MUSIC | Previews
S D R O C E R T A C T A F :
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88 THE LIST 1 Apr–31 May 2017
BASS LEGEND BARRY ADAMSON King Tut’s, Glasgow, Mon 24 Apr
Barry Adamson began his illustrious yet cultish career in music as the self-taught teenage bassist of post-punk titans Magazine. He only knew a couple of chords (in fact, his first bass only had two strings) but he finessed those primitive skills to compose the deathless bassline on ‘The Light Pours Out of Me’. He has also served his time as a dude among dudes in the Bad Seeds, returning to both bands for a time over the past decade.
‘It really was like doing the time warp again!’ he says.
‘These things often are. They become part of your identity and you never quite leave. Though the horse’s head in my bed this morning gave me a few clues as to my current status . . . ’ Thankfully, Adamson works most happily as a lone ranger, releasing his first solo album, Moss Side Story, in the late 1980s, forging his signature cinematic film noir-influenced sound with a succession of soundtracks to imaginary films, before graduating to the real thing, scoring for fellow badass auteurs Derek Jarman, David Lynch and Oliver Stone. He returns to solo action with his new Love Sick Dick
EP on which he inhabits the purring panther-like persona of the virile yet pathetic protagonist over a funky, filmic backdrop, and follows its release with a solo tour billed as ‘the full Barry Adamson experience’. Which sounds like quite an ask, given that he’s added the roles of writer, photographer and filmmaker to his artistic portfolio over the years.
‘I’m emptying the contents of my entire life into the audience,’ he says of his current show. ‘Ed Sheeran reckons it’s a doddle, which is good, as I was still a little trepidatious about it. Now I’m all like, “show me a stage where this bull can rage!”’ (Fiona Shepherd)
ELECTRONICA C DUNCAN The Caves, Edinburgh, Sun 14 May
C Duncan has had a busy year. Following the release of affirmingly reviewed second album The Midnight Sun and a string of dates supporting rockers Elbow on their recent shows across the UK (‘it was pretty exciting to be with them’), he’s back on the road to continue his own headline tour which includes a return to the capital. ‘Edinburgh audiences are generally great. It’s quite a musical place and there’s a lot of people who turn out to gigs. Everyone seems to be pretty appreciative.’ Building on the lushly textured soundscape of first release Architect, and with band in tow (‘it’s lovely to have the company!’ he jokes, referring to his habitual process of working solo in his own studio where he both writes songs and paints), the classically trained composer is eagerly anticipating switching it up a bit on stage with some of his newer material, which he admits is ‘great fun’ to perform.
‘The Midnight Sun is very different to the first album to perform because there’s much more synchronised stuff going on, but it’s really nice to have a second album to play about with on stage. I sometimes like to switch between the guitar stuff to the much more electronic stuff; it keeps it interesting.’ Named after an episode of The Twilight Zone (a recurring inspiration: stage entries have occasionally been soundtracked by dialogue from the show), The Midnight Sun has a suitably eerie, glacial beauty. Performed live, it’s likely to be a shivers-down-the-spine treat for both the Glaswegian’s loyal fanbase and the newly enticed. (Laura Waddell)
ROCK HONEYBLOOD PJ Molloys, Dunfermline, Tue 18 Apr; Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh, Sat 22 Apr
‘It’s not very glamorous when you wake up in the morning and you’ve got avocado all over your bed. Like, “what was I doing last night?”’ Stina Tweeddale, Honeyblood frontwoman and avocado aficionado, is getting into the nitty-gritty of life on the road. ‘You get sucked into eating bar food, so we ask for avocados and steamed veggies on our rider. Then we end up getting a wee bit drunk and trying to make a meal in our hotel rooms from whatever’s left over.’
The duo – Tweeddale and drummer Cat Myers – are going to have to find their hotel-food A-game on their new tour, in support of sophomore album Babes Never Die. Dining mishaps and getting locked out of your van aside (‘it happened to the girls from PINS on our tour last year: they had to jimmy the lock’), there’s plenty to look forward to. ‘Nothing tops playing to a room full of people who love the album,’ says Tweeddale.
This is Honeyblood’s largest tour to date, and they’re going more global than ever before, taking in Ireland and Wales for the first time, while breaking new ground in Singapore and Australia. This comes off the back of their newly-released ‘Babes Never Die’ video, made up of footage recorded by the duo themselves and fans on their last tour.
‘The other videos we’ve released are us dressing up and playing a part, but this is a real representation of who we are as people,’ continues Tweeddale. ‘We wanted to make sure we were getting the true side of Honeyblood out there.’ (Kirstyn Smith)