Music, Issue 649

Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Leschenko plays Chopin

Russian pianist Polina Leschenko is just 29 years old, but has played with big name international orchestras throughout the world, including as soloist with the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra at the tender age of eight. Expect fluent, delicate playing…

Errors - Come Down With Me

(Rock Action) It’s been a while since a bunch of arty boys from Glasgow made one of the records of the year. But with their second offering Come Down With Me (a title in homage to the Channel 4 dining bitchfest), Errors have done exactly that.

Backbeat - Stuart Sutcliffe story comes to Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow

And the beat goes on

This season’s major show at the Citizens Theatre is more than just a Beatles biopic. Writer/director Iain Softley explains why to Jonny Ensall

Labels of Love: SL Records

A treasured Edinburgh DIY imprint, SL Records has propagated local and global anti-folk, alt-rock and indie-pop since 1997. With ballboy, Misty’s Big Adventure and Saint Jude’s Infirmary among its dexterous alumni, SL’s current roster spans Withered…

Bombay Bicycle Club, The Maccabees, The Big Pink and The Drums set for Shockwaves NME Awards Tour Glasgow date

The latest NME tour brings another collection of bands – Bombay Bicycle Club, The Maccabees, The Big Pink and The Drums – looking to put a modern twist on familiar sounds. With sharp, noisy guitars and quivering vocals all round, the tour harks back to…

Christine Tobin & Liam Noble revisit Carole King’s Tapestry

Carole King’s 1971 album Tapestry is one of the most successful singer-songwriter albums ever made. It stayed on the US charts for six years after its release, and has sold over 15 million copies. Almost every track is regarded as a classic, whether in…

Hot Chip’s Top Tips: Five of Their Favourite Tunes

Hot Chip’s Top Tips: Five of their favourite tunes Joe Goddard ‘Set It Off’ by Strafe This is an 80s electro record produced by Walter Gibbons. It has a great minor key chorus which inspired the bassline for ‘Take It In’ on the new album. Al…

Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago

(Matador) Texan indie outfit Shearwater don’t lack ambition, or for that matter, pretension. This album is the final instalment of a triptych of records about ‘environmental and personal decay and humans’ impact on nature’, apparently. How much it…

Inspiration, stylings and getting bored - Hot Chip interview

Back with an album packed with real instruments, hymns to male friendship and informed by increasingly grown-up personal lives, Hot Chip are maturing into a proper band. Rumour has it that the mighty Hot Chip have gone a bit soft. They’ve never been…

Manic Street Preachers, Paolo Nutini, Enter Shikari and Brett Anderson mark King Tut's 20th birthday

King of clubs

If there’s one thing that every music fan around the nation knows about Glasgow’s King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, it’s that Creation Records’ boss Alan McGee (a Glaswegian himself) first saw Oasis play live there in 1993 and decided to sign them before their…

Vampire Weekend set for Edinburgh and Glasgow dates

Upon the release of their eponymous debut album almost exactly two years ago, it seemed possible to bracket Vampire Weekend as a novelty band. They were four preppy middle class New York kids taking the traditional sounds of impoverished African folk…

Tinchy Stryder shows in Edinburgh and Glasgow

One of the vanguard of the new British urban scene, Tinchy Stryder (aka Kwasi Danquah) was one of the highest selling artists of 2009. His second album Catch 22 crossed over into the mainstream with hits like ‘You’re Not Alone’, ‘Never Leave You…

Scottish Ensemble: Toby Spence sings Jacques Brel

Way back in the 60s, when the Scottish Ensemble was born, it was christened the Scottish Baroque Ensemble. Although a group always admired for pushing boundaries, a programme featuring music by Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel forty years down the…

Midlake set for Glasgow date

When skateboarder turned TV man named Earl, Jason Lee fell for Midlake’s sound, it was love at first album. After hearing their 2004 debut, Bamnan and Slivercork, Lee got onboard with both feet, and bells on. In the past, Lee has promoted the lo-fi…

Five reasons to go see . . . tUnE-yArDs

1. She’s well monikered Yes, that lower-case/upper-case thing is kind of annoying, but we’ll forgive tUnE-YaRdS because her real name is just great: Merrill Garbus sounds like she’s stepped straight out of the script of a Coen Brothers film, no? 2.

Way To Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake

Nick Drake’s popularity has only increased in the years following his death in 1976, and this concert, curated by Drake’s producer Joe Boyd for Celtic Connections, was one of the most anticipated of the festival programme. The main appeal was…

The 3 Craws

The Caves, Fri 22 Jan 2010

The 3 Craws are what might in certain circles, those more given to overblown rhetoric posturing perhaps, be termed a supergroup: the three lynchpins of the Fife-based Fence Collective – Kenny Anderson, alias King Creosote, Johnny Lynch, otherwise known…

Real Estate

Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Thu 28 Jan 2010

‘What you want is just outside your reach,’ runs the opening line of Real Estate’s best song, ‘Beach Comber’. The crowd may skip along to its cantering beat, but the pensive guitar part and Martin Courtney’s lyrics pull the song towards melancholy. In…

Paul Vickers & The Leg - Itchy Grumble

(SL Records) A sophomore album project for ex-Dawn of the Replicants frontman Paul Vickers and former Khaya/Desc buddies Dan Mutch, Pete Harvey and Alun Thomas; the latter part of the Leg alumni also a former ballboy and St Jude’s Infirmary…

Niki King pays tribute to Billie Holliday

Cool Edinburgh jazz vocalist Niki King continues her tribute to one of the true greats of jazz Billie Holliday. ‘The time of prejudice that she worked through, the hardship and awful situations endured growing up; all of this pain and vulnerability…

Kailash Kher & Kailasa - Yatna (Nomadic Souls)

(Cumbancha) Cumbancha are an intrepid label who have brought a host of brilliant musicians to the world, including the late Brazilian artist Andy Palacios. Now they capture the infectious sounds of Kailash Kher, a household name in India for singing…

Fangs, French Wives, The Big Pink and Bombay Bicycle Club set for Pinup Nights

Indie heaven at Pin Up Nights this fortnight as they host the NME Awards tour afterparty, with DJ sets from two of the stars of the show: The Big Pink and Bombay Bicycle Club. Plus there are live sets from new wave electro rockers Fangs (pictured) and…

Lostprophets line up Glasgow and Edinburgh dates

One of Britain’s big rock success stories, Lostprophets are one of the few UK acts to break in the US with their catchy, crunchy guitar hooks. The Welsh nu-metallers latest album The Betrayed continues the theme including anthem in the making ‘It’s Not…

Isa & The Filthy Tongues launch new album Dark Passenger

Launching their new double album Dark Passenger with this special gig (and an aftershow party in the Cab’s Speakeasy) of dark pop and yearning scuzz rock. Last seen soundtracking Richard Jobson’s film New Town Killers with their track of the same name…

Jesca Hoop lines up Edinburgh and Glasgow dates

Quirky folk with an indie twist from Manchester-based Californian Hoop. A startling singer of complicated folk melodies that beguile with their lightness of touch as showcased on her self-released debut Hunting My Dress from November of last year.