Close Encounter of the Third Kind – The Twilight Sad live

The Twilight Sad / United Fruit / Vladimir – 20 Rocks, Dundee – Sunday 28th April 2013 Since it’s my first visit to the building now rebranded as 20 Rocks let’s start off with a venue review. The (new) Doghouse wasn’t my favourite Dundee venue (both Dexter’s/Non Zeros and Beat Generator Live are better IMHO)…

Which Helps When I Start to Forget – We Were Promised Jetpacks live

After the Panda Su show on Thursday night, the mid point of my gigging weekend was a much louder show at Beat Generator Live as We Were Promised Jetpacks headlined the second day of the Juteopolis mini-festival. Strange as it may seem, given that I first saw the Jetpacks nearly seven years ago, but over…

Conquering Panda Sound – Panda Su live

Panda Su / Lewis Fieldhouse – Clark’s, Dundee – 25th April 2013 First gig of a busy weekend last night to see Panda Su for the first time in ages. In fact, checking back, it’s been over two years since I last saw Su and Adam perform but even allowing for that, I wasn’t even…

Monsters Under The Bed – Cancel The Astronauts video

Signs of life from Scotland’s unluckiest band. With as many gigs seeming to be cancelled as played at the moment, it’s good to see concrete activity from Cancel The Astronauts in the shape of a video for one of the standout tracks from last year’s ‘Animal Love Match’ LP. Whether or not the song gets…

The War Still Rages On – Hookers for Jesus E.P.

I’m not sure quite when it happened. But, in addition to their brilliant name, at some point I went from just being impressed with Hookers for Jesus to being impressed by them AND liking not just their brilliant name but also their music. So I’ve genuinely been looking forward to the final version of their…

Art of Persistence – Wire book

I’ve just finished Wilson Neate’s Wire book ‘Read and Burn’ – for the second time. And despite being a hefty 400+ pages long, my first read of the book was completed in a weekend before re-reading it from the start at a more sedate pace. So it’s fair to say I’m quite taken with it….