magnolia electric company @ glasgow mono

[framheim]

ah twas ace. foxface were a great opener to the night and made much more sense in the confined space of mono than in the cavernous and soulless music hall. the only thing that bugs me is the singer sounds like gary lightbody but apart from that they're a very talented band. unlike the red well who were next up and who were easily one of the worst bands i've ever seen. they even had a break in the middle where it seemed they were learning the song(turned out the keyboard player was playing it in the wrong key). they're only good bit was when the awkward speccy guitarist in the tracksuit took up vocal duties for a song and they became brilliant. that song too was ruined by the main singer/guitarist soloing over it. one of those bands who need to rethink the focus of their band.

the touring support was excellent. a gentle chap whose name i didn't catch, might've been something like micah(i saw it on the stage times sheet but can't quite remember what it was). he had a lovely voice and did a fine line in quiet introspective acoustic songs ala microphones.

magnolia electric company were far from quiet and rocked the place for over an hour. mainly playing new songs and ones from the soon to be released album they were in particularly fine fettle. we even got a huge version of steve albini's blues from didn't it rain. one wag shouted for lady in red which was pretty funny, jason molina bearing a pretty good resemblence to chris de burgh. a good night over all and a fine performance from one of america's great songwriters. bit long though.

edit: reading this back now, i'm a wee bit too harsh on the red well. not easily the worst band i've ever seen. they were poor but i've seen much worse.

[jimr]

I couldn't get into the album. I just kept taking it out and playing the lioness instead. I was going to go but I thought I would just sit there willing him to play songs ohia stuff and thats a shit place to be.

[framheim]

the lioness is an ace album.

yea, i though i'd have that problem as well but the magnolia stuff is pretty good too and i tried to think of it as a seperate band rather than a continuation of songs:ohia. the sound he has now is so different from the songs:ohia stuff that you have to draw a line between them really. whereas songs:ohia was stark, bleak and minimal the magnolia electric company stuff is full, loud and more optimistic in places. just a shame we can't get the new album here yet.

[boss]

I couldn't get into the album. I just kept taking it out and playing the lioness instead. I was going to go but I thought I would just sit there willing him to play songs ohia stuff and thats a shit place to be.

That's pretty much what I thought too. In fact, that's exactly what I thought. Someone really needs to wreck up his life so he starts writing the mournful, wrist-slitting-in-the-bathtub-over-a-glass-of-port stuff again. Just to make me happy.