Glasvegas
Glasvegas
Columbia/Sony Music
Hello, stadium sounds! This unashamedly widescreen debut from Glasgow (you’d never guess, would you?) four-piece Glasvegas had the British press wetting its collective pants at the end of last year. Its arena-ready production – all echo-laden drums, chorus-drenched guitar and anthemic vocals – speak of a band who are aiming straight for the top.
The group that this record’s romantic bombast recalls most immediately is U2, although since it’s not cool to like Bono any more, this is probably not a comparison that Glasvegas would welcome. There’s also a touch of Once Upon A Time-era Jim Kerr about singer and main songwriter James Allan’s vocals – you can just hear him belting out ‘Alive and Kicking’ if you try hard enough.
None of this is a criticism, by the way – Glasvegas are good at what they do, and have written an album that’s a fine example of their chosen genre. It’s just strange and mildly amusing to hear a band that sound like this in 2009. But it’s also strangely reassuring; proof that the ‘90s and ‘00s arched-eyebrow sneering at belief in anything - the hipster refusal to have a positive opinion on anything at all, ever - hasn’t been entirely successful in expunging starry-eyed romanticism from music.
That said, this is also a reminder that the grandiose stadium rock of pre-Achtung Baby U2 and the ‘80s’ other great flag-wavers did die for a reason. Allan’s lyrics tread the line between sensitive and mawkish all album long, occasionally stumbling off to the wrong side of the equation. The volume of echo errs towards the absurd at times – particularly on the spoken word vocals for big piano ballad ‘Stabbed’, where Allan may as well be trapped in a grain silo for all the reverb going on.
But largely, Glasvegas is good at what it does. Doubtless FM radio will eventually pick Glasvegas up, the NME will drop them like a sack of shit, the hipsters will pretend they never really liked the band in the first place, and all will be well in the world.
Tom Hawking