If Almost Nothing are virtually just starting out The Walkmen are New York City boys back after a ten year hiatus. Quite how many audience members realise their musical provenance is tricky to calculate, and certainly the duo’s slinkily subtle keyboard-led soulpop – Roddy’s yearning vocals and heroically humble demeanour aside – doesn’t give too many pointers toward their other project home. Continuing the tenuous Caledonian theme their support for the tour is ALMOST NOTHING, who consist of Roddy and Andrew from old Walkmen buddies Idlewild and who we last saw doing this in Diss a few sunsets ago. The following night in the same city, where THE WALKMEN headline the Leeds Project House, a cavernous warehouse rave-style venue opened by a collective of local promoters which is so new you almost feel sorry to sully the shiny urinals. Essentially a full-on festival show in a tiny Yorkshire boozer in the middle of the festival season, best thing is the new VLURE material is even more shiny and pop-tastic than before. Glowsticking two fingers up at the mainstream? Perhaps. They might look like they want to punch your lights out, all cropped bleached hair, leather trousers and onstage glares, but you’ll be pinching yourself when you’re caught in the headlights of their heroically welcoming party lazerbeams. If Redolent spend much of their set looking inwardly VLURE are intent on bringing the party to the masses: giant of chorus, gargantuan of attitude, they enlighten the venue with a crash course in hysterical rave history, with special attention paid to Faithless and The KLF. This time it’s the turn of VLURE to sail into The Oporto venue. Their profanity-strewn matrix screens still pump out the Edinburgh colloquialisms but there’ll be no murder on the Norwich dancefloor tonight.Īnother manic Monday, this time in Leeds, where another MVT tour stars another bunch of Scots in the headline slot. Theirs is an ever-intriguing take on electronic music, flipping the floor-pumpingly obvious in favour of a nervy, introverted soundtrack. The Hamish support on this tour is from fellow countrypeople REDOLENT, last spotted playing on Brighton Pier at The Great Escape. For now however, a positively genuine version of ‘Disco 2000’ keeps tonight’s vibe on the side of sweet, if wryly knowing, innocence. His last two louche album excursions – ‘Heavy Elevator’ and ‘Angel Numbers’ – have enthralled the 6music crowd, and the new material is said to be ready to test that playlist support by upping the filthy ante. Luckily for this here gigging diary nobody seems to have explained the summertime touring rules to Music Venue Trust, who promote a pawful of national tours with the National Lottery, or indeed the good musical people of Scotland, who happily participate in those murderous midsummer roadtrips.Ī Monday night in Norwich sees HAMISH HAWK fly into the Arts Centre to start one such MVT on-the-road romp: a man, a band and an exercise in intellectual melody cruising, our lithe-limbed eponymous hero is sufficiently rich in lyrical detail to warrant comparisons to Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker as well as much closer intention. Even the Pandaman’s August is bookended by trips to the ravey wilds of Wilderness and the endlessly entertaining End of the Road. They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun in the middle of the festival season when all the live focus is on intense action in big tents.
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