Glasgow
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The Monochrome Set with The Cathode Ray
7 March 2026, Mono Cafe The Cathode Ray There have only been a couple of times during our two-and-a-bit years of the #AtoZMusicalTour when support act has been the primary reason for getting tickets to see them play live. In the recent past, F.O.Machete filled that role. However, on this Saturday night all thoughts turned…
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Gene with James Walsh
6 March 2026, The Barrowland Ballroom Several months ago, the marketing campaign for Gene’s tour started to appear regularly in the social media feeds that form part of the daily information input. Gene, a band I was slightly familiar with having tracks on various compilation CDs purchased in the 1990s. Could I name a song…
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Mackenzies with Land Surveyor
28 February 2026, The Glad Cafe Walking into the Glad Café on Saturday night to see the Mackenzies and Land Surveyor play felt a bit like going back in time to the 1980s. Four decades or so later, the anticipation was the same. The chatter about the bands and musicians who played around that earlier…
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Psychedelic Porn Crumpets with Waldo’s Gift
25 February 2026, SWG3 In truth, I had to re-familiarise myself with the music of the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets ahead of the gig at SWG3. What was evident from doors opening though, was that the band didn’t have such worries with the rest of the audience as they drifted in. Young (compared to us!), excited,…
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Besnard Lakes with The Thorn
17 February 2026, The Rumshack Arriving early at The Rumshack in Glasgow’s Southside, we were able to pick a suitable vantage point to see both bands play to an enthusiastic crowd who packed out the venue. A good vantage point is recommended as the stage sits only a few inches above floor level and when…
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Kula Shaker with Helicon
11 February 2026, The Old Fruitmarket Helicon On the day that the band’s latest album Arise is released, it seems very appropriate to provide a review to their support act at The Old Fruitmarket. I’ve been fortunate to see Helicon on several occasions over the past couple of years and each time they look and…
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Xiu Xiu
4 February, Cottiers, Glasgow Eraserhead Xiu Xiu was described as a new a live concert with accompanying film that uses field recordings, concert specific homemade instruments, organ, modular synths, vocals, flashlights, electrical interference and elements of musique concrete to express the bizarre emotionality, conflicted sexuality, relentless darkness and singularly unsettled moonscape of this most incredible…
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Friends Again with Lloyd Cole
31 January 2026, the Old Fruitmarket Over 40 years ago, a group of young men threw a bottle into the sea and watched it drift away into the Clyde Estuary. It floated through currents across the world, untouched by the ever-changing musical vibes that drifted just above the seas. Four decades on and the bottle…
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Tom McGuire And The Brassholes with Sean Choon & The Prawn Monsoon and The Great Pleasure
30 January 2026, Barrowland Ballroom I’ve been to my fair share of gigs across the years at Glasgow’s premier music venue, The Barrowland Ballroom. However, across the whole evening, I can’t remember so many people on stage to entertain the packed floor in front of them. There appeared to be a competition between all three…
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Rudebeard with The Three’n’Eights
23 January 2026, McChuills I’ll start this post by putting the gig in some kind of context. McChuills invites everyone who plays and attends gigs there to enjoy an intimate evening. You can, as I did, get up close and personal to the performers if you’re so inclined. Alternatively, you could stand at the back…
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Biffy Clyro with The Armed and Soft Play
OVO Hydro, 21 January 2026 When Biffy Clyro formed in 1995 or thereabouts, did they ever imagine they would be ending the UK leg of their tour in front of 14,000 adoring fans at an indoor arena in Glasgow? Such was the case when they arrived on stage to an adoring fanbase on a damp…
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Top 10 Gigs and Albums of 2025
So many to choose from in both categories The Gigs Of The Year 2025 was another busy year for gigs, though I didn’t manage to close off #Chapter2 of our #AtoZMusicalTour with the letters U and X still awaiting to be ticked off. The #RaceAcrossEurope tour which was our #Interrail holiday was even better than 2024 with some great locations and bands, topped off with Nick Cave in the Pompeii…
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Miki Berenyi with F.O. Machete
Nice’n’Sleazy’s, 20 December It’s now almost a week since attending, what looks like, my last gig of the year with headliner the Miki Berenyi Trio and local support F.O. Machete. I’ve used the lapsed time to listen to both their 2025 albums, assess how they both interpreted and re-mixed them into the live setting, and…
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Tom McRae with Radhika and special guest Boo Hewerdine
King Tuts Wah Wah Hut, 17 December Arriving just after the doors opened at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut on a midweek night in Glasgow, I half expected Tom McRae’s show to be intimate yet with plenty of room to manoeuvre across the venue floor to get a couple of different views of him in…
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The Creeping Bent Organisation with
Radhika & Future Pilot AKA, The Secret Goldfish, The Leopards, QUAD90, The Bluebells and Port Sulphur Mono, 12 December The Creeping Bent Organisation Let’s put the record straight at the outset. Unlike many of those who arrived at Mono to remember all the good times that were created over the past thirty years or so…
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Stereophonics with Finn Forster
The OVO Hydro, 10 December For a few years either side of the millennium, Stereophonics were establishing themselves as a band who produced anthemic songs for their growing fanbase to share at festivals at home and abroad. A quarter of a century on, the band dug deep into their recorded work, providing the music, and…
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Idlewild with Jill Lorean
The Barrowland Ballroom, 7 December The Barrowland Ballroom welcomed, for the umpteenth time, one of Scotland’s enduring musical icons with Idlewild taking to the stage as part of a tour celebrating 30 years of existence and to promote their self-titled album released only a few months earlier. A thirty-year career that had delivered over a…
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Marconi Union
Nice’n’Sleazy, 6 December Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. Often “peaceful” sounding and lacking composition, beat, and/or structured melody, ambient music uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening, and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. And with that description in mind, we headed to Nice’n’Sleazy’s to…
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Dirty Three
Classic Grand, 30 November The Classic Grand building has been in place for over 160 years, initially opening as a warehouse, circa 1860. Classic in design, it’s seen many changes during its illustrious lifetime, one time cinema, amusement arcade and now music venue. And on this night, the Classic Grand welcomed its own Classic Act…
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My Bloody Valentine
OVO Hydro, 27 November My Bloody Valentine and the OVO Hydro, with a capacity of over 14,000 on a good day, seem like odd companions for one of the most anticipated gigs of the year. One of the pioneers, if not the defining forerunners of the Shoegaze movement, their meagre back catalogue of recorded work,…
