Music, Issue 603

Black Kids

INDIE King Tut’s, Glasgow, Wed 4 Jun They’re not going to teach your boyfriend how to dance with you, but tipped-for-greatness combo Black Kids are hellbent on entertaining the Tut’s crowd as part of their UK and Europe-wide tour. Speaking from…

Le Weekend

JAZZ Tolbooth, Stirling, Fri 23–Sun 25 May With Triptych now but a memory, the eclecticism of Le Weekend is brought into even sharper focus as an important vehicle for music that eludes the attention of more conventional mainstream events. This year’s…

Three Harbours Arts Festival

We’re all about the community arts festivals this week, it seems. Summer is finally coming, and we can’t think of a nicer way to spend a sunny weekend than tracking down art in unusual places. So, in East Lothian, the main premise behind the Three…

Glasgow International Jazz Festival lineup announced

Grammy–award winner Buddy Guy will headline this year's Glasgow International Jazz Festival. Guy will be joined on the bill by Birth of the Cool alto sax player Lee Konitz and Mari Wilson, best known for 80s hit 'Just What I've Always Wanted'.

Award for Annie Lennox

Annie Lennox has been honoured by The British Red Cross for her outstanding humanitarian work for families affected by HIV and AIDS. The singer will receive the British Red Cross Services to Humanity Award at a Royal Charity Gala Evening on Thursday 12…

Leith Festival

To commemorate the annual clamjamfry of community celebration way down dockward, we thought we’d treat you to a picture of everyone’s favourite Leither. Okay, everyone’s favourite fictional Leither. We’re not just gratuitously posting pictures of…

Carbon/Silicon, Hard Fi and BMRC rock the JD Set Legendary Mash

Paul Dale reports from the JD Set Legendary Mash, a very special, intimate music event at the Jack Daniel's distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.

Glasgow Americana Festival - Jason Ringenberg

If there was ever a singer who fits the dewy-eyed, British notion of Americana as thinking man’s country music, it would be Jason Ringenberg. With the social conscience of Steve Earle, the cheekbones of (a young) Johnny Cash, the punk aesthetic of Joey…

Public Enemy

HIP HOP ABC, Glasgow, Tue 27 May Do you know the one about the ahead-of-his-time internet entrepreneur, the clock-obsessed reality TV star, and the boyish looking, alleged anti-Semite? No punch line here, just excerpts from the long and vivid history…

Exposure - The Sauchiehall Crawl

For most of us, spending a night crawling down Sauchiehall Street is not an entirely new concept, but add 11 bands in three different venues for the price of one ticket to the equation, and you’ve got something pretty special. Created by Rooftop…

Ida Maria

How do you solve a problem like Maria? Don’t worry, we’re not talking about any scary Saturday night television show featuring melty-face Andrew Lloyd Webber. No, this is a much nicer problem, in fact, this Maria isn’t really a problem at all, she’s a…

Singles & Downloads

It may be happy coincidence, or just a refusal to write about the new Rascals single, but there’s only good stuff left in the pile this issue, meaning everyone deserves a big sloppy one on the lips for their efforts. Dead or American have run at…

Opera Circus: Differences in Demolitions

OPERA Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 27 & Thu 28 May; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 31 May Think of Bosnia and Herzogovina and the chances are that ethnic cleansing and bloodshed spring to mind. Yet, this Balkan country, where east meets west, has a rich…

5 Reasons To Go See - Bob Mould

Hüsker Dü - Mould was singer and guitarist with seminal American hardcore outfit Hüsker Dü. Throughout the 80s they released a string of hugely influential records including Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. Their unique blend of thrashy punk, melody and…

Various - Sub Club: 20 Years Underground

ELECTRONICA (Soma) To continue the Sub Club’s 20th birthday celebrations, Subculture’s Harri and Domenic and Optimo’s Twitch and Wilkes (the Subbie’s longest-serving residents) have been invited to compile an album which reflects the music policy that…

JD Set Legendary Mash

COMPETITION WINNERS Various venues, Tennessee, Thu 10–Sun 13 Apr Friday night’s shenanigans began with dinner at BB King’s before moving onto the Mercy Lounge for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. It was an amazing set in an intimate venue. On Saturday…

Scottish Opera: A Night at the Chinese Opera

OPERA Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Sat 19 May An afternoon at Scottish Opera was the setting for Judith Weir’s delightful A Night at the Chinese Opera. First performed in 1987 but amazingly only now receiving its premiere north of the border, the opera is…

Four Year Strong, Meg & Dia and The Colour Fred

ROCK King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu 15 May In case you missed the memo, pop punk is cool again, and judging by those on this Give It a Name festival spin off tour, beards are too. But the trouble with all four bands being rotating headliners is that…

White Rabbits

INDIE Nice’n’Sleazy, Glasgow, Fri 2 May Frightened Rabbit, Fleet Foxes, Sam Sparro – there’s a veritable woodland of new bands and artists out there at the moment, so what sets New Yorkers White Rabbits apart? The fact that they subscribe to the…

Various - Chamber Music: James Joyce (1907)

INDIE (Fire Records) As it says on the double-CD, this is a collection of 36 James Joyce love poems from 1907 interpreted by underground rock artists, some familiar – Mercury Rev, Mike Watt, Ed Harcourt or Willy Mason – others still on the fringes.

Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head

COUNTRY POP (ATCO) To consider the pedigree of actors turned musicians is to consider a whole bunch of people walking the line between self-indulgence and inpsiration: David Soul, Richard Harris, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Robert Downey…

Outhouse - Outhouse

JAZZ (Babel) LOOP collective alumni Outhouse take their name from the garden shed-cum-studio in which they developed their freely improvised approach to contemporary jazz, using compositions as frameworks for free exploration of the musical material.

Kevin MacKenzie - Chiasmus

JAZZ (Laundry Room Music) Guitarist Kevin MacKenzie’s first set of original compositions since he recorded his nine-piece Creative Scotland Award project in 2004 features a fine quartet with saxophonist Julian Argüelles, bassist Aidan O’Donnell and…

Drive-By Argument - Drive-By Argument

INDIE (Lizard King) Who says you don’t get anything out of further education these days? This quintet formed as part of a college course and rather than that eternal sound of compromise, they came up with this: throbbing Altern-8 keyboard riffs…