Jason Lytle has a “fervent appreciation”, he says, “for bands that don’t exist anymore”. It’s why he’s playing the cover of “Here”, by Pavement, that has become a staple of his band Grandaddy’s live sets on this open-ended reunion tour, although it doesn’t explain why the time is right for a Grandaddy reunion in the first place.
The Queen made a rare visit to Glasgow yesterday. Now as luck would have it Liz 'n' Philip did too, apparently driving by my office on their way to George Square for afternoon tea and a quick chorus of long-to-reign-over-us (at least until 2014), and in the process lending this opening paragraph a rare note of topicality. However I'd be very surprised if the pair of them received quite so rapturous a welcome, or experienced as many people take an icy command to "bow down to me" so literally, as Shirley Manson on her triumphant return to the Barrowlands.
Best Coast has always been the quintessential California band, an identity the duo has embraced so fully that the artwork for their latest album features the bear that is the state’s mascot.
“The angels' share” refers to the two percent of whisky that evaporates each year during its maturation process - which the romantically or religiously inclined would have us believe is siphoned off by cheeky celestial beings. With two Hollywood monoliths (Prometheus and Snow White and the Huntsman) slugging it out at the box office this week it seems unlikely that Ken Loach’s Glasgow-set latest - a tiny wee film by comparison - will be left with much more than the angels' share of business.
In the eight years since the fourth – and very possibly last - Blue Nile album, High, Paul Buchanan has seen his band disintegrate and a close friend die. Little wonder, then, that his solo debut is a reflective record. The most cinematic of bands, the Blue Nile's ravishing sound-pictures generally came in widescreen; Mid Air may be a more intimate, art house affair, but it is no less affecting.
Club culture has always had a tension between democratisation (“come one, come all!”) and exclusivity (the thrill of being in the know about the newest or most underground thing). The best clubs have always been the ones that find ways of short-circuiting this seeming opposition, and a great part of the success of The Boiler Room is the way they have harnessed technology to perform the same trick.
With last month's debut album, Boys and Girls, still riding high in the charts and a buzzworthy Jools Holland performance under their belts – to say nothing of the attention they've attracted on their own side of the Atlantic from the likes of Jack White – Southern roots four-piece Alabama Shakes have become the hottest ticket in town on this, their first headline UK tour. Those dates on the run that aren't full have been upgraded to bigger venues and when they told me that their Glasgow date was sold out they meant SOLD OUT.
Welcome to our second show, brought to you again from the Red Bull Studio in London where it was recorded by Brendon Harding.
From the moment the first series came eyepoppingly to the boil, the loyal fanbase of Lip Service began clamouring for a second helping. That was back in November 2010. Eighteen months later, their wish has finally been granted, and audiences are once more free to plunge headlong into the world of the Glaswegian L Word. Some things are reassuringly very much as you were. Two characters were down to their smalls within a minute of the start, while the Friday-night bar scene is still a low-lit den of drugs, booze and casual same-sex nods, winks and frots.
In a members-only bowling club, down a side street in a residential part of Glasgow I'd never visited before last night, Texan fiddle-player and songwriter Amanda Shires stood wearing the most magnificent pair of cowboy boots I had ever seen.