It feels like The Courettes have a bucket list aiming to play every venue in Glasgow. Having seen them in a whole host of places over the years, I have to say that this set in Stereo was up there with the best.
Support came from The Lotts who supported The Courettes when they played Room 2 in 2024. The band appear to have come on in leaps and bounds since that gig, their raucous serving of 1960s influenced garage punk songs was played with such a ferocious energy it would have blistered paint off the walls of Stereo if indeed there had been any left. There was no rest from the full on aural assault with minimal talk from the stage,the band using every second of their allotted time to steam through their set taking no prisoners and I’m sure winning a host of new fans along the way. Their debut album is coming later in the year, and on the evidence of their high adrenaline set it will be a sure fire winner.
I never tire of seeing The Courettes perform, the hardest gigging duo in music throw everything into their theatrical performances and this gig was no exception. They never fail to bring a smile to my face and from the moment they took to the stage in Stereo to them taking their final bows I’m sure I had a Cheshire Cat sized grin splitting my face, apart from when I was singing along to their infectious, punk attitude fuelled, garage soul crowd-pleasers. Kicking off with You Woo Me, the woo-ing came from the Danish/Brazilian duo themselves as they wasted no time in their rabble-rousing and had the fervent Stereo crowd eating out the palms of their hands from the get go. It was an impossible feat to stand still for longer than the few seconds between songs, as the music took control, and they hit us with a steady stream of powerhouse showstoppers. I say steady stream but it was more like a strafing stream of machine gun fire, an unrelenting barrage of pounding drums and fuzz laden riffs.
Each time you thought things couldn’t get better, they pulled off another master stroke, their incendiary performance increasing the intensity and the sense of theatre. The heat in the venue reached boiling point (I could probably still wring a pint of sweat out of my t-shirt this morning) with Until You’re Mine, Want You Like a Cigarette, Night Time, Better Without You and Misfits and Freaks amongst a smorgasbord of songs from across their catalogue that ignited a passion that spread like wildfire throughout the room. I particularly let loose when they played one of my personal favourites, Hop the Twig, spontaneously pogoing for a brief moment before my body reminded me of my age… This was just the start of their big finale with Flavia crowd surfing, and for a change I wasn’t front and centre so finally got a chance to observe the spectacle from a distance rather then being right below her. Their double whammy to close the set triumphantly came with a euphoric take on the best song (in my opinion) from their Soul of.. album, Keep Dancing, and a vociferously energetic Shake before they took their final bows and left the stage leaving behind a battered and bruised but glowing (I think that’s the polite way of saying sweaty…) and wide-eyed crowd in their wake.
Let’s do it all again next year…
