Viva Glasvegas!

Glasvegas frontman James Allan is enjoying a “lovely” pub lunch of lentil soup and steak pie, pondering on why getting a passport is proving so difficult, and amidst all of this, musing on everything from linguistics and Lisa Marie Presley, to air-hockey and Alan McGee. And all the while, James “doesn’t really feel any pressure at all”.

This very special Glasgow-based band have managed to acquire almost universal acclaim (“I think when people believe in you, that’s not something to feel pressurised about”), the complete enthusiasm of a certain Alan McGee (“Alan is so enthused, beyond my mum’s enthusiasm, he keeps phoning at like five in the morning wanting to know what the songs are about and stuff”), and a vinyl demo now selling on eBay for close to £100 (“aye, you know, I hope they don’t spend all their pocket money on it”).

These tips for the top can’t be musically situated much further away from the local counterparts that have enjoyed success over the past few years – there’s no post-post-punk art school angular jerk-pop here.  Glasvegas have, excusing the cliché, gone back to basics. The music is personal without being overwrought, anthemic without being contrived, retrogressive without plagiarising, and the wall of sound noise is enough in itself to set the four-piece apart from its peers without even bringing to mind the delicate melodies, the atmospheric textures and the girl-group harmonies.

Glasvegas have all it takes in ‘Daddy’s Gone’ and ‘I’m Gonna Get Stabbed’ - the latter’s focus needing little explanation, and also well worth checking out so long as you don’t mind having it stuck in your head for the next three days – to create festival chants to last. “We got together a few years ago, just pals really – no auditions. The guitar player Rab is my cousin, the bassist Paul I was in the same class at school with, and I met Caroline our drummer in a vintage clothes shop she worked in, in Glasgow.”

So the next step is to find out more out about James’ take on the hype, the monikering of Glasvegas as any of many superlatives to come out of Scotland since The Jesus and Mary Chain. “The thing is,” he pauses before coming across all too conscious of the industry he must embrace yet beware of, “at the beginning it’d be difficult to tell us that we’re gonna make it or essentially for people to write good reviews. Or for people to write shit reviews and say we’re never gonna make it and for us to be disappointed and heartbroken.” Whilst his words are wise, it doesn’t mean that the comparisons haven’t happened, as Glasvegas have been described as everything from ‘The Ronettes go indie’ to ‘nu-C86’, as well as inducing inevitable mention of Phil Spector originating from James’ own admiration of the musical legend alongside the ever-present use of echo. The truth of the matter is that the more diverse the descriptions become, the more clear it becomes that “we just sound like Glasvegas - it’s a difficult thing and it’s always up to other people to put their own take on it as opposed to me.”