If it’s ever all too easy to get something, if there is no sensing that first impressions are the start of a relationship rather than the extent of it, then bailing on bands can be the only logical subsequence. Like it or not, there will be empty t-shirts masquerading as zeitgeist surfers forevermore, practicing the fine art of mimicry. In distrusting – if not directness or immediacy – just plain obviousness, you protect yourself against effectively diving in the shallow end on a regular basis. So here then is an album, and the band behind it, that flies forcefully in the face of that assertion.
There is so much that is plain-as-a-bloody-headbutt about Glasvegas. From the crystalline clarity of the melodies that you hardly need an A-Z to follow, to the whitewash, tenement-flats-combusting omnipresence of the guitars to the industrious trudge of the drums, the inescapably colloquial coarseness of James Allen’s vocals and the blunt unfussiness of the language he uses so pointedly. So why so magic?
They might initially seem to subscribe to the “Supersonic/Give me gin and tonic” school of lyricism, but that belies the deep, clawing, evolved sadness at the heart of these fist-raising anthems. It is the immediate articulation of ideas that need to be communicated but don’t need dwelling on or spinning out. The way that ‘Geraldine’ is surely the first rock or pop love song sung to a social worker. And how the titles of ‘Flowers & Football Tops’, a tribute to a murdered teenage boy, and ‘Daddy’s Gone’, a heart-wrenching anti-paean to his own father, are enough alone to make you shed a tear. And that’s before they really nail the emotions with that manifest, steely wall of sound.
It’s the way that Motown through the Jesus & Mary Chain and debut album Oasis are so clearly influences, but that ‘Glasvegas’ is something so much grander and cared for, less flippant than the former and more invested than the latter. The way that the songs sachet into one another, one after the other and into the next, with undimming majesty, gradually amassing into a pulse driven homage to the human condition. You get Glasvegas, how can you not? But don’t be guilty, feel proud. They deserve it.
