Gig Review #1

Friendly Fires @ ABC, Glasgow, 7th May 2009

It's not often a band blows me away live when i've tried and largely failed to be touched by their recorded output. Friendly Fires are such a band. A couple of months back I saw them as part of an NME sponsored tour alongside Florence & The Machine, White Lies and Glasvegas. They surprised me by being the standout of the evening. Finishing with Jump In The Pool, they were joined onstage by a troupe of Brazilian drummers and climaxed with lead singer Ed Macfarlane risking life and limb by climbing a speaker stack and dancing deranged like a man with an elastic waist and a death wish while security tried to talk him down. Suffice to say they left an impression.

Three nights ago at the ABC in Glasgow, they somehow, against the odds, minus Brazilian drummers, succeeded in eclipsing the brilliance of the NME Tour performance. I should mention that i'm generally more keenly predisposed to dark depressing music. Friendly Fires are the antithesis of this. With lead singer Ed Macfarlane doing his rubber man dance and the music doing it's damndest to coerce the audience into doing the same this is the kind of live experience that had me grinning like a loon from start to finish. Highlights of the show were an astounding Jump In The Pool, a hair-raisingly wonderful performance of Paris and show closer Ex-Lover which managed to marry massive dance beats to swathes of feedback as it built towards a frenzied climax. It was this last song that sold me on the band 100%. I guessed that the Brazilian drummers wouldn't be making an appearance and wondered whether they would be sorely missed. They weren't. At all. This is a band who can stand on their own, free of such adornments and pull of a show that I would rank amongst the top three i've seen so far this year (the other two being Tricky and Scottish band Frightened Rabbit). I guess i'm going to have to give Friendly Fires debut album another go. It's only fair

9 out of 10

Morrissey @ Barrowlands, Glasgow, 8th May 2009

It's not often i'm driven to tears (in a good way) by a live performance but tonight, twice, Morrissey succeeded in doing just that. It happened three songs (or four) songs in during How Soon Is Now. As the spiralling vibrato guitars built towards a climax that featured the drummer pounding a giant drum that flashed like an arc-light every time he struck it before bringing the song a close by striking a massive gong at the back centre of the stage...well...I got a bit emotional. It was such a breathtaking high point that Morrissey and his band couldn't hope to match it over the course of the rest of the performance. But they tried.

I never had the good fortune to see The Smiths live. I arrived late to that party only getting into their music a couple of years after their demise. But my fiance saw them around 1986 and accompanied me to the gig the other night. Neither of us had any idea what version of Morrissey we would be greeted by. Would it be the churlish version i'd seen on various chat shows over the years or would it be the angry man who at a recent festival stormed off the stage as the smell of cooking meat wafted stagewards from the snack vans beyond the crowd. It was neither. Instead he was thoroughly charming (and very sweaty it has to be said).

The setlist was predominantly drawn from his solo material with a smattering of Smiths classics. Of course any artist with as extensive a back catalogue as Morrissey has at his disposal couldn't hope to please everyone in the audience. I was disappointed not to hear Still Ill or There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (which would, in my opinion, have made a better set closer than First Of The Gang To Die great as that song is). From his solo years Everyday Is Like Sunday and November Spawned A Monster would have been welcome (not to mention a personal favorite, Speedway from Vauxhall & I). But overall it was a wonderful performance from a master showman who might not again find the lofty heights of sublime brilliance he attained in the eighties but nonetheless remains a true original and one of the most interesting artists working today. If he does, as he as threatened to do, retire a couple more albums down the line, it will be a sad, sad day.

8 out of 10