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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
John Aizlewood's rating
Reader rating
Spine-tingling: Glasvegas triumphed over a creaking sound system
Without anything so prosaic as a record deal to their name, Glasgow's Glasvegas are, right now, the name to drop. In the wee small hours of Saturday morning, they didn't make things especially easy for themselves, finally deigning to join a crowd of non-teetotallers just before 1am.
Moreover, such was the quality of a sound that veered muddily from tumble-drier to cement mixer, they may well have been singing in tongues. And hipness is not necessarily the mother of articulacy: frontman James Allan, obscured by clouds of throat-thwarting dry ice, remained silent, other than the occasional Caledonian mumble, incomprehensible to all born beyond McSpitting distance from The Gorbals.
And yet, somehow, they managed to not merely wrench a most unlikely victory from the jaws of a circle of misery but also to suggest something truly special.
Drilled to within an inch of their musical lives, Glasvegas sound like everybody and nobody but in an often black and white world they offer glorious Technicolor and in a world of fiddly detail they see the big picture.
The wall of echoey guitars suggested echoes of a less dour Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine in It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry.
But, as if they were a living pop history lesson, there were nods to Phil Spector (and if Glasvegas played golf, their dazzling cover of Spector's Be My Baby would be a hole in one) and fellow genius Jim Steinman in the heady harmonic sweep of Daddy's Gone and a warm pop sensibility The Feeling would appreciate in Flowers and Football Tops.
Most spine-tingling of all, they have the undeniable aura of wonder which meant that when they sloped off after a mere 30 minutes, I felt rather privileged to have endured their self-inflicted wounds. Viva Glasvegas indeed.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
