The Futureheads - Oran Mor, Glasgow, Mon 9 Apr
Stripped down acoustic and a capella show from the indie-rock group
For a band who made one of their very earliest trips around the UK a tour of working men’s clubs, there was a certain sense of having come full circle here. Billed as an acoustic and a cappella tour, it was more than just a stripped-down version of their usual set. In the instrument-bare versions of their own ‘The Keeper’, Kelis’ ‘Acapella’ (gorgeous, and so much more than an excuse to get that title in) and Sparks’ ‘The No 1 Song in Heaven’, they offered a postmodern flashback to the days of barbershop quartets and music-hall turns.
Accompanied, however, they also strayed far from the generic tedium of the usual unplugged format. ‘Decent Days and Nights’ thumped along like a piece of social-club skiffle half a century too late and ‘Carnival Kids’ evoked folk-rock’s pomp ('Mixed with "Battle of Evermore", a wee bit' is how Barry Hyde accurately described it). Their way with a winning lyric and melody was laid bare on tracks like ‘News & Tributes’ and ‘The Beginning of the Twist’, their high-quality banter exposed during, for example, dissections of R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet amid tuning mishaps. Somebody ought to put them on stage, honestly.