I’ve been sitting on this post for days because, well, I’m just trying so hard to concentrate on my studies between the points when I come away from it for a gig and a couple of days off. Then I am straight back to it. When to find the time? Also, what else can I actually say about Hamish Hawk that I haven’t said a million times already?
So, I shall try to make this as succinct as possible.
Sue came up to stay with us. We had two back-to-back shows booked for last year at the Barras. Two Del Amitri gigs but Sue sustained a back injury around 10 days before the gigs were due and could not make it up here last year. Last Thursday, finally, Sue experienced her first Barras gig. Hurray!
We had watched the skies all day, praying to the weather gods to be kind to us as we queued outside. Please keep us dry! They did.
We had decided to drive in (I say “we” but I wasn’t the one that needed to drive) and hope for the best with finding a parking spot. We found one not too far away just off London Rd. It was a little drizzly then when we parked up. Not too bad and it seemed to be getting lighter as we made our way down to Gallowgate. We had a keek at the queue which was only a quartet long. With time to kill, we perused the Blitzkrieg shop and had a chat to Tony.
We joined the queue around ten minutes to six, by which point the drizzle had abated and there was even some evidence of clear sky overhead as the time ticked on to 7pm. After a while we started to wonder if a game was on as there were a number of Celtic fans walking up the road. The conversation between one bunch of young men walking past us became audible at the most hilarious moment with one guy declaring to his pals “Ma baws were sweatin’.” With barely a beat in between, the woman behind us in the queue retorted, “Aye, mine an aw,” which had me and Sue in hysterics. As it turned out there was a game on. Celtic were playing Roma.
I digress with all these incidentals. Suffice it to say that the wait in the queue was pleasant and dry.
Our time in the queue paid off with a pretty darn good front row spot to the right of centre, just by Lizzie Reid on bass.
It wasn’t too long a wait until Goodnight Louisa came on stage. She sounded fabulous and performed a short but Marathon-packed set. The set included: ‘Champion at Giving In,’ ‘Jennifer Aniston,’ ‘Goner,’ ‘Actor,’ ‘Drew Barrymore’ and ‘Polaroids from Malta.’ I need to see more shows of hers. I hope she has more gigs in her calendar for next year.
Next up were Cloth, still very fresh after their headline tour of the UK last month. Again, it was another short but punchy set filled with tunes, including the title track of their current album, Pink Silence, as well as other album tracks ‘Golden’ and ‘Polaroid’ (there was somewhat of a photograph theme going on). They were totally on form.
On to the main attraction and, well, were to start?
Perhaps with something that I had NEVER seen happen before. Hamish showing that he is indeed fallible! He fluffed. Like, full-on-brain-freeze-panic-in-the-eyes-memory-wiped-stasis. It was during the opening of ‘Elvis Look-alike Shadows.’ He delivered the first two lines and then …. ….. ….. he was gone. He was silent and I could see him just panicking internally. In my head I’m thinking ‘Look at me Hamish, look at me! I’ll mouth the words to you!’ The irony of the next line being ‘I could stand up and sing, fidget with a shoe string / And act as if you bruised me.’ Poor Hamish! He recovered with throwing in lines of the second verse. Internally I could feel he was mortified but he didn’t let it show. He was back in the room quickly enough but, yeah. I’d never seen that before.
There was also a malfunction of his in-ear monitor which needed a readjustment at the side of the stage. He had initial asked Andrew to help him out with it but it required more help than he could offer. So then he and Lizzie just noodled on guitar and bass while Hamish’s monitor got sorted out.
Apart from those little things happening, it was just absolutely stellar as always. The acoustics at the Barras are just fantastic and it sounded amazing. Looked amazing too.
There were two new track performed. One is called ‘The Tuscan Guy’ (I think) and the other is called ‘Half of Paris.’ They’re already slotting into the set nicely and their inclusion indicates that perhaps we’ll be getting a new HH album in 2026? He also tacked on the set a wee performance of ‘Lemonade’ from his Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Vol. 0 album. I did wonder if there would be just a little splash of Mr Cutler somewhere but I hadn’t been hopeful, thinking that maybe Hamish would want to keep the two entities separate.
I got some crap photos of Louise that I’m not even going to bother to share them. I didn’t bother with taking photos of Cloth as I didn’t think anything I’d get would look any better than the photos I took at King Tut’s last month. And I wasn’t even going to bother with trying for photos of Hamish either – but the man is a photographic dream – how could I not?! I got two that I REALLY like, and the rest were fairly good as well in all honesty. I’d be stoked with those at any other time.
As we made our way back to the car with the rain coming down (not too steadily, thankfully), we encountered the Roma fans being marshalled back towards the city centre by a wall of polis. They all seemed on their best behaviour. Nothing was kicking off, mercifully. I’ll never get the kind of behaviour this bloody GAME can insight in people. It’s just some blokes kicking a bloody ball around a field. It’s ridiculous. But what the fuck do I know, eh?
It was a stellar night – and next week we do it all again for Del Amitri.
Tara for now 🙂
Enjoy some ‘Lemonade’ on the ‘Bakerloo.’
