I’ve heard bands complain about Glasgow crowds in the past.  In much the same way Glasgow bands tend to find Edinburgh audiences eerily quiet, a lot of Edinburgh bands can find gig-goers in Glasgow inattentive, particularly when the music in question is quiet.

Well, if you want quiet, brittle music, you won’t find much that is more so than Josh T. Pearson or Perfume Genius.  I have seen both in Glasgow in the last year and with both performers the audiences have been absolutely, completely and utterly silent, absolutely in thrall to the fragile music being played for them.

It can be a difficult thing, I assume, playing intense songs with quite difficult, personal subject matter to an audience of strangers.  One of my friends at the Perfume Genius gig at the Captain’s Rest said that she kind of wished he had played alone, instead of with a couple of extra players to add some minimal backing.  I can see what she means, but that would of course mean stripping away what little remains of the cushion between performer and audience, and whilst I can imagine that would make for a captivating show, I am not sure I could really ask any musician to open themselves up that much that regularly for the purposes of my entertainment.

As it is, you can tell Mike Hadreas is not at his most comfortable on stage.  His performance is absolutely excellent, but his one attempt to chat with the crowd showed that it wasn’t something that came all that naturally. It might have been a feeble attempt at chat, strictly speaking, but it was honest and without artifice, so however meagre, it still helped us connect with Hadreas as a performer a little better.

That was a relief, because given he was sitting down to play the piano at a venue with a very low stage, it was actually quite difficult to get much feel for him as a person.  Unless you were right up the front you really couldn’t see him at all, so the night felt just a little bit like a bunch of people standing in a crowded room to listen to the same record.

A little paradoxically, one of the other strange things to contend with was the very existence of performers playing the music.  Given how ethereal and elusive the Perfume Genius albums are, it seemed almost shocking to see three normal guys there in front of us playing, as if it were entirely unremarkable for them to be doing so.  And the Captain’s Rest seemed like an odd place for this all to be happening.  I can imagine the band playing an intimate house gig or in some stunning old edifice in Edinburgh for example, but a run of the mill, workaday gig venue in Glasgow just seemed a little incongruous.  Too normal, somehow.

And having said all that, you’d think I wasn’t that into the gig wouldn’t you, but that’s really not the case.  I really noticed these odd little things, but in general it was a cracking show.  The band may have numbered only three but they fleshed out the songs beautifully, and their restraint was a pleasure to witness; never trampling over songs which need air to breathe and silence to break.

I can easily imagine this being difficult music to translate to a live setting actually, but in this case it was gorgeous.  Perhaps less icy and mysterious than on record, but that was replaced by a warmth which I will confess I hadn’t quite seen there before.

Perfume Genius – Lookout, Lookout

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Perfume Genius – All Waters

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When I lived in Glasgow, back between 1994 and 1999, the Captain’s Rest was a shitty-looking Rangers pub with the sort of forbidding exterior and clientele that meant I never stepped inside once in the four years I lived virtually next door to the place. It’s all been spruced up now, although the exterior still isn’t exactly what I’d call welcoming, and is in the process of reinventing itself as a rather snappy little venue with a consistent knack for good underground lineups.

Going to a gig in what is basically the basement of a pub the first thing that struck me was the price: £7.50 are you fucking joking? For a small band with barely a single four-song release to their name? Well it turns out it was something of a bargain.

We missed a good deal of Davie Fiddle, the openers, because we were upstairs guzzling beer, but the three or four songs that we did hear were excellent. It’s quite a staple of the indie scene at the moment: four posh boys playing folky music with an old-time English fiddle sound, but these guys were excellent. Listening to their MySpace page, the charm of the music doesn’t seem to quite come across in the recorded version, but believe me that they are worth seeing live. Dylan and I thought Phil was playing a viola at first, the sound of it was so deep, but apparently it’s just a normal fiddle. Did they say there was a string missing, to make that distinctive sound? They may have, but I was drunk and I don’t remember that clearly.
Davie Fiddle – Chasing Reason

Next came a brief interlude from Derek Meins, ostensibly there simply as a compere, he stood up with the Mumford lads as his backing band and played a brief but brilliant set of country, folky, bluesy, gospelly crazy music. His contorted, evangelical delivery was superb, and I can hardly believe I’ve not heard anything about this guy before. His album, for sale at the gig, has been licensed to Sony BMG thought, so clearly someone has. Again, I find myself not loving the album as much as the live show just yet, but give me time. And if you get the chance to see this lad, defintely, definitely do it.
Derek Meins – The Gin Song (Yes, the Gin Song – I should make this the official Song, by Toad anthem!)

And finally, on to the main attraction. I’d pretty much have been happy with the value for my £7.50 already at this point, but to add cherries to the top of the sundae, Marcus Mumford and his Minions were absolutely superb as well. The performance itself was tight as hell – absolutely perfectly executed, and with easily enough Big Pop grandeur mixed into the indie-folk to suggest that these guys really do have the capacity to become very, very big indeed. I make no claim to knowing how these sorts of chains of events are set off of course, nor how much luck is involved, but I am getting to the stage now where I am confident enough to say so when I think I hear the potential for a band to make an impact outside the confines of the narrow little genre in which I tend to interest myself. The music is euphoric, emotive, arresting and all the other good things you would imagine and if they can keep this up there should be plenty of excitement on the horizon. Their new (and fucking brilliant) EP is only to be found at rawrip.com at the moment, but vinyl copies should be available soon.
Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page