Sunday night, and the pulse of the beat is overwhelming. Opening tonight are Anna & Holly’s Dance Party, blending perfect vintage blues and garage 45s, it provides the perfect foundation for the gathered congregation.

Daddy Long Legs grace the stage not long after with the spellbinding combination of the Howling Hurd’s rasping harmonica and Murat’s bad-to-the-bone guitar is impossible to resist. Laid over Josh’s booming drums and Dave’s keyboards, involuntary movements jolt throughout your body, causing heads to nod and feet to tap.

Daddy Long Legs are such an irresistible live band—so engaging, so hard-hitting, and so sharply dressed. Their aesthetic is so on point that it’s almost easy to overlook.

Tonight’s subterranean labyrinth is the perfect backdrop for the delivery of this Brooklyn gospel. They might often be seen delivering their street sermons in the USA and beyond, but tonight they are in Glasgow’s Flying Duck—a venue that is part speakeasy, part grassroots dive bar. Perfectly dark. Perfectly juke joint.

“Pink Lemonade”, “The Theme from Daddy Long Legs” and “Harmonica Razor” are highlights of the set, but tonight we’re also treated to a cover of the Memphis Jug Band’s “On the Road Again”,a song first recorded nearly 100 years ago, yet it sounds as fresh and relevant as anything else played tonight.

The truly fantastic night crescendos with drums being brought to the front, Buckfast being drunk, and harmonica bouncing off the walls. How can a band with seemingly so little hardware hit so hard and so deep?

The answer is simple: Brooklyn voodoo.

Words: CECH

Photos: Chris Hogge