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:
“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:
Border Song, and 2nd 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…
…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.
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.
Lovely review, just one small thing - Just Like Blood is Tom's second album. His first album is self-titled and was nominated for the Mercury music prize.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like the videos :D