Lily Allen @ SECC 25/11/09

Lily emerges through the floor atop a large staircase, which she saunters down to the sound of her latest album’s opening track, ‘Everyone’s at It’. Still, just her appearance on stage is enough draw hysteria from this massive crowd. Even Lily herself acknowledges this, commenting: “This is a big fucking room!” And it is, many people have made the step up to playing arena sized venues and failed abysmally, Lily is not one of them as she holds the audience and sound just as good as she had in the Academy and ABC. Although she seems tiny to the majority of the crowd three large screens enable to audience to view her antics, including pulling pints of Guinness for the front row, apparently what she chose to spend her extended budget on.

As the ska-tinged introduction to ‘LDN’ plays, for her second song, there is a sudden realisation to why Lily is so successful as a pop star. Lily’s debut album, ‘Alright, Still’ is a superb effort full of sharp ska-pop which could have any open listener hooked. Her latest effort, ‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’, sees a more electronic sound and tracks like ‘The Fear’ still drip with that accessible yet clever feel Lily’s debut had. However, some newer tracks lack the quality her debut carried and with only three old tracks remain in the set, a very nasal version ‘Littlest Things’ and her classic number one ‘Smile’, along with the aforementioned ‘LDN’. Obviously the lack of a brass section has had a major impact on this decision, even her version of Kaiser Chiefs single ‘Oh My God’ produced by the moronically corrupting, horrendously untalented and evil Mark Ronson only has his signature trumpets on backing track.

Still, to the majority of Lily’s extraordinarily varied audience the lack of older material doesn’t seen to matter as they latch on to Lily’s every word, whether genuinely meaningful or just idiotic. Her performance cannot really be faulted, even her cover of straw hated, fake accented, indie lightweights The Kooks’ ‘Naïve’ brings it close to sounding credible. Her nationalist bashing single ‘Fuck You’ also seems to carry a new punch with the recent high profile the BNP have been receiving.

Mid set Lily is joined by chirpy London MC Professor Green to perform ‘Just Be Good to Green’ which Lily featured on. This acts as superb interlude and brings an extra energy to the stage as the rapper runs about around drawing massive cheers from the crowd. The cheeky grin plastered on Green’s face says it all as he performs to an audience surely much bigger than he is used to.

As Lily disappears throw the centre of the stage at the end of her first encore there is a feel of great satisfaction, a set full of sing-a-longs, expensive looking props and costume changes only add to the spectacle. However, it should have ended there, as Lily re-enters to perform the frankly awful country-tinged ‘Not Fair’, where she moans about some ex being bad in bed. Still, if you forget about this ending the performance is enthralling, if only the track list could have been stronger.

Photo: Joshua Porter

The Field @ Optimo 15/11/09

Tonight is quite the dramatic day here in Glasgow, the Christmas lights were turned on in George Square tonight and The Flaming Lips spreading joy to the masses with their uplifting live show. The Flaming Lips stage show is probably about the most prop filled and entertaining a visual experience as you are likely to see, the fireworks and Christmas lights in the town centre are not bad to witness either. So, in a way it is quite refreshing that The Field is much more reserved on visual effects, let’s face it there in no point competing with the F’Lips.

It is gone midnight when The Field and his live band take the stage, this is the norm for Optimo, and the hugely popular club night serves as pretty much the ideal setting for The Field’s live sound.

Axel Wilner’s music on record is chilled out and flows beautifully well in the background of any location. Still, performing live is a different beast and the intensity of his minimal techno has to be upped to keep a packed Subclub dancing through the entirety of his set. Wilner and his band manage this step up to this level superbly as the sheer force of their music drives the crowd into a frenzy that you would expect to be received for any top DJ.

Wilner bobs up and down behind his mixing desk while the rest of band smoothly change between instruments with minimal fuss. Still, it is the Swedish artist’s music that really speaks for itself; there is no need for an emphatic stage performance at this show. The smart little projections on show form a slight visual distraction, but without this the strength of his music would be easily lapped up by this, or any, Optimo crowd.

Optimo is superb experience whether there is a top of the range live act booked or not. Resident DJ’s JD Twitch and JG Wilkes have had praise heaped upon them from all over the globe for their mixing skills over a vast range of genres and sounds. Still, there is no arguing that a quality live band makes a difference at the club and The Field have to be up their with the best of recent times.

The Field’s latest LP ‘Yesterday and Today’ is available now on Kompakt.

A Place To Bury Strangers @ Captain's Rest 12/11/09

A Place to Bury Strangers is affectionately hailed as ‘New York’s loudest band’ and on tonight’s evidence this is hard to argue. Support Japandroids, who are no means quiet, claim that they make them ‘sound like an acoustic folk band’. The tiny downstairs basement of the Captain’s Rest goes no way at all to restrict the loudness, if anything the enclosed environment only goes to enhance this reputation.

Still, you cannot go to this gig and not throw some word to Japandroids who are gathering major hype at the moment and are possibly one of the reasons why tonight is sold out. The Vancouver duo’s brand of noise rock is achieving more followers everyday, so much so that they have a headline show booked at King Tut’s in February which will surely be a hot ticket. Unfortunately though, the band’s first visit to Glasgow is plagued with microphone issues and even the ‘sound magicians’ could not save the day completely. Sounding ‘as much like Lady Gaga as possible’ was the aim, don’t worry this was not going to happen, but enough promise and energy is expelled to have people intrigued enough to have a further listen.

A Place To Bury Strangers emerge in an almost pitch black room, in an filled to capacity venue, the only light shone on them for the first three quarters of their set comes courtesy of a sole projector at the back the room. This creates an atmosphere suiting of the shoegazing beauty of their music that seems ever more perfect in a live setting. True enough the volume is a slight distraction; I certainly would not advise seeing this band without earplugs, the fact they sell them at their merchandise stand says it all, but with this investment made the bands set is even more glorious than they sound on record.

For the last quarter we find the minimal lighting replaced by drastic strobe effect, which near engulfs the band from the audience’s vision. Again, this effect only emphasises their music, as the band seem to increase the volume even more while drenched in a sea of white light. Closer ‘Ocean’, from 2007’s self-titled standout, is probably the best track of the evening. The band take the song to new extremes from the recorded version dragging it out to ridiculous lengths while holding a gawping crowd with sheer intensity. The forceful end to the set definitely goes the furthest to justify the band’s current tagline, which will have to go some way to be topped.

A Place to Bury Strangers second full-length ‘Exploding Head’ was released on Mute in October this year.

Picture: Sam Fenn