The Golden Bough

I climb the famously steep hill to Glasgow’s Art School and arrive at the dark, hazy upstairs venue with about fifteen minutes to spare before Deadletter grace the stage. While the room is less full than expected, with their last Glasgow stop at St Luke’s at the end of 2024 selling out, there are still plenty of familiar faces dotted around the room. The show had been rescheduled, but a loyal crowd had clearly reshuffled their plans to welcome the South London-via-Yorkshire post-punk sextet back to one of their rowdiest cities.

Frontman Zac Lawrence spends most of the night slinking around the packed stage, one hand gripping the mic while the other punctuates the air. Behind him, the band’s signature saxophone cuts through crunchy guitars as the crowd responds in kind. Few words are exchanged between songs, and Lawrence frequently closes the distance between himself and the audience. During old favourite “Binge”, he serenades those at the front with the song’s prolonged ahhhhhs before disappearing into the crowd entirely, weaving across the sticky floor at the back of the room before eventually returning to the stage.

Overall, the show feels more measured than previous visits, though that’s less a criticism than a reflection of where Deadletter finds themselves sonically during this new era. Much of the material from Existence is Bliss (2026) leans into something more sophisticated, atmospheric and diverse. Ultimately, these songs are still settling into their live form and finding their place with audiences, and “It Comes Creeping” and “Purity I” are already proven strong live performances. Given time, this material will likely inspire the same riotous display that has become synonymous with a Deadletter show as, even on a slightly quieter night, there’s very little sense that the bond between band and crowd has weakened.

Article: Anni Cameron

One of the things I love about summer shows at Saint Luke’s in Glasgow is the way the evening sun shines through the high stained-glass windows. It adds just that extra layer of atmosphere that suits live music perfectly. This gig was no exception, as Sir Chloe’s return to the city on Sunday 24th May delivered a stellar performance after three years away.

The band kicked off with “Squaring Up,” with frontwoman Dana Foote singing the first verse backstage before finally stepping out for the chorus donning a kilt to an immediate wave of applause. Notably, she no longer plays guitar live, leaving the gritty instrumentation to her bandmates. The change suits her well; she fully leans into her captivating stage presence, constantly moving and locking eyes with audience members throughout the show. The crowd matched her energy, and although the show wasn’t sold out, the more intimate atmosphere felt like a perfect fit for the band.

The setlist was solid, striking a strong balance between older favourites and new material. If you haven’t heard Sir Chloe before, they sit somewhere between PJ Harvey’s raw intensity and The Pixies’ dynamic alt-rock — a combination that translated exceptionally well to the live setting. Highlights of the show included a ferocious performance of “Animal,” the grungy “Salivate,” as well as personal standouts “Forgiving,” “The Hole,” and the dreamy, swaying waltz of “Eyes,” all from the band’s latest album, Swallow the Knife.

The night reached its peak in the encore as the opening chords of their viral hit “Michelle” rang out beneath the venue’s vaulted ceilings, with the crowd singing along to bring the night to a close.

It was a fantastic gig that showed just how versatile Foote is as a songwriter and performer. Backed by a superb band, Sir Chloe delivered a set that felt both intimate and powerful, leaving little doubt as to why their audience continues to grow. For me, the newer songs felt particularly strong live, showcasing a more confident edge to their evolving sound.

Article: Barry Carson

When Fcukers first appeared on my radar, I had them pegged as another provocateur outfit — names like Savages and Dead Kennedys came to mind. A band using their name as an initial platform for anti-establishment rhetoric that the music itself would reflect. Well, it turned out I was half right.

The stripping back of music to create a space from which people could escape the brutality of life — ignoring the beigeness of so much that is presented as popular music, turning against the established music machine and the machines of war — is what Fcukers are about. They rewind and present an alternative ‘now’ that is, in many ways and by their own admission, a vibe and feeling drawn from two decades ago. Solidarity formed from optimism. Sub Club and Trainspotting euphoria mingled with a bloc-party sense of camaraderie and unity.

Whoever chose tonight’s venue deserves a gold star. SWG3’s TV Studio is the perfect environment for such a musical experience to thrive. A brutalist, Kafkaesque space with low ceilings and lots of concrete — you could be forgiven for thinking you were at a 1990s illegal rave. Tonight wasn’t just about the music; it was about the experience. Even before the band came on, the sound system was pumping out beats at a tireless, continuous 120 BPM, give or take. The scene was set, and the light was low. Very low.

As Fcukers took to the stage, it was obvious this was going to be a strobe-heavy show punctuated by backlit colour. The band were silhouettes for the entire set — the odd flash would reveal a face, but then it would be gone.

Musically, the band delivered exactly what you’d hope for: bass-heavy and body-pumping. The New York-accented vocals — nonchalant, almost spoken, with a The Velvet Underground quality — were so personable that you could join in, mimic the lines, and feel even more connected. The influences of Groove Armada and Faithless are obvious, but then you catch something that triggers a memory. Was that Talk Talk? Was that Pop Muzik by M? It turned out it was Beck.

The pace was relentless but always steady — as intended, and unmistakably club-like. There were no rip-your-head-off moments à la The Prodigy.

Tonight was far more than a retro retake on a club night. Was it re-emphasising the importance of subculture and past anti-establishment movements — musical and social? Was it a band presenting itself as a club? Was it a band saying: be yourself, don’t adhere to the rules? Probably all of these. Yes, this was no illegal rave, but equally it wasn’t playing by the rules either. Were they saying there has to be another way? I have no idea — but what I do know is that for those 60 minutes, none of the noise from outside that room got in. You weren’t thinking or worrying about the world, or even your own world. You were taken somewhere else. Somewhere optimistic.

What’s in a name? Fcuked if I know.

Words: Nick Tamer | Images: Chris Hogge

Bloc+ …Glasgow 12/5/26 

Banshee Labyrinth…Edinburgh 13/5/26

Being a kid in the UK in the 70’s meant it was near on impossible to catch seminal LA punk bands such as X or The Go-Go’s — and don’t ever think that seeing The Germs, The Runaways or Alice Bag was ever on the cards. It simply did not happen.

So imagine, all these years later, self-proclaimed snot punk rockers Kill My Coquette arriving from Los Angeles on a whirlwind week-long tour of the UK, culminating in two debut shows in Scotland.

Kill My Coquette export a brand of punk that can only ever truly emerge from LA. There is something distinct and immediately recognisable in the music, the words, the vibe — and when you know, you know, even if you can’t quite explain why. This is neither NYC East Coast grit nor UK grime. It is unmistakably LA — fluid, fuzzed and nuanced, carrying an almost transcendent quality, as though shaped by vitamin D overdose and an absence of rain. A product of their environment, carrying the DNA of every great band that ever came out of that city, yet cut through with something entirely their own. They took the inheritance and ran.

Glasgow and Edinburgh. Two cities. Two KO’s.

Grassroots venues like Bloc+ and Banshee Labyrinth are the perfect stages on which to witness the energy, the effervescence, the sheer otherness of Kill My Coquette. The enthusiasm is infectious, their belief in themselves and their songs absolute. You are drawn into the magnetic pull of something electrifying — songs landing with a solid, driving beat that feels both familiar and thrillingly new. These are tales of everyday struggle: private, public and globally recognisable.

Natalie is fearless. She permeates the room, invading the space, mingling with the audience and drawing them helplessly into her web. The songs hit considerably harder live than anything you’ll hear online, the combined force of rasping guitar, bass and drums building a hypnotic wall of sound that fully delivers on every expectation.

Bloc+ may not have been full, but the band gave everything regardless. Banshee Labyrinth, however, was a case apart — Edinburgh truly came to the party, and the band met them more than halfway. Natalie was in the crowd again, soon joined by Adam, guitar raised aloft, the moment swelling into something euphoric. It climaxed in a jubilant stage invasion, led in no small part by band members of Edinburgh’s own Möschmellow. A joyous, chaotic, perfect end to Kill My Coquette’s time in Scotland.

Songs like ‘The Metro’ and ‘The Wrong Crowd’ are absolute classics — veering from a punk-meets-No Doubt sunshine street swagger to a Rage Against the Machine grab-you-by-the-throat fury. By luck or by design, LA bands find their way to our shores more than we might expect. The world has grown smaller, and for that I am grateful. Kill My Coquette came, they played their hearts out, and they were loved. 

We are part of their journey now — and they will be back. 

Make sure you are there for the ride. You’ve already missed enough.

Words: Nick Tamer

Images: Chris Hogge

On Thursday, 14 May 2026, The Glasgow School of Art briefly stopped being an art school and turned into the sort of beautiful industrial panic attack only CHALK can engineer. I have been evangelising about this band ever since catching them supporting Sprints at SWG3 Studio back in 2023, boring friends and alarming strangers with the zeal of a doomsday preacher who has traded scripture for distortion pedals. Watching them now, with Glasgow hanging on every bass throb like sinners awaiting judgement, felt less like vindication and more like watching the future arrive in stompy Dr.Martins.

Ross Cullen and Ben Goddard stalked the stage like men trying to exorcise Belfast through volume alone, while touring drummer Finn McAleavey — a newer addition to the live line-up — gave the songs a physical violence they previously only implied. The old CHALK setup always sounded mechanised, all brutalist synths and anxiety-rave pulse, but the live drums have changed the chemistry. The songs now breathe, sweat and occasionally threaten to punch somebody through a wall.

The setlist was studded with gems. “Tongue” opened proceedings like a prison riot conducted by Giorgio Moroder, before “Pain” and “Can’t Feel It” shoved the crowd straight into the red. The newer Crystalpunk material sounded colossal — not polished, exactly, but sharpened, like broken glass swept into nightclub strobes. “1980” lurched forward with the haunted swagger of Nine Inch Nails if Trent Reznor had been raised on Colonial tension and warm cans of Tennents. “Pool Scene” arrived like a panic attack at a rave. “Bliss” and “Static” pulsed with the ghost of Underworld, while “Skem” sounded like the entire city of Belfast trying to claw itself out of wet concrete.

And then there was the atmosphere. Christ. Purple smoke curled around the venue in thick poisonous ribbons while lasers slashed through the darkness like a nightclub operating inside a war zone. The lighting was absurdly theatrical — half warehouse rave, half end-times sermon. CHALK understand something many modern bands don’t: if you are going to make music this intense, you should look like you are summoning a storm while performing it.

Mid-set, the band plunged into the audience during the heavier material, turning the room into one convulsing organism. There are bands who “work the crowd”, and then there is CHALK, who seem determined to drag the crowd bodily into the songs with them. At one point the room looked like a collapsing nightclub scene from a lost cyberpunk film: bodies flying, smoke choking the air, Ross Cullen barking into faces like a man trying to start a revolution with pure adrenaline.

What makes CHALK so compelling is that they are unmistakably Irish without ever lapsing into cliché. Their music carries the psychological residue of Belfast — division, paranoia, dark humour, identity crisis — but filters it through industrial techno, post-punk and rave culture. You can hear echoes of David Holmes, Stiff Little Fingers and the electronic dread of Aphex Twin, yet they never feel derivative. They sound like the future if the future grew up ducking emotional shrapnel.

The encore was devastating. “Get Fucked” landed with all the elegance of a brick through a cathedral window before “Conditions” closed the night in a delirious wave of catharsis. Hearing that song now, after the evolution from the Conditions EP trilogy into the full-length assault of Crystalpunk, felt strangely emotional. Conditions I, II and III built the mythology piece by piece — all tension, grime and nervous energy — before Crystalpunk arrived as the fully realised manifesto.

There has been online chatter suggesting CHALK intended Crystalpunk to be their final statement or that they would stop recording after it. That does not appear to be accurate. The band recently clarified that the “only album” idea was more a creative mentality than a literal ending, and that they still have more to say as CHALK. Which is fortunate, because the idea of this band disappearing now would feel like somebody bulldozing a cathedral just as the stained glass finally caught the light.

CHALK remain one of the few genuinely exciting bands operating in Britain and Ireland right now. Most contemporary post-punk acts sound like men sadly reading spreadsheets in German nightclubs. CHALK sound like societal collapse you can dance to. I love them with the sort of unhealthy devotion normally reserved for cult leaders and dangerous exes. Long may they continue making beautiful noise.

Article: Angela Canavan

As I traipse through Finnieston, around the corner from OVO Hydro, I see hordes of twenty-somethings dressed in their finest cropped jackets and loose jeans, slim sunglasses shielding them from the late sun as pints are consumed. They babble excitedly about the evening ahead. Tame Impala, the psychedelic project of Australian musician Kevin Parker, has long soundtracked this particular archetype of Scottish youth. I’m reminded of 2014, the signature mud of T in the Park at the Balado site, and seeing him beneath the blue King Tut’s tent in the wake of his rise after 2012’s Lonerism. I’m sure many here attended, eager to relive the buzz that live music instils in you when you’re seventeen, when everything feels like a momentous discovery you’re dying to tell your friends about when you get back from the summer holidays.

Walking through the red Clyde tunnel, watching pint bottles clink along the approach to the venue, I feel as though I could be back at Balado queuing for my fabric wristband. But when Parker emerges through a torrent of strobes, I quickly understand that enough time has passed for him to outgrow those beginnings entirely. Long gone are the days of psychedelic projections against a fabric stage wall. Now, Parker is part man, part machine, the architect of the most sophisticated production I have ever seen. A flood of lasers pulses rhythmically as Parker plays his anthems one by one, each song paired with its own colour story. Dracula begins awash in blood red before a gold glow falls across the crowd, illuminating the venue beautifully.

Parker drifts into the crowd, greeting fans as he goes, until he disappears from sight altogether. Above us, humorous footage plays of him taking a bathroom break, the camera pointed carefully at his feet for privacy, before he re-emerges on the B-stage at the back of the arena. It is small and stripped back in contrast to the main spectacle, lit by four lamps, softened by patterned rugs, and free of excess. Sitting on the floor with two keyboards, he looks like your friend’s older brother making music alone in his room, unguarded and lost in feeling. He lies back as he sings, lamps pulsing gently around him in shifting colour. His body moves loosely with the sound, knees swaying, one arm raised so the microphone dangles above him. Just when it feels as though the show might never find a quiet moment, the chaos subsides. For a brief spell, it is just Kevin Parker and his makeshift bedroom, looping textures and airy vocals dissolving across the arena.

The lighting rig descends as the song closes, and then he is on the move again, emerging once more for Let It Happen. Pints immediately rise overhead, the Scottish crowd vocalising the iconic bassline. Nangs follows soon after, and the lights behind Parker and his band wobble in time with the song, a detail that speaks to the production’s overall mastery.

“Let me look at you quickly… there’s more of you than I thought. I didn’t know this place went so high — it’s beautiful.” He reflects briefly on earlier Scottish shows, name-checking Barrowland Ballroom and The Arches, before adding, “No matter where you were or what time it was, I’m happy you’re all here. In fact, I’m fucking happy you’re all here. The only thing I care about in this whole universe at this moment is the fact you’re here right now.”

There is a slight trade-off to the grandeur. At times, the sheer ambition of the lighting rig becomes almost overbearing, occasionally obstructing sightlines for those seated higher up. Nevertheless, the show is one to be felt as much as it is seen. Confetti spills over the adoring crowd for New Person, Same Old Mistakes, and following the encore, Parker teases “song number two…” before delving into one of the most iconic guitar riffs I’ve ever known. The Less I Know the Better is even better than imagined, an experience that will fuel nostalgia for another decade. Finally, End of Summer arrives as a softer closer, nudging the night towards an early exodus as people begin filtering out to catch trains and buses, the evening ending in what can only be described as a comedown.

Article: Anni Cameron