Twilight Sad - Richmond Park, Glasgow, 30/8/2014

  by Tony Gaughan

published: 6 / 9 / 2014

intro

At the chaotic Last Big Weekend Festival in Glasgow, Tony Gaughan watches brooding Scottish post-rockers the Twilight Sad play a short but intense and brilliant gig

I had no idea what to expect from this gig. I did know that the bill had been largely curated by Chemikal Underground and the East End Social,so the line up was going to include many of the acts associated with that label or studio Chem 19. I had passed Richmond Park before on a bus and knew it had a pond, but had never been inside it or had ever heard of a gig there before. On arriving I had already missed local act Honeyblood and Oxford shoegazers Swervedriver among others. It very quickly became apparent that one tent hosted the music, but there were a couple more selling overpriced food and the ultra-cool local brewery were today looking after the beer tent. There was a fairly lengthy queue for beer, so I headed off into the half-full arena tent to see Scottish Album of the Year Award winners Young Fathers finish their set in quite an impressive way. I caught all thirty seconds of it, which was my first regret of the day. I will catch them live again soon. The Twilight Sad actually appear to have pulled in a fair crowd for this performance, although it was short in length. It was started by the rather excellent 'Cold Days from the Birdhouse' from their debut album, 'Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winners', which had already got the crowd onside, even before they played the magnificent 'I Became A Prostitute' and 'Reflection of the Television' from their next album, 'Forget! The Night Ahead'. 'Nil' from 'No One Can Ever Know' also had a run out too. The band also gave a taster of their forthcoming fourth album 'Nobody Wants to be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave', before closing the set with 'And She Would Darken the Memory' and '3 Seconds of Dead Air'. There was now a ninety minute queue for a drink which appeared to being nursed rather than poured by rather stressed out bar staff, which forced me to forgo the next act, the Wedding Present. To be fair, they were sounding pretty good from where I was, but no one was giving up their place in this queue and panic buying had set in. Even worse the food queues were now as bad and, as there was no provisions to bring any of this in, it was all a bit fraught out there and there were still three bands to catch. Fortunately F***Buttons made my next decision very easy, and I was out of there as a man has got to eat. There were no pass outs I was told but food and refreshments far outweighed the risk of that, although I did get back in to catch a fine set by headliners, Glasgow legends Mogwai. Yes, so most of it is instrumental,lengthy and proggy, but from opener 'White Noise' the crowd were loving every second, even guitarist Barry Burns' half-hearted apology for the queues at the bar brought much humour for the crowd. The band encored with the excellent 'Mogwai Fear Satan' from their 'Mogwai Young Team' debut album, which certainly made up for some of the setbacks of earlier. The photographs that accompany this article were taken by Darren Aston for Pennyblackmusic.

Picture Gallery:-