BLAENAVON // ST LUKE'S, GLASGOW
AFTER A SUCCESSFUL YEAR RELEASING THEIR DEBUT ALBUM 'THAT'S YOUR LOT', BLAENAVON BRING THEIR UK TOUR TO GLASGOW FOR ONE LAST RUN.
BLAENAVON
PHOTO BY: CALUM BUCHAN PHOTOGRAPHY
★★★★☆ (4.5/5)
Having been nearly five years till we seen the release of Blaenavon’s debut album ‘That’s Your Lot’, the band have shown themselves that there are the masters of the waiting game for something to happen. This evening shown that they had no such self-restraint. From the moment they bound onstage at Glasgow’s St Luke’s to the sound of Lorde’s calling-card lyric “I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it”, which firmly got their feet on stage. Before front man Ben Gregory struck a chord, Gregory makes a beeline for the surging crowd who lay to claim into his pastel suit. As the opening drum sequence of pre-debut cut ‘Hell Is My Mind’ began, this really kicks things which is setting a pace and energy of the band which doesn’t let up for the rest of their set. ‘Let’s Pray’ and ‘My Bark Is Your Bite’ follow and when one of Gregory’s darkest lines “Let’s pray for death”, prompts a deafening sing-along with the Glasgow crowd, this nothing to be compared with the jubilant atmosphere which is already in the room before the band came onstage.
The band’s debut single ‘Into the Night’ sees Gregory on fine form, delivering a chasmic foreboding vocal to the song. Then ’The Monte Carlo Kid’ ushers in a run of upbeat cuts and the pace is once upped again with new number ‘All Your Vanity’. So the performance has been a charm for Blaenavon, but take on some of their album soft cuts, the band struggle to slow down the breakneck speed for what they set themselves. ‘Lonely Side’ suffers a bolder, brasher incarnation. It’s a shame, for considering the album prospers that just as much in its quieter moments, but an extra tender rendition the album title track ‘That’s Your Lot’ during the encore goes the way to making up for it. ‘Orthodox Man’ and ‘Prague’ close the performance with an incendiary note and as the band are swept away on a sea of hands, echo chants, you can’t really hardly blame them for getting very carried away on stage with it.