My third gig of this years Summer Night season (if you count the pre-Summer Nights warm up up with Alcatraz, Awful Eyes & Leisureland) and all bands on the bill were a first for me, buying a ticket having heard great things about so boring. live gigs and being addicted to Limerence’s debut single She Bites since its release.
As always with these gigs… well pretty much any gig… I was in position ready for the first band. That’s one of the things I love about these multi band bills, half hour sets with a quick turnaround between so there’s no hanging around for ages. It’s like a tasting menu, you never know when you might sample one of your new favourite dishes and want to investigate further, but if there’s a band you don’t quite like the flavour of, it’s not long until the next course comes along. I’m always a bit incredulous and perhaps a bit peeved when some folks only come along to see one band on the bill. I mean, I get it, they’ve come to see a particular band for whatever personal reasons, but at least give the other bands a chance…
Anyway, that wasn’t a problem for me tonight, turning up with an open mind, ready and willing to enjoy whatever new aural pleasures were laid out in front of me.
Tonights Amuse-bouche was Late Night Getaway Drivers who didn’t waste any time in flooring the accelerator with a set of passionate high energy alt-rock demonstrating a range of influences from spiky post punk through deftones/punk era Beastie Boys and veering into soaring melodic indie rock, the vocals always delivered with an impassioned vigour, like on the high energy romp that is their debut single Heard It On the Radio. An indicator of their influences came from the covers in their set, for the auld yins in the audience there was a ferocious take on Gang of Four’s Damaged Goods, a delicious version of Le Tigre’s Deceptacon and with an extra morsel added onto the end of their set in the shape of Fontaine DC’s A Heroes Death. Look out for their second single, which was another of their set highlights, Want to Know, out on the 7th August.
Bouche well and truly amused, it was down to four piece Bed to provide the appetiser and continue to satisfy the palate with their delectable aural flavours… A band I was completely unfamiliar with until I bought a ticket for this show, so had no idea what to expect, but boy did they put in a show…the first two songs in their set had an intensely dramatic and exotically compelling Eastern feel to their melody, a harder, heavier Kashmir if you will, with plenty of guitar hero rock star poses. Mid set saw them go all brooding and glitchy with one of my favourites from their set, the moodily breathless Itchy Eyes. For me though, their set highlight was still to come in the shape of Easy (?) – I did take some notes in my phone but was clearly typing with fat fingers and didn’t check the notes actually made sense or were spelt correctly – this one had a slow burner of an intro with bluesy guitar twangs, and a baseline like the bastard child of Waterfront and Black Velvet, the band together creating a cool, laidback groove. At times there was a feel of the dark majesty of The Filthy Tongues when their bass player took on the vocals, before the song built to it’s feverishly boisterous apex. Things weren’t done yet though as they closed their set in style with their latest single the epic Harder They Fall.
The far from boring so boring. went on to serve up the sumptuous entrée to an enthusiastically fervent response from the front row. Before they took to the stage, I noticed the guitar sitting in the corner that reminded me of a transphobe I saw the day before… on the day of Pride in Glasgow. A grown man in a t-shirt bearing the slogan I ❤️ JK Rowling. I may be doing him a disservice but I doubt it, this wasn’t a child or a teenager, probably a bloke my age. If I hadn’t been in a moving car I’d probably have got myself in trouble… I’m sure he knew exactly what he was doing on that specific day, I don’t understand these vile haters. Anyway, kudos to so boring and bands like them, as the saying goes “Existence is Resistance.” Off my soap box and back to the music, so boring’s music was like a time machine for me, taking me back to my more youthful days of being absorbed by the shoegaze scene. The band aren’t shy and retiring by any means, theirs is certainly not the light ethereal type of dreamy shoegaze. Yes Amelia’s vocals might channel the likes of Hope Sandoval or even Beth from flinch. (Maybe it’s a lowercase with a full stop at the end of their name thing) while singing about washing machines and choir teachers, but musically they are like a high-octane fuelled juggernaut laying waste to everyone and everything in their wake like Son of Mustang Ford era Swervedriver meets the face melting volume of mbv with a smattering of heavily distorted Dinosaur Jr slacker grunge riffs, as they followed the loud quiet loud aesthetic by bands like the one on Amelia’s t-shirt, Pixies. There was much hair flailing, both on the stage and in the front row as the quartet breenged through their set with a furiously sparkling exuberance, while creating a searing wall of blistering noise. The set highlights for me were a fierce as fuck magnolia and the multi-textured sacrifice, which features on their new e.p. misery made me a fiend, which of course I snapped up after the gig with the CD having the added bonus of a live recording of their recent Leith Depot gig. “Fucking phenomenal” screamed someone from the barrier, a sentiment I can’t disagree with.
And finally it is was time for the plat du jour in the form of headliners Limerence, having bought the ticket on the strength of their debut single She Bites, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the rest of their set, but I’m pleased to say I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Like bed earlier in the evening, Limerence is a quartet of guitar, bass, drums with a vocalist on synth & programming. While there were similarities running through all the bands (including a shared drummer for Late Night Getaway Drivers and so boring.) each of them channeled their own distinct take on a variety of genres. For Limerence there were several genres they brought to the table, early in the set they blended elements of ethereal goth with dark folk undertones, including some suitably elegantly diaphanous dancing from Jade, with a heavy bass rumble, and lyrics that followed that shadowy gothic theme including Take Me to My Grave and the “existential dread” of Carousel. As the set progressed, the songs got harder and heavier as they led up to an ebullient cover of Wolf Alice track Formidable Cool. From that cover onwards things got really rowdy, Jade switching things up with her menacing howl on the brilliant She Bites. This was the unleashing of the heavier grunge tinged numbers and the electrifying and pointedly incisive ear bleeding guitar playing continued into Baby Teeth, which turned up the thunder and the grit even further before they closed their set with a jubilant Rejoice Don’t Weep. A fantastic end to a brilliant evening.
I walked away from Tuts fully sated after that smorgasbord of music and happy to have broken my duck on another four bands, all of whom I’d definitely head out to see again given the opportunity. Happy days.