Live Reviews


  Cities Glow, The Miss's, Bobo, Ross Mitchell live at Pivo Pivo in Glasgow



Crumble, lost souls, before the overwhelming weight of mediocrity! Pass quickly by those who have fallen from grace for it's a superhero startup on the astral plane of life as Cities Glow, The Miss's, Bobo and Ross Mitchell do the on stage musical prestidigitation thing. She wonders if I've spaced myself out on mushroom soup and I wonder if God is, in fact, a woman.  It would explain a hell of a lot of things.

Philosophy diverted to another day, there was the serious matter of Ross Mitchell to consider. A man of evident experience, he took his acoustic guitar and did the mainstream, crowd pleasing thing and delivered a covers heavy set of the kind of songs that pretty much defined good taste. However, it is also said that one man's meat is another man's two day old - even if it has been chilled - donner kebab.

Next on the menu was Bobo – a guess as nothing as mundane as an introduction was on offer – who provided proof that a man, an acoustic guitar and a chair could change the world. OK, so I might well have tripped over my own sarcasm there but it is an incontrovertible fact that Bobo sounded like the kind of musician that – despite having obvious talent – was completely unaware that there was such a thing as second gear.

I've always been a sucker for harmonies and The Miss's, fortunately, do harmonies. Delicate and polished harmonies at that and duly delivered to your door with the precision and poise that you would expect of clean living girls from the better part of town. That's not a criticism, by the way, but more an observation regarding the amount of effort that it takes to sell mellow to a Red Bull fuelled world.

There's always time for a last minute surprise and Cities Glow duly handed out one. Despite the clear and present danger of succumbing to the mediocrity of indie rock, Cities Glow nonetheless transcended that uncertainty by bringing a fair bit of drama into their performance and that, curiously, made them sound like amplified version of a typical singer songwriter only with their credibility most definitely left intact. Altogether better than you would expect of a Glasgow band.

All streets have names and some even have stories. Time once more to venture back out into the cold and look for that happy ending.



Reviewer:
Review Date: August 23 2011


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