Tom McRae at the Arches 11.04.11

The formal title of his performance was “Tom McRae and String Quartet.” Now this string quartet makes all the difference. Primarily, McRae’s music has a prominent cello, a wee sneaky violin here and there, but it is mainly lyric/vocals/guitar based. Hearing his music stripped back, but at the same time equally emphasised was just… goosebump inducing. 

You Cut Her Hair to open, was just beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxEzMTJJVz0

 “Hello,” was the first word Tom greeted the crowd with, followed, after a long pause by “… sitting down… well this is different.” It was exceptionally odd to be sitting at a gig in the Arches, let alone a Tom McRae gig. He continued to explain that choosing the arches was to “drag you and me out of our collective comfort zones,” which I think it is safe to say was the outcome of the evening.

I think the only comparison I can make is that it’d be like seeing your friend’s band performing in your house for years, to then having to see them perform at somewhere like the Royal Concert Hall. You’re used to a more homely, chatty, intimate setting, such as McRae’s previous and numerous gigs at King Tuts. Whereas now you’ve been thrown into a large room with neatly laid out chairs where you feel that you should sit with your legs crossed at the ankles and clap politely.

Thankfully, neither Tom nor the audience were up for that kind of polite, aloof and out right pretentious mumbo-jumbo.

There was an outburst of laughter when Tom explained, “We’ve usually been performing in churches, but I thought it was unlikely to get a couple of hundred Glaswegians into a church. You’re far more likely to find them under a railway bridge.”

It’s a tribute to the respect that Tom McRae has gained as an artist, a musician and a performer that a Glasgow crowd would let him away with such banter; to be honest, the chat between Tom and the general heckling from random members of the crowd made it feel homely and familiar in the new and particularly formal surrounding.

Launching back in to Karaoke Soul and Walk to Hawaii, off of his second album Just Like Blood, Tom then explained that he was starting to write songs for other people, muttering something about getting to that age, and said how people like Leona (Lewis) and Will Young still wont get back to him (clearly joking as his lyrical and musical talent would entirely be lost in the pop circle) he smoothly lead onto All that’s gone. The pensive lyrics were quite tragic, in relation to both the age comment as well as the careers of older pop celebrities.

There’s a wonderful wee video of the performance here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y85CX3CBjUs

Border Song, and 2^nd Law were followed by the out cry of a audience member shouting, “I love microphones,” to which Tom smiled, shook his head and said, “It’s just so random.” Obviously the next cry from a member of the crowd was, “Welcome to Glasgow.”

Linking back to the chat about Leona Lewis, McRae ended his song, Blackheart rodeo with a nice wee rendition of Bleeding love, which although was not something I would have ever imagined in a million years, worked incredibly well and gained a suitable amount of chuckles from the crowd.

Continuing with the chuckles, Tom went on to explain a long an intriguing story about how he was trying to translated and remake a song that he had heard when he was travelling in Eastern Europe. After a long and deeply traditionally eastern European folk music style intro, Tom broke into a great, yet unexpected…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiuQD5GmsqU&feature=related

…cover of Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf. If you watch the video, you’ll see what I mean.

Finishing, well, pre-encore finishing with One Mississippi, the crowd were going crazy. I don’t think he had a choice but to come out for an encore.

In true comedic style, he came back, announcing, “You can’t get out that way.”

Vampire Heart and Boy with the Bubble Gun went by with enthusiastic sing-a-long by the crowd. But the memorable moment, the one that even thinking about gives me goosebumps, was to End of the World News (Dose Me Up). 

I don’t think there was a soul in the room who wasn’t on their feet and singing their heart out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VeB4mLIi84

For all your Tom McRae needs head to: http://www.tommcrae.com/

Or follow him on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/tommcrae

All the videos in this blog came from the lovely Rhiannon. It’s definitely worth checking out her videos, not only from the Tom McRae gig at the Arches, but also some previous King Tut gigs, as well as a couple of wee cheeky videos from Regina Spector’s recent Glasgow gig.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rhiannon83videos

Tsunami Charity gig- The main act!

Scott lackadaisically wandered onto stage and broke into one of the biggest songs off Frightened Rabbit’s second album, Modern Leaper, followed swiftly by The Twist. He then announced that he hadn’t actually made a set list, to which there was an outcry of requests from the audience. He selected, Less Rude, providing a rare performance of one of their songs off of their first album, Sing the Greys.

 

Throughout the gig, the audience were not only kept entertained by the musical talents of Mr Hutchison, but were also suitably kept chuckling by Scott’s comedic commentary on his songs. Stopping halfway through Nothing Like You, he explained that in the chorus he always has to restrain the urge to palm mute along to “she was not the cure for cancer, and all my questions still ask for answers…” (Palm muting, for all those who aren’t musically minded, is when a chord repeated chord is played faster, but quieter. It’s predominantly used in genetic rock/pop/punk music, hence the jest.) The crowd were loving it, but whether it was the song, the palm mute, or the hilarity created by the combination of the two, it is yet to be decided.

Scott got his brother Grant out to vibe with him to Old Fashioned, where he grab a spare tambourine and brought his dulcet tones to the piece.

One of my personal highlights from the evening was the story behind the song, Snake. Scott explained about his heartbreak over “Midnight organ girl,” to which the audience gave supportive cheers and jeers, telling the audience about how he wrote a song about his and his girlfriend’s draft excluder, which was a multi-coloured snake, so as to woo her back when she moved to New York. It was funny, heart warming and heart breaking all rolled into one.

It was especially poignant as Backwards Walk followed it; to which the audience sang along, word for word. The emotional lyrics, “I’m working on erasing you, I just don’t have the proper tools. I’ll get hammered forget that you exist, there’s no way I’m forgetting this,” were so relevant and immediate to the emotion behind the story that it just made sense that the they went together in the set list.

Finishing the intimate glimpse into the emotional mindset behind the album, Midnight Organ Fight, Scott played Floating in the Forth. This song, which he doesn’t play with the band and feared that he’d “fuck it up,” talks about the suicidal thoughts that he was dealing with when writing the album, and openly said, “it’s just how I was feeling at the time.” It was just beautiful to behold the stories behind some of the most honest and beautifully blunt lyrics ever written.

He grabbed his Frabbit band mates for a broken down version of Living in Colour and Head Rolls Off, followed by Swim Until You Can’t See Land, which is was safe to say that Scott was pretty much drowned out by the audience participation.

After the Frabbit boys, the next special guest that Scott brought onto stage was the lovely James Graham from Twighlight Sad. The unnecessarily bashful singer helped Scott out with the vocals for their cover of the Halle and Oats classic, Private Eye.

Rounding off the evening with Good Arms vs Bad Arms, Scott then stepped on front of his mic and performed Poke entirely acoustically. The entire room filled with the crowds’ voices, along with the almost silent sound of his guitar; it was a beautiful way to end the gig.

The crowd wanted more, however, and Scott came back on to finally finish the set with Keep Yourself Warm, to which the crowd joined in, word for word and note for note.

We all knew why we were there and where our money was going to. But what the acts managed to do was equal the charitable efforts of the evening, with some spectacular performances, making the evening wholly and entirely sweet.

Tsunami Charity gig- warm ups!

I find charity gigs quite bitter-sweet in general.

Predominantly it’s a band or artist constantly reminding you that you are having a great time while other people are struggling through some of the most horrible human experiences, inevitably leading to a mixed emotional bag of awkwardness.

Clearly not everybody feels as I do though, as the tickets for the gig were sold out days before the event. I caved and purchased the last two tickets available; the opportunity to see Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison perform an intimate and acoustic solo set was, and for future reference is not, an opportunity to be missed.

The atmosphere at stereo emphasised the bitter-sweet element of the evening; the excitement was juxtaposed by a relaxed and pensive friendliness. Everyone knew the meaning and purpose behind the night’s performance, but equally it seemed as though everybody was there primarily to experience some truly moving music.

Haight Ashbury made a strong start to the evening. Clearly influenced by American folk music, with a healthy amount of sixties love and protest based lyrics thrown in, Haight Ashbury managed to intrigue the surprisingly large audience for the first act on.

As the second act set up, the crowd grew extensively; a couple of shunts forward and the last bar trip of the evening undergone, two exceptionally stunning ladies came to the stage.

Now it wasn’t only the duo’s looks that grabbed the crowds attention and grasped on tight so that they had no choice but to sit up and take note; by the end of their first song, Gill and Jenny managed to stun the audience into a suitable awe struck silence, followed quickly by a mass round of applause.

The girls are not only exceptionally talented musicians, with both of them switching from guitar to fiddle, but they are so harmonised in their vocals that it came as a complete shock when they announced that this was the first time that they had performed together.

Their hauntingly harmonised vocals were also impressively and imaginatively altered during one of their songs, when one of them sang through their violin string, creating the oddest, yet perfectly suited reverberation of sound.

Their set concluded with a comic, yet original cover of JLS’s Beat Again, where the audience gave enough whoops and cheers to prove that they were most definitely ready for the main performance of the evening.

Frightened Rabbit/Scott Hutchison gig review to follow...