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PREVIEW SURF POP-ROCK GIRLS Stereo, Glasgow, 27 Feb
Bleary-eyed San Francisco duo, Girls, follow up last October’s Scottish dates with another gig, as part of a frankly stomach-churning US/European tour. The pair, comprising of Chet ‘JR’ White (pictured, left) and Christopher Owens (right), released their debut – simply titled, Album – last September to heavy critical acclaim, earning them a place on multiple end-of-year ‘best of’ shortlists with their entrancing mix of 50s/60s inspired guitar pop and hazy experimentation – a sound that has seen them compared to everyone from the Beach Boys and Buddy Holly to Elvis Costello. The glorious clutter the two create is perhaps a reflection of their rather unusual origins. Owens in particular, the world-weary voice of the band, was born into the confines of the infamous religious sect
Children Of God, which banned all outside music, endorsed prostitution and presented him with numerous personal/family problems. He eventually escaped to Texas as a teenager, only to find himself out on the streets. Soon after, Owens was almost miraculously taken under the wing of a millionaire benefactor and moved to San Francisco, where he and White met and forged what was to become an invaluable, though somewhat improbable, creative partnership. The band have since enlisted the help of various pairs of capable hands to help them with their live efforts and when quizzed by The List as to what exactly we can expect from their upcoming show, Owens was pretty concise. ‘Expect two guitars, drums, a bass, and hopefully a keyboard, if we get lucky. And if you get lucky, you can expect a good time.’ (Ryan Drever)
Music
PREVIEW GUITAR VIRTUOSO SIR RICHARD BISHOP Stereo, Glasgow, Wed 24 Feb
For the past three decades, avant- garde guitar wizard, Sir Richard Bishop, has dazzled, confounded and disturbed, both as a member of Arizona freaks Sun City Girls, and as a wildly inventive solo artist. While less deranged than Sun City Girls’ sprawling oeuvre, Bishop’s own albums are just as eclectic, deftly leaping from gypsy jazz to Indian ragas, or between psychedelic rock and electronic soundscapes. Bishop’s current album, the excellent Freak of Araby, pays homage to the Arabic surf-rock of Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid.
‘It wasn’t my intention to make any kind of Arabic or Middle Eastern type record,’ he explains, ‘But after recording a couple of original pieces that were “eastern” sounding, I decided that I wanted the entire record to reflect that sound. So I scrambled to find some traditional songs to record and a number of them were songs that Khorshid also played.’
Perhaps reflecting the heavy psychedelic rock of Rangda, his new band with Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny and inspirational free drummer (and one- time Edinburgh resident) Chris Corsano, Bishop is plugging in for this tour. ‘I just needed to step away from acoustic guitar for a while. I wanted to force myself to try something different. I am doing a couple of pieces from the Freak of Araby and I am also doing a fair amount of improvisation and trying out some new songs and some older pieces that I haven’t really played live before.’ (Stewart Smith)
PREVIEW ELECTRO-ROCK ERRORS Grand Ole Opry, Glasgow, Thu 25 Feb
‘God, I hope it doesn’t get to the point where we all try to outdo each other and turn into Rush,’ shudders Errors’ drum leviathan James Hamilton, talking about the Glasgow quartet’s rousing group dynamic. ‘But the thing about playing in an instrumental band is that you don’t have a vocal line to carry your song. You have to up the stakes, experiment, make everything else more interesting.’ Having brightly defied attempts to align their vivid party psalms with any given scene since
2004, Errors’ towering electro-rock democracy is in stellar fettle. Their second long-player, Come Down With Me (Rock Action), is rife with melodic fortitude, pummelling beats and – most notably – live ardour. ‘Yeah, I think our first record sounded different once we’d toured it, and I guess that’s the sound we were going for this time,’ nods Hamilton. ‘It wasn’t a conscious thing though – we were just doing what we do: bumbling around. Maybe that’s what we should have called this album: What We Usually Do, But More So.’
So, in the absence of any lyrics, do the band’s epithets bear particular weight, to disseminate their messages? Is each title scrutinised, visualised and honed? ‘There’s really no deep meaning behind our titles,’ he confesses. ‘They’re almost always something someone’s said while meaning to say something else.’ But what of ace recent single, ‘A Rumour in Africa’ – surely an aural exposition on the continent’s post-colonial turmoil? ‘Oh, that was just something Greg misheard on the bus after he’d been awake for 48 hours.’ (Nicola Meighan)
18 Feb–4 Mar 2010 THE LIST 61