7 April 2026, The Glad Cafe
The Glad Café is starting to feel like a second home, at least on the musical front. It more often than not offers a night of pleasant surprises with the diverse range of music it hosts.
And while I’d like to think I have an eclectic taste in music, it is primarily driven by guitar-based bands, and that’s what I’m invariably looking out for.
On this visit I was there to catch wor_kspace launch their latest album. Collapsing The Wave Function. More of that below.
First up though was National Park, a band who seem to have been around for years, the good old internet claiming as far back as 1997 when John Hogarty and Scott Walker teamed up to start this venture.
30 years in the making and this is the first I’d ever heard of them which, having listened through their entire set, was proving to be very remiss of me.
Again, looking at some info from the internet pages, their music has been described as akin to the Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500 and Yo La Tengo.
With that newfound knowledge, I can confirm there is something about each of the three bands identified above who filtered into the music National Park played. John Hogarty, despite a heavy cold, sang and played guitar with such a relaxed style that it was difficult to understand why there wasn’t the commercial success that comes with the sort of pedigree their music undoubtedly has.
As a signature tune, No More Rides, clearly exemplified their shared musical ability and, while adding any vinyl or cd collateral to the collection may be out of the question due to a gap in the merch department, the case to have their Solo Demos EP playing on repeat on Spotify remains a sharp reminder of the tracks Patti Smith and Greyhound which were played as part of the set.
I may have missed the boat 30 years ago, but I hope the chance to see them play again will be sooner rather than later.
wor_ksapce
And so, to wor_kspace who had recently released their latest album Collapsing The Wave Function.
Finlay Macdonald is the main man in this musical enterprise with a background in Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits, both of which I was more than a bit familiar with, so at least I had a signpost as to what to expect. He wasn’t a one-man band though with Alasdair Vann on bass, Lesley McLaren on the drums stool, and his daughter Ray Macdonald on synth and Casio. Together they certainly formed a unit that gelled despite a lot of gig time together.
Like National Park, there was such a relaxed feel on stage with the music providing a welcoming aural accompaniment to the night. Time, or the lack of it, prevented a top to toe rendition from the album, however Autonomy Of Frames is such an immediate standout track at the beginning of the album you are immediately sucked into the flow of the music. Over Mountains and Manifesto completed the trio of songs offered up from the album however, like many other gigs, the live performance of these and the others on the setlist mostly from earlier album Workspace released in 2022, added a further sonic dimension to the existing high production levels.
John from National Park and Finlay have been at this game for so many years, sharing shows if not stages together from time to time along the way. There is little doubt on the evidence of the gig at The Glad Café, both of them and their bandmates are as relevant today as they have been at any time in their career. They may be older and a little wiser. Looking around the audience, it would be fair to say that many of them are also older and wiser too. I’d also like to suggest that they didn’t have to wait 30 years before finding out about the band’s output though.
Another great gig to etch into the memory banks.
Thanks everyone involved in putting the night together.
