Music, Reviews, Laura Ennor

Sweet Baboo - King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Tue 7 May 2013

Charming set combines lyrical originality with self-deprecating humour

‘I go dancing and chancing my luck with all those girls - that’s why I’m bound for hell’, sings Stephen Black, aka Welshman Sweet Baboo, on catchy 2010 single ‘I’m a Dancer’. To look at this freckly face, rabbit-in-the-headlights expression and guitar…

Dirty Projectors - The Arches, Glasgow, Mon 15 Oct

The alt. indie sextet show moments of greatness but are guilty of repetition

Dirty Projectors can be quite hard to get your head around. It’s not so much about the immediately apparent awkwardness of their sound, which blends abrupt changes of time signature and raw atonality with jangling guitars and the occasional surprise of…

Efterklang - Piramida

Homespun yet grand release from the Danish alt.folk group

The latest offering from the Danish orchestra-botherers comes wrapped up in a rich mythology: Piramida (also known as Piramiden) is an abandoned Russian mining settlement half way between the northern tip of Norway and the North Pole. The ghost town so…

Grizzly Bear - Shields

Same as before, but with less oomph, more fuzz and fewer tunes

If you know the woozy psych-indie sound of Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House and Veckatimest albums, and can imagine it with less oomph, more fuzz and fewer tunes, you’ve got Shields pegged. The same sounds resurface again and again: the shimmering strings…

Meursault, Rob St John and Jill O’Sullivan & Jenny Reeve - Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 7 Jul 2012

Triumphant performance more than delivering on high hopes of hometown crowd

Some album launches can be rather flat affairs – people don’t know the songs, the band are nervous, and it can all feel a bit dutiful. But this packed-out show heralding the arrival of album number three for Meursault couldn’t have been further from…

Austra - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Tue 5 Jun 2012

Crystalline headrush of swirling synths with voice centre stage

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has heard her group’s debut album, Feel it Break, that Katie Stelmanis’ stunning voice is central to the Austra live show. The Latvian-Canadian’s classical training is very much in evidence in the clear diction…

Stag & Dagger, various venues, Glasgow, Sat 19 May

Eleanor Friedberger and Miaoux Miaoux play as part of 13 hour gig crawl

While its London sister seems to have died a death, presumably smothered by a surfeit of such hipster-friendly crawls and brawls in the English capital, the Glasgow leg of multi-venue one-dayer Stag and Dagger happily lives on, albeit with perhaps a…

Tinariwen - Oran Mor, Glasgow, Thu 5 Apr 2012

An evocative but occasionally flat show from the Tuareg blues guitarists

A beguiling mix of blues guitar sounds, gently insistent but sometimes complex rhythms and desert sensibilities is what’s always made Tinariwen unique. Live, the blend is all the more compelling, which must be due, at least in part, to the sheer…

The Cornshed Sisters - Tell Tales

Reminiscent of The Unthanks with extra dollops of pop sensibility

(Memphis Industries) A gentle debut with just enough edge and earthy Northern lilt to balance the sweetness of the bell-like vocal harmonies, Tell Tales is the work of four non-sisters from Tyne and Wear. The tales told stretch from the overtly…

First Aid Kit - King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Mon 27 Feb

Young Swedish sisters' take on country hints at originality and potential

One of the things that really stands out on Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg’s recent second album, The Lion’s Roar, is the maturity of the songwriting. It’s striking how these two, with barely 40 years on this planet between them, have…

Human Don’t Be Angry - The Arches, Glasgow, Sat 25 Feb

Malcolm Middleton's side project gets a satisfying full-band outing

For those who knew Malcolm Middleton only from his days as one half of the funniest band ever to be famous for misery, or even as the alt folk jangler behind ‘A Brighter Beat’ and one-time Christmas No 1 outsider ‘We’re All Going to Die’, this, the…

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - O2 ABC, Glasgow, Thu 26 Jan 2012

Expanded line-up works well in large venue - once everyone relaxes

The few gentle piano chords and overheard Fife chit-chat that form the start of ‘First Watch,’ the opener on King Creosote and Jon Hopkins’ Diamond Mine, are all it takes to bring a sold out crowd to what is, for this venue in particular, an uncannily…

The Unthanks, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Tue 24 Jan

Sisters deliver inventive tribute to Robert Wyatt and Antony Hegarty

This Celtic Connections show was the last planned outing for what Rachel Unthank, with inordinate modesty, refers to as ‘our self-indulgent experiment’ – that is, the Northumbrian folk collective’s double tribute to the songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony…

Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard - The Third Door, Edinburgh, Wed 26 Oct 2011

Near two-hour set pulls disparate parts into satisfying whole

For this, one of the first gigs at the refreshed and renamed Third Door venue (formerly Medina, and now boasting a beefier new sound system), big personalities and hearts on sleeves are very much the order of the day. Opener Viking Moses is one Brendon…

Best Coast and Spectrals - Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Tue 30 Aug

It’s easy to see why Best Coast take Spectrals on tour with them every time they come to Europe: the Leeds-based band’s sound mirrors that of their LA buddies in almost every way – up to the bit where the singer is an insouciant lad from Heckmondwick…

tUnE-yArDs, Captain’s Rest – Glasgow, Wed 15 Jun 2011

Merrill Garbus is an offbeat, un-obvious, must-see pop act

Three years after she self-released homemade album BiRd-BrAiNs, recognition and even a degree of hype are finally starting to come the way of Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs, and so it is that her Wednesday night show at the Captain’s Rest (a venue she…

Metronomy - Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Mon 25 Apr 2011

Danceable electropop from new album The English Riviera

There's a sweaty buzz about Cabaret Voltaire even before Metronomy step on stage, but it takes a little while before the band themselves really warm up. While Joseph Mount's gang of electropop maestros are never less than competent and the quality of…

tUnE-yArDs: w h o k i l l

Quirk-pop enthusiast Merrill Garbus treats to another helping of audacious genre mixing

(4AD) Having graduated from the dictaphone plus editing freeware set-up of first album BiRd-BrAiNs to a real studio, Merrill Garbus returns with a little more sheen and clarity than before, but still flaunting the junkyard beats, catchy playground…

Aidan Moffat's Valentine Revue - Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 16 Feb 2011

Aidan Moffat's standing on stage at Oran Mor, bathed in the seasonal glow of a red light, singing about how he'd probably stick by his girl even if she had some sort of debilitating brain disease. He's here to sing about love, and that's about as…

LCD Soundsystem and Fever Ray highlights of Electric Picnic 2010

Stradbally, Ireland, 3-5 Sep 2010

The Picnic is one of two major events bookending the Irish festival season, and it feels like all of Ireland has turned out for summer’s last gasp. Which, as it turns out, is a rather wet one. But no matter, for the craic is good, the pies are hearty…

Sleigh Bells' Treats

From the moment ‘Tell ‘Em’s machine-gun beats and bombastic guitars pummel your ears into stunned submission, Treats struts up and down before you like some aggressively flirtatious hipster girl, just daring you not to fall for its fuck-you…

Kelburn Garden Party 2010

Kelburn Castle, Largs, Sat 3-Sun 4 Jul

It’s a garden party Jim, but not as we know it. Forget canapés on the lawn, straw hats and refined company – this weekend is all about waterproof trousers, bacon rolls, and neds and hippies coming together in shared appreciation of a good pounding bass…

CocoRosie

Classic Grand, Glasgow, Wed 12 May 2010

The music made by Bianca (Coco) and Sierra (Rosie) Casady pelts the listener with such an array of different styles and influences that the closest order-loving critics have got to describing it is with the catch-all term of ‘freak folk’. Which is odd…

Laura Marling

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 14 Apr 2010

Everyone knows by now that Laura Marling (lest we forget, a 90s baby) is something of a prodigy, but even so, only a doting mother could have thought that the girl wonder had written ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ (Neil Young’s song about heroin…

These New Puritans

What did those drums ever do to These New Puritans? Something pretty heinous, judging by the way not one, but two of the band spend most of the set whacking seven bells out of them. It’s the most arresting aspect of the show -- and the sight of the two…