The Golden Bough

There are festivals that treat music discovery as a marketing slogan, plaster it over a poster alongside a handful of acts you’ve already seen approximately seventeen times, and then charge you the price of a small family holiday for the privilege. And then there is Tenement Trail, which understands that the most exciting thing about music is the possibility that, somewhere between one pint and a frantic dash across the Gallowgate, a band you’ve never heard of will rearrange your entire musical affections.

Once again, Tenement Trail delivered a bespoke bill that stretched across Scotland, Ireland and beyond, cramming more potential favourites into one Saturday than most people have room for in their Spotify libraries. The genius of this festival is that it is practically impossible to know everybody on the bill before you arrive. There will always be somebody whose friend grabs them by the arm and says, “Come and meet me here at this time. You HAVE to see this band.” And, more often than not, you do. You emerge half an hour later with a new obsession, a record to buy, a future gig to attend and the slightly humiliating realisation that your musical education remains incomplete.

Every year, I come home from Tenement Trail with something: an LP, a T-shirt, a ticket for another show or a new band lodged in my affections like a particularly agreeable parasite. This year was no exception.

Sponsored by Pretty Green, the festival once again transformed Glasgow’s East End into a sprawling musical playground. There were pop-ups dotted around the neighbourhood, including the Pure Evil T-shirt pop-up at Blitzkrieg, offering further temptation to people whose wardrobes are already an archaeological record of gigs past. There did appear to be one less stage than in previous years, with the familiar Crowded Flat -curated presence at the Winged Ox seemingly absent. But if anything, that made the business of navigating the festival feel even more like a treasure hunt.

And what treasures there were. From Glasgow’s own purveyors of gloriously heavy musical nonsense to the extraordinary racket coming out of Ireland, from Gaelic-language rave to the glorious unpredictability of a secret set, Tenement Trail 2026 reminded us that the future of music rarely arrives wearing a name badge and standing obediently beside a merchandise table. Sometimes it arrives in a football scarf. Sometimes it arrives with a saw. And sometimes it arrives with a queue so long that you begin to wonder whether you are attending a gig or attempting to evacuate a small country.

Compost Compost Compost — St Luke’s

Opening proceedings at St Luke’s, Compost Compost Compost represented exactly the sort of discovery that makes Tenement Trail worthwhile: a name you might initially dismiss as either a gardening initiative or a particularly depressing council recycling campaign, attached to a band you would be foolish to overlook. The early slot is always a curious business. Some punters are still working out where their first pint has gone, while others are already moving between venues with the grim efficiency of people attempting to complete a military operation. St Luke’s was the place to begin the day’s musical excavation, and Compost Compost Compost set the tone for a festival built on curiosity rather than familiarity.

Boxing Club — BAaD

Over at BAaD, Boxing Club offered another reason to resist the temptation to spend the afternoon merely waiting for the headliners. The name suggests bruises, blood and a certain amount of masculine posturing, although a festival bill is rarely so obliging as to tell you what a band actually sounds like. For us Boxing Club are reminiscent of early Kasabian but with more Brit pop overtures that are truly their own, we loved “Kinneshead Avenue”.

Conscious Pilot — Barrowland 2

Conscious Pilot were one of my essential stops, and the Glasgow outfit demonstrated why homegrown talent deserves considerably more attention than it sometimes receives. Their music has a wonderfully unruly, literate indie-rock character, with a post-punk edge and lyrics that seem to have been assembled by somebody who has spent too long observing the absurdity of modern life and has decided that the only reasonable response is to write a song about it.

There is something gloriously unmanufactured about them. Their appearance, their attitude and their musical personality suggest a band who would rather be interesting than coordinated. The football-scarf energy was entirely welcome, and the bassist’s Queens Park Rangers scarf was a particularly fine touch. It is difficult not to admire a musician who appears prepared to risk both his fashion reputation and his team’s standing in the same afternoon.

Their newly released material, including the much-discussed “Art Nouveau”, deserves attention, while “God’s Hot Car” is a particularly good entry point into their sardonic world. Conscious Pilot are proof that Glasgow still produces bands who can make the everyday ridiculous sound like a matter of urgent artistic importance.

Woody — Van Winkle,

Woody occupied the Van Winkle slot, offering a welcome alternative to the simultaneous racket elsewhere. One of the more pleasurable aspects of Tenement Trail is the way the different venues develop their own personalities as the afternoon progresses. You can move from a packed room where the air feels like soup to a smaller space where the audience is discovering an artist in real time. Van Winkle was a useful stop for anybody looking to expand their itinerary beyond the obvious names. Woody offers up some seriously sun breached whimsical pop out stand out track for us was; “When You Leave”.

Bad Gravy — St Luke’s,

Bad Gravy were my afternoon’s first major triumph. These Glaswegian upstarts have a wonderfully heavy stomp, the sort of sound that seems to rise through the soles of your shoes and insist that sitting still is a sign of moral weakness. They are the banter kings, but that description should not be mistaken for an accusation of musical frivolity. Their satirical observations give their songs a personality that is often missing from bands who mistake solemnity for profundity.

Bad Gravy understand that the world is already absurd enough without a band having to dress up its observations in the language of a university dissertation. Their humour is sharp, their rhythms are danceable, and their heavier passages have the physical force of somebody slamming a door in the face of a particularly tedious bore. “Father and State” is a strong introduction to their knack for turning social observation into a muscular anthem. The band sounded like a group growing into its own identity, with the confidence and irreverence to make an increasingly convincing case for itself. St Luke’s was packed, and deservedly so.

My First Time — BAaD

My First Time brought a rather different energy to BAaD. The name is a gift to anybody with an immature sense of humour, which is to say most people at an independent music festival, but the band were there to make a musical impression rather than simply provide a punchline. Cowbell heavy, snarling and witty they arrived with a camp stomp. “Man of Ill Repute” has been on our playlist for months.

Paulie Swan — Barrowland 2,

Paulie Swan’s appearance at Barrowland 2 was another invitation to investigate rather than assume. There is a particular intimacy to this room, where emerging artists can feel close enough to touch and a performance can turn a passing curiosity into something more substantial. The afternoon was gathering momentum, the crowds were beginning to move with greater purpose, and the business of choosing between stages was becoming less a question of taste than a test of personal logistics. Paulie Swan’s particular brand of multi-layered, jazz and funk infused brilliance provided accurate titillation, we loved “Shiner”.

Burglar — 226 Gallowgate

At 226 Gallowgate, Burglar offered another opportunity to venture beyond the best-known names. The venue was part of the festival’s charm: instead of one enormous field and a screen the size of a tower block, Tenement Trail spread itself across real rooms in a real neighbourhood, each with its own atmosphere and its own limitations. You could get close to the music, feel the crowd respond and make up your own mind. Burglar’s afternoon appearance fitted neatly into that spirit of discovery, in a festival where the next favourite band might be playing just around the corner.

With their alternative indie offerings this Dublin based quartet did not disappoint our favourite track was, “Cappadocia”.

Maicín — Van Winkle

Van Winkle offered a change of temperature with Maicín, whose set brought the pleasures of a smaller room into focus. In a festival where the bigger stages can become a contest of volume and anticipation, there is something satisfying about being close enough to see a band work through a song rather than simply receive it from a distance. Maicín added another shade to the day’s shifting palette, the sort of discovery that can happen because you have ten minutes to spare and decide to follow your ears rather than your timetable.

Their sound sits comfortably in the festival’s broad indie landscape, with melody doing the work of a handrail through the arrangement. For a first listen, seek out “Mouth Open Wide”.

AKA — McChuills

McChuills was one of the day’s more useful places to drift into without a fixed plan, and AKA helped make the case for doing exactly that. Their appearance sat within the more intimate, rough-edged end of the festival, where a set can feel less like a polished showcase and more like catching a band in its natural habitat.

AKA’s place in the programme was another reminder that Tenement Trail is not a single-scene festival. Its appeal comes from the different little musical ecosystems sharing the same streets. “It Grows on Trees (Money)” was a gloriously delightful stomp.

The Joy Hotel — BAaD

Glasgow septet The Joy Hotel brought a more expansive, unpredictable kind of indie to BAaD. Their music draws on pop, country and psychedelic rock, with multi-part vocal harmonies and arrangements that can move from delicate balladry to something noisier and more unruly. Imagine a country song wandering into a Sixties psych-rock party, finding a choir in the kitchen and deciding to stay until dawn. There is a cinematic quality to their music, but also a welcome sense of humour; the grandeur rarely becomes self-important.

Their song “Jeremiah” is the one to seek out. It swells from a brooding beginning into something rapturous, with the harmonies opening up like curtains at the end of a particularly strange stage play. It gives you the full Joy Hotel proposition: big emotions, curious arrangements and a Glasgow DIY sensibility that has grown into something much larger without losing its oddness.

Ferguson Hi-Fi — Barrowland 2

Ferguson Hi-Fi brought a rush of guitar-pop energy to Barrowland 2. Led by Glasgow musician Pete Ferguson, formerly of Wuh Oh, the project has an appealing ad-hoc supergroup quality: the debut single “Get Over It” features Stevie Jackson of Belle and Sebastian and Dave McGowan of Teenage Fanclub. That is a formidable bit of Scottish indie DNA to have in the bloodstream, but the song doesn’t feel like a heritage project. It has the fizz of a fresh idea caught before it has time to become respectable.

The sound is bright, immediate and guitar-led, with a hook that seems to come bounding through the door before the rest of the band has taken off its coat. “Get Over It” is the track to try: a burst of power pop that makes starting again sound less like a crisis and more like a very good excuse to turn the amplifier up.

Heidi Curtis — Barrowland

The pleasure of catching artists in rooms like Barrowland is that the music arrives without much cushioning: a voice, a song and the audience’s willingness to meet it halfway. Curtis’s performance offered a more inward-looking contrast to the swagger and distortion elsewhere, giving the day room to breathe between its louder declarations.

“Hollow Heart” showcases her voice that has a whiskey soaked ragged edge to it that belies her 24years.

Sodakill — McChuills

Sodakill brought riot-grrrl energy to McChuills, adding a welcome shot of punk abrasion to the afternoon. Their music is the sonic equivalent of a marker pen scrawled across a pristine wall: confrontational, immediate and not especially interested in asking permission. In a festival full of different shades of guitar music, their roughness was a useful reminder that punk’s most enduring quality is not a particular sound but an attitude.

We caught this band supporting Gallus a week previously and we even spied some members of the band watching from the crowd, a definite set high was, “Easy”.

THEATRE — St Luke’s

THEATRE, a Scottish band whose sound leans towards dense, muscular shoegaze, made St Luke’s feel like a room slowly filling with weather. Their reverb-soaked guitars created a thick, shifting wall of sound, while the vocals retained an intimate, folk-influenced quality. It is a pleasing contradiction: music that can sound enormous without losing the sense that someone is singing directly into your ear.

They were atmospheric and effortlessly cool, and “The Fall” is the track to try if you want to understand the balance. The guitars bloom like fog under streetlights, but the melody gives the song a human centre. It is not shoegaze as an excuse to disappear into the effects pedal; there is a song in there, and it knows exactly when to emerge.

Oedipus and the Mama’s Boys — McChuills

Oedipus and the Mama’s Boys, from Edinburgh, brought a gloriously unruly multi-instrumental approach to McChuills. With guitar, bass, saxophone, violin, drums and synth in the mix, they occupy the messy borderland between post-punk and experimental noise rock. Think of the nervy propulsion of IDLES or Squid pushed through a machine that has been fed too many instruments and not quite enough rules. Their music can feel like several different bands trying to escape through the same fire exit.

The single “Stretched/Kitchens” is the one to seek out. It gives a taste of the group’s collision of rhythmic drive and experimental textures, with the sense that the arrangement might veer off the road at any moment but somehow keeps hurtling forward. They were one of the acts that made McChuills feel less like a side room and more like a laboratory for strange ideas.

Makeshift Art Bar — St Luke’s

Makeshift Art Bar, from Belfast, were one of the more compelling propositions for anyone drawn to music with its elbows out. Their music video for “Discipline” featuring a Harry Styles lookalike all over Benidorm has been soundtracking my summer. Their sound occupies the noisy intersection of grunge, noise rock and punk: rumbling bass, jagged guitars and the satisfying push and pull between quieter passages and sudden eruptions. It is music that seems to be held together by sheer force of will, then deliberately pulled apart again.

There was an extra little connection for anyone following the Irish alternative scene: band members were wearing Chalk T-shirts. Chalk’s touring with Fontaines D.C. has helped shine a light on the wider ecosystem of Irish bands making intense, contemporary guitar music, and Makeshift Art Bar fit comfortably into that conversation without sounding like anyone’s understudy.

Their appeal is in the abrasion. They don’t polish away the rough edges; they use them as the point. “Bedwetter” is noisy, jagged and full of grunge-punk tension, with the quiet-loud dynamics of a door repeatedly slammed in your face. It’s a good introduction to a band whose music is less a neat indie-rock product than a slightly unstable object that might fall apart at any second — which is precisely why you keep watching.

Tom A Smith — BAaD

Tom A Smith brought a more direct, melodic form of alternative rock to BAaD. The Sunderland artist works in a broad British guitar tradition, but his appeal lies in the mix of sharp hooks, youthful urgency and a performance style that makes the songs feel larger than their running time. There is a lineage here that runs through Jamie T and the more restless end of British indie, though Smith’s material has its own bright, punchy personality.

The Ninth Wave — Barrowland

The Ninth Wave brought the sort of dark, propulsive guitar music that makes a larger room feel like a pressure chamber. The Glasgow band balance post-punk drive with a bruised, emotionally charged atmosphere; they can sound both urgent and detached, as if the music is racing forward while the lyrics are stuck somewhere in the past. Their rhythms keep pushing, while the melodies carry the weight of something unresolved.

There is a satisfying contrast between their muscular sound and their more vulnerable emotional register. They understand that gloom need not mean sluggishness, and that a song can be bleak without losing its pulse. “This Broken Design” is a strong place to start: restless, shadowy and full of forward momentum, like a night bus cutting through wet streets while the city outside blurs into neon.

Limonead — Van Winkle

Then came Limonead, whose Gaelic-language rave was one of the day’s most distinctive propositions. The Scottish artist combines Gaelic vocals with hip-hop beats, synths and pop production, taking a language too often treated as a cultural heirloom and throwing it straight into the middle of the dancefloor. The result is not a solemn exercise in preservation but something playful, contemporary and built to move bodies.

There is a tendency to treat music in Gaelic as something that must be presented with solemnity, heritage and a little respectful distance. Limonead takes a different route: the language is alive, rhythmic and entirely capable of sitting over a beat that belongs in a contemporary club. Her sound makes tradition feel like a material to be played with, not a museum exhibit to be admired from behind glass.

“Nàche Buidhe Dhut” combines the bounce of hip-hop with big synths and pop immediacy, and it helps explain why Limonead’s music travelled beyond the usual circles. In Van Winkle, the idea made perfect sense: the pub became a tiny rave, and the festival’s discovery ethos suddenly had a bassline.

The Orielles — St Luke’s

The Orielles brought a more adventurous kind of indie to St Luke’s. The Halifax band have never been especially interested in staying inside one genre, moving between post-punk, disco, psychedelia and dream-pop with the ease of people changing lanes on an empty motorway. Their music can be wiry and danceable one moment, hazy and expansive the next.

That combination makes them an ideal festival band. They can give a crowd a rhythm to lock into while allowing the arrangement to wander off into stranger territory. “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” is an expansive, shape-shifting track where motorik rhythms, psychedelic guitar and danceable indie seem to be sharing the same bloodstream. Their music is too curious to be reduced to a single label, and that refusal to settle is part of the attraction.

Pixie McCann — BAaD

Pixie McCann brought a pop sensibility to BAaD, adding a different kind of immediacy to a bill heavy with guitars. Her songs move through personal territory with the clarity of someone writing down a thought before it has had time to become a cliché. The sound has a contemporary pop directness, but it also leaves space for the emotional details to breathe.

For a first listen, try “Deja Vu” or “Living in Memory”. Both offer a way into her songwriting without reducing her to a generic festival-pop slot. In a day of dense guitars, shifting time signatures and pub-sized dancefloors, that melodic clarity was a welcome change of pace.

Lucia & The Best Boys — Barrowland 2

Trying to get into Barrowland 2 for Lucia & The Best Boys was an exercise in crowd management, or rather, in discovering that crowd management had apparently been abandoned as a concept. The queue had the air of an event whose popularity had taken its organisers by surprise. Lucia, the Glasgow artist led by singer Lucia Fairfull, was hardly a secret, though. Her dramatic, synth-driven pop has been steadily building its audience, and her music makes a virtue of the gap between intimacy and grandeur.

There are shades of Kate Bush, Bat for Lashes and Stevie Nicks in the theatricality, but Lucia’s songs have their own distinctly modern, emotionally unsettled atmosphere. The arrangements can feel like a room slowly filling with smoke: brooding synths, sudden surges of sound and vocals that move from a whisper to a full-throated release. The Picking Petals material has a strong emotional core, and her performance made the songs feel like private thoughts suddenly projected across a ballroom.

“Perfectly Untrue” captures that delicious tension between vulnerability and drama: pop music with its eyeliner running, but still perfectly capable of hitting the high notes.

Diva Down — McChuills

Diva Down, an all-girl rock band from Glasgow, brought a shot of full-band energy to McChuills. Their sound is direct and unapologetic, with the kind of rock attitude that doesn’t need to be softened by elaborate production. They fit the room well: close enough to the audience for the performance to feel like a shared undertaking, rather than a polished product being delivered from a safe distance.

Their first single, “I’m Your Girl”, is : confident, guitar-led and not especially interested in waiting for permission. There is a straightforward pleasure in a band that turns up ready to make noise and lets the songs do the persuading.

Baby Strange — Barrowland

Baby Strange were among the natural focal points of the day. The Glasgow trio have built their identity around a wiry, confrontational form of guitar music: punk attitude, post-punk tension and choruses that arrive with the confidence of someone who has never once wondered whether they belong in the room. Their one-off reunion show celebrated ten years of their debut album Want It Need It, giving the set the added charge of a band revisiting the music that helped establish them.

They played “Pure Evil”, “Trouble” and “Pleasure City”, with Lucia joining them for “California Sun”. That guest appearance was a neat bit of festival cross-pollination: artists who had occupied different corners of the day suddenly sharing the same stage, making the programme feel like a connected scene rather than a collection of isolated slots.

Baby Strange are good at making swagger sound like a musical strategy rather than a pose. Their songs have bite, but there is craft beneath the sneer; the hooks make sure the attitude has somewhere to go. “Pure Evil” was one of the highlights of the set, and it remains a fan favourite characterised by the festival literally being awash with people wearing the T-Shirt. You can instantly understand their sharp-edged, snarling charm. It sounds like Glasgow guitar music with its fists in its pockets and absolutely no intention of apologising.

Willie J Healey — St Luke’s

Willie J Healey, from Oxfordshire, offered a looser, more melodic alternative at St Luke’s. His indie rock has a slightly crooked charm, mixing strong melodies with offbeat turns of phrase and a relaxed, sometimes soulful delivery. There is a sense of a songwriter who knows the rules of a good pop song but prefers to leave a few fingerprints on the glass.

His music can feel like a conversation with someone who keeps changing the subject just as you think you’ve worked them out. That looseness is part of the appeal: the songs are accessible without becoming predictable, and the personality keeps them from dissolving into generic festival indie. “Sure Feels Good” is the track to try for a first taste of that melodic, slightly askew approach.

Brògeal — BAaD

Brògeal’s folk-punk energy made them a natural fit for BAaD. Hailing from Falkirk, the five-piece draw on traditional folk textures and the communal force of punk, turning songs into something that feels built for a crowd rather than a solitary listen. Their backstory — meeting on a football supporters’ bus — feels entirely appropriate for a band whose music thrives on shared enthusiasm, big voices and the feeling that everybody in the room should be joining in.

The queue for entry snaked all the way around the BAaD and inside was a seething mosh pit right from the first few chords.

The trick with folk-punk is to make the tradition feel lived rather than decorative. Brògeal understand that. Their songs have the lift of a pub singalong, but the momentum and scruff of a band that wants to push the music forward rather than merely preserve it. It is a sound with room for sentiment and a good deal of noise.

Their set closed with “The Lonesome Boatman”, a fitting choice for a band who can make a familiar folk melody feel like a communal event. It was one of those moments when the room seemed to stop being an audience and become a chorus.

Club Sabbath: Tina Sandwich and Spyres — McChuills

The night ended with the sort of surprise that makes a long day of venue-hopping worthwhile. Club Sabbath’s secret sets brought Tina Sandwich and Spyres into the picture, turning the final stretch into a last-minute bonus rather than a simple procession towards the exit.

Spyres offer a more direct, guitar-driven indie-rock rush, with the kind of hooks that can make a late-night set feel suddenly more consequential than its place on the timetable might suggest. “Only This Could Happen to Me” is a good place to start if you want to hear their melodic, guitar-led side; “Otherside” is another worth a listen.

Tenement Trail 2026 was a reminder that Glasgow’s musical life is most compelling when it refuses to sit still. The festival’s crowded schedule can make it difficult to see everything, and the queues occasionally threatened to turn discovery into an endurance sport. But the same sprawling, slightly unruly structure is what gives the event its character.

The strongest moments came from the collisions: Lucia’s theatrical pop meeting Baby Strange’s guitar-driven swagger; Limonead bringing Gaelic into the world of contemporary rave; Brògeal turning folk into a mass singalong; Makeshift Art Bar carrying Belfast noise-rock into a Glasgow room. These were not all variations on one sound, and that was the point.

A festival this size will inevitably produce missed sets, imperfect choices and the nagging suspicion that the best thing happening in the city is taking place in the venue you didn’t choose. That is part of the deal. Tenement Trail is a map of possibilities rather than a checklist, and the reward is not necessarily seeing every big name. It is finding something you didn’t know you needed to hear.

Glasgow has never lacked for bands, attitude or people prepared to argue about both. Tenement Trail gathers those instincts into one gloriously overstuffed day — occasionally chaotic, frequently surprising and at its best when it lets the music do the talking.

Article: Angela Canavan & Natalie Vanderpool

Images: Angela Canavan & Marco Cornelli

More than seven years after her last solo headline show in Glasgow, Courtney Barnett’s return to the city was highly anticipated, and the legendary Barrowland Ballroom felt like the perfect setting for the occasion.

The setlist struck a great balance between new and old, with every track from her latest record, Creature of Habit, making an appearance alongside some well-loved favourites.

Barnett was joined by longtime bandmate and bassist Bones Sloane, alongside Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint on drums. The trio were tightly locked in throughout, providing the perfect foundation for Barnett’s distinctive guitar work, from her fuzzy tones and angular riffs to the more melodic passages. Her sharp, often humorous observations on everyday life remain central to her appeal, and songs like ‘Avant Gardener’, ‘Depreston’ and ‘History Eraser’ were particular highlights. The encore offered a change of pace with a solo performance of ‘Mostly Patient’, during which the audience fell completely silent, creating a wonderfully intimate moment before the band returned for a closing run of classics, including ‘Canned Tomatoes (Whole)’, ‘Pedestrian at Best’ and ‘Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party’.

Barnett seemed completely at home on the Barrowland stage, delivering a performance that felt effortless from beginning to end. After such a long wait, it was well worth it. Undoubtedly one of the best gigs of 2026.

Article: Barry Carson

It always feels as though there is no time left; not really, not enough. There is no time for the things that matter, and sometimes even the words we use to describe them begin to feel spoiled, worn out or untrue.

For years, I watched and rewatched Californication. I idealised it. I idolised it. Then, gradually, I forgot what it had once meant to me — starting again with fewer memories, less courage and less time.

But here I was again. The map had moved to another place, and there I stood, watching someone who had once made me feel something, for better or worse. This time, it was not Hank Moody on a screen, nor Denise Bryson emerging from the strange, luminous world of Twin Peaks. It was David Duchovny in the flesh: actor, writer and musician, standing in a small Glasgow venue and turning a lifetime of storytelling into song.

Duchovny’s performance at The Art School marked the opening night of his Prince of Pieces European tour, and the intimacy of the venue gave the material an unusually personal quality. Best known to many for The X-Files, Californication and Twin Peaks, he arrived not as a famous face indulging in a musical detour, but as a songwriter with a growing body of work and a clear sense of purpose.

The set drew on his melodic soft rock and poetic lyricism, alongside songs from his fourth studio album, Prince of Pieces, released earlier this year. There was a reflective, roots-rock warmth to the arrangements — songs concerned with love, loss, vulnerability and the difficult business of rebuilding oneself.

What made the evening compelling was the distance between the screen and the stage. For anyone who had once idealised Hank Moody, seeing Duchovny perform in person was a reminder that the person behind the role is more restrained, more thoughtful and perhaps more human than the characters that made him familiar. His music did not ask to be compared with Californication or any of his other shows; instead, it offered another route into the same central preoccupations: time, memory, regret and the possibility of beginning again.

By the end of the night, the initial strangeness of seeing Duchovny in the flesh had given way to something simpler: gratitude. For an audience that had carried his work with them through different chapters of their lives, this was not merely a celebrity concert. It was a chance to feel something again.

Article: Marco Cornelli

It’s that time of the year again as Edinburgh turns into a sea of obscure band t-shirts and tote bags for its annual Edinburgh Psych Fest. 6 venues, more than 35 acts, plenty of beer and a whole lot of walking (seriously, there’s so much walking) underpin one of the best alternative UK festivals of the year. 

Also, one day festivals are fucking great, as there’s no need to camp. At 35, I am much too old for that. 

Anyway, here’s all the bands we saw at Edinburgh Psych Fest this year. 

GHOSTWOMAN

Starting the day off strongly, Canadian two-piece GHOSTWOMAN got us into the swing of things with their distinct instrumental psych-grunge, garage rock flavoured slice of Americana. 

As someone who’s been in multiple two-piece bands, I’m always excited and intrigued to see how bands solve the dynamic shortcomings that inevitably come with being a band member down. While they were probably one of the slowest bands of the day tempo wise, they certainly packed a punch in terms of dynamics. 

Vocalist and guitarist Evan Uschenko and drummer Ille van Desse take center stage, facing one another as they play through a lot of their most recent album – Welcome To The Civilized World. There’s a deliberateness to their sound that’s refreshing to experience live. Where the majority of two-piece bands feel the need to go hard, fast and fill the space with noise GHOSTWOMAN are more reserved. 

Together the pair build a soundscape live, taking the audience on a journey through guitar solos, controlled distortion, husky vocals and bass so loud that it made my hair vibrate. GHOSTWOMAN were one of the most distinct bands I heard at Edinburgh Psych Fest and I would recommend checking them out if you get a chance. 

Songs you should check out:

• Along 
• Alright

Angine De Piotrine 

After GHOSTWOMAN it was straight onto the band that everyone wanted to see, Angine De Poitrine. We’ve already written about our experience with the polka-dotted Canadian Rock duo, but if you haven’t had a chance to read that yet, just know that they put on a wonderfully fun and impressive show. You should definitely go read that after you’ve finished reading this!

Songs you should check out:

• Yor Zarad
• Sherpa

Adult DVD

Next up was Adult DVD, a Leeds based dance-punk six piece that remind me of early Kasabian – back when they were called Saracuse and leaned a lot more heavily on synths. The band were already well into it when we arrived, having packed La Belle wall-to-wall with people.

I was surprised right off the bat by just how tight they are. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and while there’s almost certainly a click track underpinning everything, I’ve got to give the drummer Jonathan Newell props for keeping everyone together. That tightness really emphasises the electronic sound the band are going for, tying together grungy guitar riffs with 2000s era synth sounds and four to the floor syncopated hi hat drum rhythms.

Watching Adult DVD live took me back to the late 2000s, specifically the window of time in which I discovered how fun live music, house parties and copious amounts of alcohol were. I also want to shout out just how much Cowboy On Aisle 3 absolutely slaps live – the bass synth was stuck in my head for days after.

Songs you should check out:

• Cowboy On Aisle 3 
• Do As I Please

Water Machine 

Following a short walk from La Belle’s, it was time for Water Machine at Sneaky Pete’s. The Manchester five-piece (originally from Glasgow) are a fun mix of indie rock, pop and jangly guitar sounds. Walking towards the stage I honestly couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea to book a five member band on what was easily the smallest stage at the festival. 

Equipment Tetris aside, Water Machine’s set was one of the most enjoyable of the day. Despite it being a small, warm and sweaty venue,  the entire band put their all into the performance, smashing their way through a set filled with tongue-in-cheek lyricism, fast-paced pop punk riffs and plenty of danceable moments. Lead singer Hando Morice also deserves a special shout out for not only incorporating violin during songs, but playing it with an injured hand as well

The on-stage chemistry and friendship between each member was one of the elements that made them stand out most during the day for me. The songs, interactions and ad-hoc moments between it all were elevated by the sense that the band were all sincerely happy to be there. Prior to going, Water Machine wouldn’t have typically been the kind of band I’d have listened to, but their set won me over. 

Songs you should check out:

• River 
• I Quit

Bleech 9:3

It was now time to head back to La Belle for Bleech 9:3, an alternative-grunge four piece from Ireland. Having been born in the 90s, I knew I was in for a good time the moment I spotted beach-blonde dyed hair, red Adidas tracksuit trousers and trouser chains. 

This was immediately evident as the band jumped straight into Jacky, a nu-metal  stomper complete with scratchy guitars, rap-like vocal delivery and a punchy chorus. This set the tone for the next fourty-five minutes, as the band belted their way through a 90s inspired grunge set that took from all the best bits of that era whilst making it authentically their own.

Beech 9:3 (and I hate this word, but please bear with me) have a stage swagger that really encompasses the 90s alternative aesthetic they’ve committed so strongly to. Lead singer Barry Quinlan stomped confidently across the stage, capturing the engagement of the crowd before jumping into it to sing with them. I always love it when a band manages to truly connect with a crowd, and this was something Beech 9:3 accomplished pretty immediately and throughout the rest of their set.

It’s always interesting seeing how bands convey their inspirations whilst creating a sound that feels distinctly their own. Live the band shifts across numerous clear inspirations, whether it’s the early-Incubus sounding Jacky, the Deftones-like dynamics of Cannonball or the Alice In Chains vocal delivery of Ceiling. The band channels those inspirations clearly, but not in a way that ever feels derivative. Bleach 9:3 perfectly captures everything I love about grunge and alternative rock music, but in a way that feels fresh and exciting to witness live. 

Songs you should check out:

• Ceiling
• Jacky

Shame 

It was time for the last set of the day.  And while a good majority of the festival ended the day with the mighty Stereolab, we instead went with the London five-piece Shame. Right from the off, the room is noticeably quiet for a headlining Shame set – especially when you consider that the band have played tours across both Europe and the US over the last 12 months. However, Stereolab are well liked and I can certainly understand the allure of watching them at Usher Hall. 

Unperturbed by a smaller crowd, Shame went straight into their regular show starter Axis Of Evil. Even with a smaller crowd than one might have anticipated, Shame and lead singer Charlie Steen were not going to settle for anything less than absolute chaos.  As Axis Of Evil reaches its first major build up, Charlie belts out “you want it all, you need it all” and the crowd completely loses it. This set the tone for the rest of the band’s performance, as the five piece went about giving it their absolute all and expected nothing short of the same back from the crowd. 

From here, the band went straight into Concrete – a fan favourite and one of their first singles. It was at this point that we collectively witnessed the sheer mayhem of bass player Josh Finerty’s playing, as he started running back and forth across the stage whilst also pulling off the occasional front flip. It’s impressive to watch, and really adds to this give and take between the crowd and the band. 

Charlie’s stage presence also needs to be mentioned. As the band headed into Fingers Of Steel, it became quite clear that his vocal delivery, movement around the stage and the way in which he interacts with the crowd are all pretty distinctive. He moves with purpose and confidence that’s captivating. Regularly shifting and marching around the stage, as if delivering a sermon or a keynote speech. 

Seemingly not wanting to let the energy drop, the band go straight into Six Pack, an upbeat guitar-heavy song with a marching band-style snare roll that underpins everything. Unsurprisingly the crowd loses it and we start to see the first crowd surfers of the evening alongside a mosh pit. Drummer Charlie Forbes plays with a relentlessness that drives the entire band onwards during Six Pack, at points it feels like they are only just keeping up with him. 

From this point onwards the show becomes a bit of a blur. For the first time in more than a decade, I decide to join the mosh pit. The energy between the crowd and the band is exhilarating and I really felt the need to be a part of it. For the next 30 or so minutes, I mosh, I make friends, I end up on the barrier and I even almost end up crowdsurfing. 

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I completely lose myself in the music. Any anxiety around how sweaty I am, if I look a bit silly or the myriad of other inner worries we all get whilst in a large crowd are gone. 

Instead  I’m just there, in the moment. Deeply enjoying one of my favourite bands in play an incredibly intimate show.

My only complaint is that they didn’t play Alibis from Food For Worms, but you can’t have it all.

Songs you should check out:

• Six Pack
• One Rizla

Edinburgh Psych Fest 

This was my first time at Edinburgh Psych Fest, and honestly, I can’t believe I’ve never been before. By the end of the day, the line up had achieved two pretty key things:

1. It further embedded my love for bands that I was already a fan of
2. It gave me a bunch of new bands to listen to 

My only real gripe is that there’s potentially a lot of walking if the bands you want to see are spread across numerous stages. This doesn’t make it the most accessible festival, especially if you aren’t as mobile as other people. I saw a lot of people combating this with pushbikes, however it would be great to see festival-backed transportation between venues.

If you’re into alternative, heavier music and you don’t mind a good walk or cycle, I’d definitely recommend checking out Edinburgh Psych Fest next year!

Words: Thomas Hughes

Images: Angela Canavan

Sodakill arrive first with the sort of big, heavy noise that makes the Art School feel considerably smaller than it is. The Stockholm four-piece — Julia Sjöström on vocals and guitar, Beatrice Nordling on guitar, Astrid Carsbring on drums and Elsa Presto on bass — have been making their particular strain of “spicecore” since forming in 2022, throwing punk, metal, grunge and rock into the same industrial blender and then turning the thing up until it threatens to shake itself apart. Their live energy is raw and unfiltered, the sort of performance that makes you want to see what happens when they are given a festival crowd and absolutely no reason to behave. I cannot wait to see them at Tenement Trail next week. 

Then come Gallus, and suddenly the whole evening feels less like a gig than Glasgow has been given temporary permission to misbehave indoors.

We’ve been simping after Gallus ever since we caught them headline the River Stage at TRNSMT, circa 2024, and then followed them to the after-party at McChuills, where the band provided an even more fervent show than their headline appearance. Since then, their gaudy, stompy, swampy noise music has found its way into the hearts of an ever-growing number of Glaswegians, something abundantly clear from tonight’s sold-out Art School. This is a room of roughly 850 people, a sizeable venue by any reasonable measure, yet Gallus have somehow retained the feeling of a band who might still be playing somewhere with a leaking ceiling and three people standing between the toilets and the stage. 

Gallus are, after all, Glasgow through and through. Barry Dolan is on vocals, Eamon Ewins and Gianluca Bernacchi on guitars, Paul Ewins on drums and Russell Baxter on bass. The band was formed by cousins Paul and Eamon with Dolan, before Bernacchi joined.

The occasion is particularly significant because Gallus have now released their second album, Life Is Bliss, and the sold-out audience reflects the sense that the band are going from strength to strength. Released only a week before tonight’s show, it is a record rooted in Glasgow: anxiety, community, identity, upheaval and the uncomfortable feeling that the city you know is becoming something you no longer entirely recognise. Yet Gallus have no interest in presenting any of this with a face like a slapped arse. They make serious things funny and ridiculous things strangely moving. 

The opening song, “Donnie Murdo”, gives way to “Au Contraire” and “Marmalade”, and immediately the Gallus formula becomes apparent: take the emotional directness of the Offspring, the muscular stomp of IDLES, the wiry post-punk intelligence of Yard Act and the self-conscious Glaswegian humour of a night spent drinking in a pub where everyone knows everyone else, then set fire to the resulting mixture.

There is a pleasingly adolescent quality to Gallus, but it is not childish. Maybe because the music the create reminds me so much of what I would have listened to in my bedroom when I was 15. Music with blunt emotional hooks and the sense that a serious grievance should ideally be accompanied by something you can shout at your mates. The sheer volume of noise provides the physicality: the heavy guitars, the pounding rhythms, the sense that a song is not properly finished until somebody has thrown themselves into another person. They have the ability to turn their own misery into a punchline before anyone else gets the chance. An antidote to being raised within the Scottish school system, no doubt.

There are some technical issues tonight, including a microphone cutting out, but Gallus are not a band likely to allow a malfunctioning microphone to interrupt the evening’s general decline into chaos. Barry Dolan simply carries on, and if anything the disruption provides another opportunity to wind up the audience. Goading the crowd appears to be one of Barry’s favourite things to do.

The set moves through “Depressed Beyond Tablets”, “Stupid Dog”, “Sick Bastards”, and the audience knows exactly what to do with them. Sing, shout, jump, shove, collide. There is no great separation between performer and spectator. Gallus don’t simply play to the audience as drag them into the performance and make them responsible for whatever happens next.

“Fireflies” remains a personal favourite, partly because the line “My friends got a head disease” has stayed lodged in my brain ever since that TRNSMT appearance. Some lyrics make you think. Others simply refuse to leave. Gallus have several of the latter.

The new material sits comfortably alongside the older songs. Life Is Bliss may be more melodically expansive than the band’s debut, We Don’t Like The People We’ve Become, but it has not diluted the live ferocity. If anything, the songs give Gallus more ammunition. “Sick Bastards” is particularly well suited to this crowd: nasty, funny and sufficiently catchy to ensure that any insult can become a chorus.

I have to say the mosh pit, which develops its own understanding of civic responsibility. Pitt etiquette apparently dictates that somebody has to do a front flip or a back flip. Right? Congratulations, Gallus. Your turn is now.

This is where Dolan’s particular talent becomes most apparent. He does not look like a frontman who has spent his career cultivating an aura of mystery. He could literally be your brother’s pal, the one you have come to know and enjoy the presence of over countless packets of fags and cans of Tennents while watching the Celtic match down the local. He has the conversational aggression of someone who knows exactly which button to press because he has probably been pressing it on his friends for years.

That familiarity matters. Gallus may now be touring Europe and playing substantial festival stages, but there is still something gloriously local about them. The band came out of Glasgow’s pub and grassroots music scene, and that history remains audible in the music. Their success has not transformed them into an anonymous export product. If anything, they sound increasingly like a band who have worked out how to take Glasgow with them wherever they go. 

The final stretch is “M8”, “Fruitflies” and “Cool To Drive”, which feels about as close to a sensible conclusion as Gallus are ever likely to get. “M8” is particularly apt: the motorway is not merely a piece of infrastructure here but another symbol of the changing city, the road taking you through a Glasgow that is familiar and unfamiliar at precisely the same time, also one of the cities most hated features.

Then Barry Dolan leaves the stage, stomps through the crowd and heads downstairs towards the merch stand, where he warmly greets fans and starts selling merchandise. It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate ending. No grand rock-star exit. No disappearing behind a curtain. Just a man downstairs selling T-shirts to people he has spent the previous hour encouraging to throw themselves around the room.

Yet…the evening is not quite over. Everyone from the Art School is welcomed back to Nice N Sleazy, where the band promise to keep the party going with a selection of tunes. It gives the whole gig a feeling of brotherhood in arms, everybody back for an empty — and yes, I am showing my age here. I refuse to use the word “gaff”.

There is something deeply satisfying about watching Gallus at this particular point in their development. They have a second album, a sold-out hometown show and an audience large enough to make the Art School bounce, yet they have retained the spirit of the scruffy Glasgow band that emerged from small venues and pubs. Life Is Bliss is an album about a city changing around you, but Gallus themselves are changing too: bigger, sharper, more assured, without losing the scrappy sense that someone might nick your lighter before the encore.

The title Life Is Bliss is, naturally, taking the piss. Gallus know life is rarely blissful. Their trick is to make the misery danceable.

Tonight, Glasgow obliges.

Article: Angela Canavan @ zombiefang_

Man/Woman/Chainsaw brought plenty of energy to a sold-out King Tut’s on Friday 25th September, with a cheery, enthusiastic stage presence that kept the room moving. There was clearly a strong buzz around the band, and they made the most of the busy crowd with a lively, upbeat performance.

However, the set could have benefited from more variation and interaction. The set-list often felt quite one-note, with a similar intensity running throughout, and there was relatively little rapport between the South London band and the audience. While the energy was consistently high, a greater sense of dynamics and crowd engagement could have made the performance feel more memorable. 

Man/Woman/Chainsaw have the potential to be the next great band, with a genuinely unique, genre-bending sound; if they can find a way to make each show feel more grounded in its own time and place. 

Article: Anni Cameron

Be still my beating heart: Death Cab for Cutie are the sort of band I would have wanted desperately to see at 15, when emotional devastation was not an occasional inconvenience but a lifestyle choice. There is nothing quite like watching the soundtrack to your adolescent yearning walk onstage three decades later, only to discover that the boys you once swooned over are now fully fledged adult men with silver streaks in their hair. Nothing makes you feel middle-aged quite so efficiently. Not even the price of olive oil.

Death Cab for Cutie are from Bellingham, Washington, and they have never been a band that tours Scotland with anything resembling irritating regularity. So when frontman Ben Gibbard reminded the Edinburgh crowd that the band’s previous Scottish dates had been derailed by illness, the response was immediate and genuinely delighted. It felt less like a rock-star anecdote than news that a long-lost relative had finally made it home.

The five-piece — Gibbard, Nick Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper and Zac Rae — have been making exquisitely melancholy music for long enough now to have become something approaching an institution. Gibbard remains the emotional fulcrum, his voice still carrying that peculiar mixture of resignation and hope; Harmer’s bass provides the bloodstream; McGerr gives the songs their muscular pulse; Depper’s guitar adds breadth and shimmer, while Rae’s keyboards provide the atmospheric architecture. Together they sound far larger than the sensitive indie boys of memory might suggest.

They open with “Riptides”, “Roman Candles” and “The New Year”, the latter producing an instant rush of recognition from a crowd who have clearly been carrying these songs around in their emotional hand luggage for years. This is Death Cab’s particular trick: they make nostalgia feel less like looking backwards and more like accidentally walking into your old bedroom and finding your teenage self still sitting there, waiting to complain about somebody who never called.

If emo has forefathers, Death Cab belong somewhere near the altar. They helped establish the entire sad-boy economy: the trembling guitar, the romantic fatalism, the sense that death, heartbreak and existential dread are all perfectly reasonable subjects for a Sunday night. They are the patron saints of people who have felt too much, thought too much and probably sent a text they regretted.

“Photobooth” is a beautiful relic from the early years, while “Black Sun” and “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” demonstrate how the band have expanded their sound without abandoning the intimacy that made them so beloved. “I Will Possess Your Heart” grows into one of the night’s great instrumental swells, the band stretching the song until it feels less like indie rock and more like an approaching weather system.

Then comes the moment that everyone has been waiting for.

Before “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”, Gibbard addresses the audience and the song is performed alone, acoustically. For several minutes the Corn Exchange becomes not a concert venue than a mass séance for everyone we have ever loved, lost, dumped or embarrassingly texted after midnight.

It is a tiny song about mortality that somehow became a generational wedding and funeral staple, but stripped back to Gibbard and his guitar it recovers its original intimacy. The room goes almost completely still. Somewhere, presumably, a thousand teenage versions of the audience are quietly screaming. Me included.

The newer material holds its own. “I Built You a Tower”, “Stone Over Water” and “How Heavenly a State” sit comfortably alongside the catalogue favourites, while “Cath…” earns one of the evening’s warmer responses, dedicated from the stage to support act Pool Kids.

Then comes “Crooked Teeth”, followed by “Trap Door”, by this point the crowd are singing with the enthusiasm of people who have paid good money to revisit their emotional damage and intend to get every penny’s worth.

And then the encore.

“Title Track”, “Marching Bands of Manhattan”, “The Sound of Settling” and, inevitably, “Transatlanticism”.

“The Sound of Settling” gets the room moving, but “Transatlanticism” is the real emotional detonation. It gathers and gathers, Gibbard’s voice suspended over that great, repeating musical tide, until the Corn Exchange feels less like a venue and more like a collective memory.

There is something unexpectedly moving about seeing Death Cab now. They are no longer the slightly scruffy young men soundtracking the private catastrophes of adolescence. They are older, more assured and visibly changed by time. The silver hair is not a defeat. It is evidence.

For a band whose songs have spent 30 years contemplating impermanence, Death Cab for Cutie have proved remarkably good at surviving it. They remain the founding fathers of sad-boy central, the patron saints of the emotionally overeducated, and proof that you can grow older without necessarily growing out of the songs that once made you feel unbearably, gloriously young.

Article: Angela Canavan

It’s been eight months since Angine De Poitrine rocketed to internet virality off the back of a live KEXP set – which currently sits at 19 million views and is the 7th most viewed video on the channel. 

For the uninitiated, Angine De Poitrine are a French Canadian microtonal math rock duo whose sound is built on a mix of heavy guitar distortion, punchy bass grooves and impeccably tight drumming that ties it all together. The masked duo are completely anonymous, performing in character as 333 year old aliens that speak in their own made-up language

It’s clear from the off that Angine De Poitrine’s set is one of the most popular of the festival . I heard them in passing conversation numerous times, clocked more than a handful of polka-dotted outfits around the city and people started descending en masse upon Usher Hall as their set time drew nearer. 

20 minutes before the band were due to start, Usher Hall was already heaving and the anticipation was tangible. As I stand in the crowd awaiting their set, I can’t help but wonder how well their sound and aesthetic will transcribe to a big stage – especially the grandiose backdrop of the Usher Hall. However, my fears were quickly eschewed as guitarist Knh wanders out on stage to rapturous applause. 

A few moments later the band head straight into Angor – the final track on their most recent release Vol. 2. What starts as a simple, tom-heavy looping drum beat soon makes way for a layered collection of guitar and bass riffs – culminating in organised chaos. It’s honestly impressive to watch in person. Where live video edits will typically switch between both Knh and Klek, in person it’s easier to see just how much goes into looping and muting those multi-layered loops. As a drummer who really likes watching other drummers live, it was a rare occasion of being utterly transfixed by someone playing guitar. 

From Angor, Khn and Klek jumped straight into Yor Zarad. Considered by many as one of the most experimental songs on their latest album, the song sees both musicians trade the spotlight across a frenetic six minutes of erratic guitar riffs and angular drum playing culminating in a joyfully doomy climax. 

The Usher Hall crowd relished every moment of it, moving, dancing and cheering throughout as the anticipation of what’s to come steadily increases. Yor Zarad reaches its climax, ushering in the four-on-the-floor half-time guttural doom-laden riff that forces a grimace of approval from audience members – unsurprisingly, this is the moment the first mosh of many moshpits throughout the evening broke out. 

Between songs Khn and Klek each take a few moments to readjust, retune and hydrate when needed, occasionally interacting with the crowd. The power they hold in these moments is impressive considering communication is delivered through nothing but gestures, a made up alien language and random noises. Regardless, the crowd is unwavering in its commitment to the bit though, matching noises on command, mimicking Khn and Klek’s triangle hand symbols and responding with cheers to every minor moment. 

This is one of the things that impressed me most about Angine De Poitrine’s live show. Khn and Klek capture the imagination and passion of audiences in a distinctly sincere way and it’s something that shows in how the crowd responds to the band. It’s honestly quite unlike any show I’ve been to before and I think it’s one of the main reasons the band are still finding success more than six months after their initial viral moment. 

For everything I loved about finally seeing Angine De Poitrine live, there was one shortfall that I felt was detrimental to the experience. The sound at points fell short of what I would expect from a festival that primarily features alternative artists. Distortion and a lack of clarity made distinguishing the more intricate elements of the band’s sound difficult. It’s an issue that likely doesn’t sit with the band, and a quick Google search reveals that Usher Hall is known to have these sorts of issues. 

Aside from this though, Angine De Poitrine exceeded my expectations in every possible way. I was so wrapped up in the show that I’d completely lost track of time and before I knew it, the band were heading into their two of their most popular songs, FabienK & Sherpa, signalling that their time on stage was coming to an end. 

Unsurprisingly, the thumping, hip-moving groove of FabienK went over a treat with the crowd as everyone collectively got their groove on and sang “SEBASTIEN” in unison. Sherpa felt like a fitting way to end the set as the climax of the song is heavy, hurried and heady, signing off just over an hour of live music in a way best befitting a band tasked with being one of the main headliners during a psych fest. 

As soon as Sherpa finishes, an elation fills the room as 2,000 people simultaneously begin excitedly talking about the show they had just seen. I get caught in numerous conversations myself, conversing with people about our favourite moments through the set. A trending theme emerges in these passing conversations, Angine De Poitrine not only met expectations, but they exceeded them.

There are always questions around the authenticity and longevity of bands that rise to fame suddenly. But in reality, Angine De Poitrine’s fame has been well earned. The band started in 2022 and have perfected their concept, appearance and sound over the last four years. This is one of the main reasons they are such a force to be reckoned with live. 

If you get a chance to see them live, make sure you take it. 

Images: Angela Canavan

Words: Thomas Hughes

The second-to-last night of King Tut’s Summer Nights brought a bill that refused to sit neatly in one genre. With iwanttobeonTV, Szliszka and Bad Gravy supporting Roller Disco Death Party. I saw the night move through drum and bass, punk, electronic music and alternative rock, building towards what could only be described as a full-blown party. I had never seen any of the acts live before, so I went into the night not really knowing what to expect.

Opening the night were iwanttobeonTV, the duo of Scott Bathgate (Drums) and Maddie Cassidy (Vocals). Describing themselves as sending “a signal from the post-human abyss to the people”, their sound is an energetic collision of drum and bass, rock and punk.

They immediately brought a dancefloor mentality to King Tut’s, bringing people towards the stage early in the night.
Their set was relentless, with Maddie making full use of the stage and constantly engaging with the crowd. Alongside their own material, they threw in a surprising cover of Britney Spears’ Toxic, which fitted perfectly into their chaotic, high-energy sound.

I really enjoyed their set, which was full of bright, colourful lighting and upbeat music. I especially liked Scott’s high-energy drumming paired with Maddie’s physical stage presence.

Next came Szliszka, who shifted the atmosphere. The three-piece kept a deliberately mysterious, DIY aesthetic, with synth-heavy electronic textures, alternative rhythms and guitar-led sounds taking centre stage.

Their performance was less about traditional stage theatrics and more about creating a vibe with the music. The stage was kept in near darkness for much of the set, broken up by flashes of strobe-like lighting and a projector shining on the back wall. I think the lack of visibility encouraged the crowd to let go, with people dancing freely in the darkness.

Then came Bad Gravy, an acid funk band who seem to have created their own universe before even releasing music. Their conspiracy-inspired mythology is matched by an electronic dance-punk sound that is impossible to ignore. Before the gig, I was told that Bad Gravy are not to be missed, and now I see why.

With five members filling the stage, there was no shortage of movement. Every member brought serious stage presence, but the main vocalist was particularly impossible to look away from, at many points diving over to the barriers and directly singing into the crowd.

The energy spread quickly. The room was dancing, jumping and shouting along, remarkably familiar with a band that has yet to release music officially.
Moving to Australia was a particular highlight, and judging by the reaction, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

With previous appearances at 1990, Nice N Sleazy and King Tut’s, and an upcoming Tenement Trail gig, Bad Gravy look set to keep building their unique gravy empire. After seeing them live, I think I’m officially on the “Gravy Train”.

By the time Roller Disco Death Party took the stage, King Tut’s was packed.

The Glasgow duo of synth player and songwriter Neal McHarg and drummer Amelia Briggs Haldane have built their sound around electronic music made for the dancefloor. Their live show takes that concept and pushes it further. Roller Disco Death Party’s sound sits somewhere between The Chemical Brothers, Justice, Soulwax and Primal Scream. Their music feels rooted in dance music but still has the rawness and attitude of a live band, particularly through Amelia’s live drums.

“Big beat music to sweat to” is an accurate description. From the opening moments, the room was moving. Hands were in the air, people were jumping, and almost nobody seemed interested in standing still.

Amelia and Neal are stationed parallel to each other on the stage, half facing the crowd, half facing each other. Their playing was so energetic that it felt like they were dancing along with the crowd rather than just performing for it.

Keep The Balance was a standout. Driven by deep synth-pop textures and Amelia’s live drumming, the track sent a pulse through the room, with the crowd immediately recognising it and throwing themselves into the rhythm. It captured exactly what Roller Disco Death Party do well.

Just Another Saturday Night was another highlight for me and, it seemed, for much of the crowd. After the gig, they told us the vocals came from a friend who happened to be at a recording session, and the vocals were inspired by a recent night out they all had at The Berkley Suite. That small story gave the track an added sense of Glasgow nightlife tied directly into the music.

After an hour-long headline set, the band returned for an encore, joined by members of Bad Gravy for their own rendition of Blur’s Girls & Boys, which they recently recorded a live video of and released on YouTube. And the party didn’t stop there. Roller Disco Death Party headed downstairs for an afterparty DJ set.

That night, Roller Disco Death Party headlined King Tut’s and hosted a packed-out party.

Article: Samantha McBride

It took a certain amount of nerve, aged 15, to walk into my sixth-year common room with a fresh copy of that week’s NME tucked under my arm, pink-and-green colour-panelled hair framing a face that had not yet learned the consequences of having opinions, and announce to the popular boys: “You know, Linkin Park are okay, but we should really listen to Deftones.”

This was not a casual recommendation. This was diplomacy. This was foreign policy. This was me, in hair that borrowed directly from The Raveonnetts, attempting to influence the cultural direction of an entire school.

A few days later, one of the popular boys — eyebrow piercing, Eminem wardrobe, the full early-2000s uniform of adolescent menace — swaggered into the common room and announced that he had listened to Deftones.

“You were right,” he said. “They’re cool.”

And that was it. My teenage street cred, previously hovering somewhere around “girl with alarming hair”, had been catapulted into the stratosphere.

I have never quite recovered from the power.

Because Deftones were the band for that particular teenage feeling: the horrible, thrilling, chemically unbalanced cocktail of lust, rage, insecurity and the absolute certainty that nobody — NOBODY — could possibly understand what you were going through. Their music sounded like somebody had taken teenage angst, put it in a blender with sex and existential dread, then poured the result over a giant Marshall stack.

Deftones were never simply heavy. They were heavy in the way a teenage crush is heavy. Heavy in the way waiting for somebody to text back is heavy. Heavy in the way standing outside the gym hall hoping a particular person might appear is heavy.

They were music for wanting to kiss somebody and punch a wall at exactly the same time.

I first encountered them in that great late-‘90s/early-2000s alternative-music ecosystem when Zane Lowe ruled supreme from the brown couch on MTV2’s Gonzo. This was before streaming had turned discovering music into an algorithmic vending machine. Back then, you watched Gonzo because there was a genuine possibility that Zane might put something terrifying, brilliant or completely life-changing in front of you.

Deftones fitted that world perfectly. They could appear alongside a band like The Rapture and somehow make perfect sense. The Rapture had the angular, sweaty, art-school disco; Deftones had the black hole. One made you want to dance in an East London warehouse, the other made you want to stare moodily out of a bedroom window while pretending your life had already become a tragedy.

It was the golden age of MTV2, when music television still felt like a secret society and Zane Lowe was its hyperactive high priest.

Fast-forward several decades and I am standing at Summer Sessions in Edinburgh, looking around at an audience largely composed of people in their late 30s, 40s and 50s.

The great joke is that we have all grown up.

The music hasn’t.

Or perhaps, more accurately, the music has grown up with us.

The best fashion accessory at this Deftones show appears to be a younger relative. Daughters, sons, nieces, nephews — a whole second generation being introduced to the same dangerous little secret that once made us feel impossibly cool.

I brought my niece.

Before Deftones, IDLES have the unenviable task of getting an audience emotionally prepared for a band who have built an entire career out of making misery sound sexy. Fortunately, IDLES are basically a human defibrillator. “Mother”, “Danny Nedelko” and “I’m Scum” land with the force of a politically motivated riot.

My niece is hearing IDLES properly for the first time and, after “Never Fight A Man With A Perm”, gives the verdict: “Yeah, Aunty Ang, they’re pretty cool.”

She is also fascinated by guitarist Mark Bowen, who looks, as she astutely observes, a bit like George Harrison if he’d gone backpacking in India, accidentally settled in a Brighton squat, attended art school and never quite found his way home.

She may have a point. She may also have the gift for writing reviews.

IDLES are old favourites here at the Golden Bough— we’ve seen them repeatedly in Glasgow — and their appearance makes perfect sense tonight. There is a beautiful polarity between the two bands. IDLES attack the world head-on; Deftones retreat into the psyche. One kicks the door down. The other locks it behind you and turns the lights off.

Joe Talbot gets the crowd down on their knees for “I’m Scum”, and the subsequent mosh pit erupts with all the restraint of a family discovering that somebody has cancelled Christmas.

Yet there is tenderness, too. Talbot spots a young fan’s placard thanking IDLES for opening up conversations around addiction and alcohol consumption. His response — that we’re all on a journey, that we make mistakes, that love can help us pick ourselves back up — is genuinely affecting.

Then comes the Palestinian flag and the “Free Free Palestine” chant.

IDLES have done what good support acts should do: they’ve primed the audience, but they’ve also left us with something to think about.

Then, at 8:45pm, the lights go down.

And suddenly I’m 15 again.

The opening bars of “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)”, from 1997’s Around the Fur, roll across the Royal Highland Centre.

Honestly: be still my beating heart.

There are songs you remember, and songs that remember you. “Be Quiet and Drive” belongs to the latter category. It is teenage escape disguised as a guitar song — the desire to get into a car, shut the door, put the music up and drive until your parents, your school, your town and your embarrassing adolescent self have all disappeared in the rear-view mirror. It sounds like headlights on an empty road and a bad decision that will probably turn out to be one of the better decisions you’ve ever made.

Chino Moreno is immediately everywhere, running from one end of the stage to the other, bounding up and down the platforms with the improbable grace of a ballerina who has been raised by wolves. He is a genuine showman, and there is something wonderful about watching him occupy the stage rather than merely stand on it. Behind him, the VJ visuals turn the enormous stage into a constantly mutating fever dream.

The rest of the band provide the architecture for this madness. Lance Jackman is the great slab of granite at the centre of the sound, his guitar turning riffs into geological events. Abe Cunningham is the engine room, bringing the muscular precision that stops all this atmosphere floating away into the ether. Frank Delgado is the ghost in the machine, supplying keyboards, samples and electronic textures that make Deftones sound less like a conventional metal band and more like a nightclub sinking slowly beneath the ocean. Fred Sablan, touring on bass, brings the subterranean weight that makes the whole thing physically register. And Chino, naturally, is the voice and the face: whisper, howl, seduction, menace and melancholy all sharing the same microphone.

Then comes “Cherry Waves”, from 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist, and suddenly the whole show becomes less like a rock concert and more like being swallowed by a very beautiful ocean. The song is sensual, melancholy and narcotic, Chino’s vocals drifting over the guitars like smoke under a locked bedroom door. This is the peculiar Deftones trick: they can make heaviness feel intimate. The guitars don’t simply crush you; they seduce you before doing it.

“Around the Fur”, from 1997’s Around the Fur, brings the brutality back. The title track sounds like adolescence with the safety catch removed. It is sweaty, ugly, thrilling and gloriously unrefined, a reminder of the period when Deftones could make a riff sound like somebody had just kicked through a bedroom wall. And yet even now it doesn’t feel like heritage rock. It feels alive. Most of us have aged. This song has apparently been drinking blood.

Then “Rosemary”, from 2012’s Koi No Yokan, stretches the evening out into something almost cosmic. This is where Deftones demonstrate that their real superpower isn’t heaviness but atmosphere. The song expands slowly, like a galaxy opening behind the stage, while Chino darts from platform to platform. His movement is extraordinary: part rock frontman, part ballet dancer, part man who has just remembered he left the oven on.

Then “Rocket Skates”, from 2010’s Diamond Eyes, hits like a car crash in expensive sunglasses. It is pure kinetic energy, Carpenter’s guitar providing the wreckage while Cunningham drives everything forward. If “Rosemary” is space, “Rocket Skates” is the asteroid hitting it.

And then comes “Sextape”, also from Diamond Eyes, and suddenly Deftones remind everyone why they have always been more interesting than the lazy nu-metal tag suggested. “Sextape” is erotic without being sleazy, intimate without becoming twee, and beautiful without losing its darkness. It sounds like perfume in a dark room. It is desire rendered as atmosphere rather than adolescent locker-room boasting. In the audience, people who now have mortgages, children and possibly a preferred brand of dishwasher tablet are singing along as though they’re 19 again. This is what Deftones do: they make respectable adults temporarily unavailable to themselves.

Then comes “milk of the madonna”, from 2025’s private music. This is important because tonight isn’t merely an exercise in nostalgia. Deftones have nine studio albums behind them, but private music demonstrates that they are not content to spend the rest of their career wearing the corpse of their younger self like a particularly fashionable coat. “milk of the madonna” sits comfortably among the older material — psychedelic, heavy, strange and sleek — proving that the band can still create music that feels like Deftones rather than music that sounds like a tribute to Deftones. The band’s own description of private music calls it both a psychedelic voyage and a skull-rattling wallop, which is annoyingly accurate. 

Then they disappear.

The crowd waits.

And the encore begins with “Change (In the House of Flies)”, from 2000’s White Pony.

By now the sun is beginning to rise.

It is an almost indecently perfect visual metaphor. “Change” has always been about transformation, and here the night itself is transforming above us. The darkness slowly drains from the sky as the opening notes hang over the audience.

When I was 15, change was what I wanted.

Now, as a grown woman, change is something I occasionally regard as a personal attack.

But the song still works.

It is the sound of realising that the person you thought you would become isn’t necessarily the person standing here now — but that the teenager is still lurking somewhere underneath. Possibly demanding better lighting.

The tenderness lasts approximately four minutes before “Lotion”, from Around the Fur, arrives like a brick through a conservatory window. The song is the antithesis of middle-aged reflection. It is raw, confrontational and gloriously adolescent. If “Change” is the adult looking backwards, “Lotion” is the teenager shouting from the bedroom: “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.”

And then, finally, “7 Words”, from 1995’s Adrenaline.

The beginning.

The primordial Deftones.

It sounds exactly as it should: furious, physical and slightly out of control. After three decades, it still has the energy of a teenager throwing their bedroom furniture through the window because their mother has asked them to turn the music down.

The crowd goes feral.

And that is the perfect ending.

Because Deftones haven’t simply soundtracked one generation’s adolescence. They’ve somehow preserved it.

The girl with the pink-and-green hair is still here. She’s just got older. She’s acquired responsibilities, and a wider world view and considerably less colourful hair. The eyebrow-pierced boy from the sixth-year common room is presumably somewhere with a mortgage and a LinkedIn account.

But play “Be Quiet and Drive” and we’re all back there.

The gym hall.

The school corridor.

The NME under the arm.

The impossible crush.

The conviction that nobody understands you.

The desperate desire to get away.

The strange belief that music might save you.

It probably can’t.

But on a night like this, it can certainly remind you that the person you were has never completely disappeared.

They’ve just been waiting for the right guitar riff.

And when that riff arrives, they are ready, they are dancing, they are chanting back every word – with a new generation looking in with adoration in their eyes.

Words: Angela Canavan

Images: Tim Craig