Jonathan Deamer

30th January ’08 @ Korova, Liverpool

“You sang so beautifully. Like a bunch of altar boys”. Given that the refrain the audience join in with so enthusiastically is a shouted coda of “here we fucking go” (from track Go Square Go), you can’t help but feel that frontman James Allan has his tongue placed firmly in his cheek. Comparisons to religious experiences aren’t actually that far from the reality of a Glasvegas live show though: Allan exorcises himself of bad childhood memories and emotional frailty, while the assembled congregation mouths along to lyrics like psalms, strangers put their arms round each other, and a bloke at the back even starts speaking in tongues.

Whether that’s down to spiritual fervour or cheap beer no-one can say, but what’s certain is that this Liverpool basement has never seen such a communal epiphany. Tonight’s walls of noise-pop will be the first experience for many here of the four Scots’ ethereal sobbing-into-their-football-scarves beauty. And they’re an awe-inspiring lesson in how music really does make the people come together, with last year’s debut single Daddy’s Gone becoming the mass singalong it’s always had the potential to be. Although one non-believer was heard to claim that all the songs sound the same, who cares? It’s not as if the Ten Commandments had much stylistic variation, and they were cracking.