The List

Vic's Picks: June 2025

BBC broadcaster, author, actor, musician, DJ, and now a List columnist, the lad Galloway flicks through some music listings to choose top June gigs in variously sized rooms and across different genres…

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Vic's Picks: June 2025

As a true rock’n’roll survivor, Iggy Pop has defied the very laws of nature night after night from the 60s to the present day. I’ve seen him sacrifice himself onstage countless times over the decades, often with fairly questionable bands backing him up; but he never fails to deliver the wild-man goods. No other rocker has gone to such physical extremes for their fans before or since, and I doubt there will ever be another of his kind. At the ripe old age of 78, there can’t be too many more times to witness the godfather of punk and his untouchable catalogue of Stooges and solo classics; so join him and get ‘taps aff’ in the Glasgow Academy (Tuesday 3 June) for what may well be his last hurrah in Scotland.

If an angry dog dosed on amphetamines strapped on a guitar and plugged into a wall of visceral fuzz, the sheer and undeniable energy emitted from the stage might be comparable to another rock’n’roll lifer, John Dwyer. Since 1997, he has prolifically released a morass of records in a slew of uncompromising acts, most frequently by the ever-changing, amorphous garage-punk blob that is Osees. Other than the Iguana above, no other live act brings the fire every damn time. The velocity, intensity and unhinged freedom on display takes your breath away, and we’re lucky enough to have the twin drummer line-up back at SWG3 in Glasgow (Wednesday 18 June) & Edinburgh’s Liquid Room (Thursday 19 June). I think I’ve seen them more than any other live act, and I’ll be back for more.

Picture: Jimmy Fontaine

Finally, if those eardrums are aching from that garage-rock blitzkrieg, let me point you towards Kathryn Joseph. Fresh from supporting Mogwai at the Usher Hall and Barrowlands, and celebrating a decade since she appeared fully formed with her SAY Award-winning debut, Joseph has just released a new album, WE WERE MADE PREY. With help from collaborator and henchman Lomond Campbell, she has added esoteric electronica to her heady witch’s brew and the results move her haunting sound further into intoxicating, ethereal climes. Playing at The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen (Thursday 5 June), in Portree, Skye (Friday 6 June) and at St Luke’s, Glasgow (Wednesday 11 June), Joseph will prove yet again what an extraordinary, mesmerising artist she is.

Listen to Vic Galloway every Monday and Wednesday night on BBC Radio Scotland; he is co-curator and host for the Wavelength Music & Film festival as part of Fringe By The Sea in North Berwick this August.

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