Live Reviews


  Augustalia, Christie Connor-Vernal, Linky Gray, Julia Doogan live at Pivo Pivo in Glasgow



The country has gone to the dogs. There’s nothing on the telly on a Tuesday night. What, therefore, is a man to do? Seek solace in beer? Eat transdimensional Guinness cake? Beer won the toss of the coin. Anyway, I happened to be in the basement known as Pivo Pivo so the galactic odds were in favour of that outcome. She tells me of the geek that tried to make her acquaintance by inquiring if she played Scrabble on Facebook. Apparently she let him live even though he obviously didn’t deserve to. Time for the soundtrack.

Julia Doogan has a sweet voice and does a nice line in sweetly harmonious songs that could barely be contained by the walls of a bedsit in the better part of town. It is a skill indeed to make wistful wanton and, as she sings of “New York City”, I feel the need to hold her hand. Metaphorically, of course.

Linky Gray then attempted a similar trick with rather less success. Admittedly, it took her a while to hit her stride but, nonetheless, it does take a bit more sparkle to pull off the one woman and an acoustic guitar in a city with so much competition.

Possessing the necessary sparkle, however, was the next act. Christie Connor-Vernal proved to be the kind of diversion that doesn’t take no for an answer. Not for her the easy route of lovelorn sentiment as she ploughed instead a rich furrow of rock and blues stripped down to its basics. A courageous approach that deserved commendation.

Rounding things off was Edinburgh band Augustalia. Fronted by the mightily voiced Hannah O’Reilly, a set of confident and commercial soft rock decorated with melody was on the cards and duly delivered. There was much to like here and comparison could easily be made with the likes of Maeve O’Boyle even if Ms O’Relly was more than a little raunchier in approach.

As they say in all the best cartoons, that’s all folks. Time now for chicken pakora or perhaps even a game of Scrabble.
 



Reviewer:
Review Date: November 23 2010


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