the rest

Brat Coven, Brenda & Dusk Amadeus – live in The Hug and Pint

August 7, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

My working week last week was bookended by two of the Endless Summer nights in the Hug and Pint, the latter featuring the darkly gothic shoegaze of Dusk Amadeus, the utter joy that is the experience of a Brenda show, and the first headline show for the angry riot grrrl punks, Brat Coven.

Dusk Amadeus

Events were conspiring to have me miss this gig, having firstly to turn for home realising I’d forgotten my wallet, then eventually getting to the station to discover my train was cancelled. Thankfully though, although I missed the start of Dusk Amadeus set, i did catch the second half.… Read the rest

Lemon Drink, flinch., Sacred Noise & Miss the Occupier – Live in the Hug and Pint

August 1, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

What better way to avoid the Sunday night blues than to attend a gig in one of my favourite little Glasgow venues with four (count em!) brilliant bands. Part of the series of the Endless Summer gigs in the venue, the line up was set to make this a very special night, and one which stuck two fingers up to the festivals that continue to lean heavily on white male guitar bands (says the aging white male who can’t play the guitar… but ), a fact which did not pass flinch. by… making a tongue in cheek comment about the line up being made up of white female electric guitar bands instead… Seriously though, on a night where England and Germany were battling it out in the women’s Euro’s, well done England… it was refreshing to be at a gig where male band members were outnumbered 2 to 1.… Read the rest

Keeley – Drawn to the Flame – mini album review

June 9, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

Drawn to the Flame… an excellent description of the music of Keeley. From the moment I heard their first track, The Glitter & the Glue, I have been drawn to the hypnotic quality of the indie dream pop music and specifically to the burning passion lead singer and guitarist Keeley Moss has for the subject matter of her songs.

Keeley is an extraordinary and unique recording artist in so many ways. None more so than the fact that the subject of all the songs she writes is German backpacker, Inga Maria Hauser, who was murdered on her dream trip between Scotland and Ireland in 1988, somewhere between leaving Scotland and arriving in Ireland.… Read the rest

The Courettes – Daydream

June 9, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

The ”Fabulous” Courettes hit McChuills in Glasgow this weekend for what is certain to be one of the most explosive gigs of the year. Prepare to be blown away by the wall of sound that is sure to be served up by husband and wife duo Martin and Flavia Couri.

If you haven’t got your ticket yet, or indeed for any of the other remaining dates on the tour, what the hell are you waiting for?

Ahead of the gig, the band have released a video for the lead track on their recent mini album Back in Mono B Sides and Outtakes reviewed here

Flavia Couri: ””Daydream” is a living picture of our state of mind in the last couple of years.… Read the rest

Run Into The Night/Jemma Freeman and the Cosmic Something – live

May 29, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

Sometimes things are worth the wait.

in a week where I personally had an intense release of pressure after finally delivering the pilot of a training programme that has been delayed for years not months due to COVID, Run Into the Night and Jemma Freeman and the Cosmic Something finally got to play their gig in Broadcast. And what a gig it was to, a celebration of all that is good about live music, a coming together of like minded souls, a common stream of consciousness if you like, basically, with an emphasis on having a good time.

We arrived too late to see the first support Fog Bandit, who appeared to have gone down well with the assembled throng.… Read the rest

Run Into the Night – Common Stream of Consciousness – single review

April 28, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

One of the Ginger Quiff’s “22 for ’22”, the revamped Run Into the Night release the first single recorded as the new 2 piece with Christina on guitar and vox and long term friend and collaborator Andrew (also of Powderkeg) on drums, with additional backing vox from Steven Young.

The result of their hard work is the addictively compelling Common Stream of Consciousness which will be available to purchase (or stream) tomorrow, and infiltrate your own consciousness, lodging itself firmly there and refusing to budge.

Hulking great dirty crunching riffs from Christina accompanied by a vigorous thunder of drums from Andrew herald the arrival of this deeply resonant rumbling growl of a tune.… Read the rest

James Domestic – Carrion Repeating – album review

April 20, 2022 By neilho27@sky.com

James Domestic (James Scott) isn’t one to rest on his laurels. The frontman of hardcore punk band, The Domestics, he has a list of other bands/side projects the length of your arm, Carrion Repeating is his first solo offering which he describes as “post-punk pop music for weirdos”.

Swagger

How would I describe this solo project? Let me try… To me the album lives in a place somewhere between the cockney geezer swagger of Ian Dury, living in a world of John Cooper Clarke observational poetry and all bundled up with a soundtrack like the coming together of The Fall and Sleaford Mods.… Read the rest