Last Thursday
another Louder Now reporter and I grabbed some dinner and put the world to
rights over cocktails (she read the sign outside said “bitch, its happy hour, get
in the restaurant” and ran inside in all her Irish glory.)
We analysed every
section of crappiness we could and moaned about how nothing we had planned was
happening quite the way we wanted it to.
As most
people do when suffering from any kind of life-crisis (we’ve dubbed ours a
pre-life crisis) we decided that something drastic would have to happen to get
rid of the general crappiness.
36 hours
later we were in a Volkswagen Up! driving from South West London to Glasgow.
Yeah. My grandmother tells me that I’m brave.
I know
that this all sounds slightly senseless or, failing that, like the beginning of
some sort of Thelma and Louise
re-hash but it all becomes a lot more reasonable when I point out that we were
off to see Twin Atlantic rip up their
home town alongside Lonely the Brave.
THINGS I LEARNT FROM OUR ROADTRIP
TO GLASGOW NO.1:
Twin Atlantic and Lonely The Brave have made the best possible road trip music.
It was a
400 mile trip to Glasgow which took us about 8 hours (we stopped a billion
times, all of which were my fault) so we listened to their albums, in each one’s
entirety more than once. If you’re ever looking to learn the words to a song,
play it on loop on a road trip. But the problem with epic albums is that you
can’t help but think to yourself: “It just can’t be this good live.”
Red
light. I promise I will get to the show, just bear with me.
Green
light. Have you ever sat in a car and stared out the window, with the perfect
song playing on the radio, and imagined yourself as the lead in some movie
which involves an epic journey of discovery or the like? Lonely The Brave’s The Day’s War, which will be re-released
on June 8th, was 14 spectacular variations of that perfect song.
It’s just the right amount of beautiful and moody. Hands-up time, I thought the
term “Doom-Pop” was ridiculous when I saw it on Lonely The Brave’s Facebook,
but that is accurately and specifically
what it is.
At this
junction I should probably mention that I’m pretty infamous for suffering from
chronic travel sickness. Ask my mother and she will tell you, in graphic
detail, about the time we boarded a plane and was told on more than one
occasion that we were SUPER lucky because the plane was brand spanking new.
Yeah. I christened the hell out of that plane.
I know,
I’m pretty much the idiot with hayfever who becomes a florist, but nevertheless
there I was on an 800 mile round trip in a car that should probably never have
been forced to do it, and I was freaking loving life. It’s incredibly difficult
to even remember that you feel significantly poorly when you’re listening to
Twin Atlantic’s Hold On from their
2014 album Great Divide.
THINGS I LEARNT FROM OUR ROADTRIP
TO GLASGOW NO.2:
The song The Ghost of Eddie from Twin
Atlantic’s first album, Free, makes
you feel all sorts of bad-ass.
You
remember the crappiness I mentioned? I’m pretty sure we had all but forgotten
it by the time we spotted the mountains in Cumbria. (I’ve looked them up and I
know that their technically hills but from where I was sitting those were mountains
dammit.)
Anyway,
half a bag-for-life of snacks, a thousand re-plays of Heart and Soul, and 8 phone calls from my mother later (no
exaggeration), and we arrived in Glasgow.
THINGS I LEARNT FROM OUR ROADTRIP
TO GLASGOW NO.3: There’s
a reason people rave about Scottish meat.
We
checked into our hotel, did our hair and make-up (we were owed the girly time),
sent a dozen e-mails and headed into Glasgow to explore. We popped into a Bar & Kitchen called Neighbourhood where
I had the best burger I have ever had and then laughed because I forgot where I
was. Of course the burgers were amazing.
Only
marginally recovered from the journey we took the short walk to The SSE Hydro Arena
which, by the way, is stunning and an incredible venue which gives Wembley and
The O2 a run for their money.
Amber light: we’ve now arrived at the show, see,
I told you we would get there eventually.
First up
were the Cambridge doom-pop-rockers. Lonely The Brave took all of my worries
about not being as fantastic live and obliterated them in style. Their set was
magically moody and really intriguing. These guys have had a pretty eventful
year themselves clocking up over 10,000 miles
over seven and a half weeks for their UK and Euro tour, being nominated for
Best Video at the Kerrang! Awards and preparing to re-release their album, The Day’s War, as I mentioned before.
Track number two on that album, Trick of the Light, is particularly gorgeous and this will not be
the last time an arena hosts it.
We were lucky enough to pose a few stupid questions to Lonely
The Brave and you can see what ridiculousness ensued here.
THINGS I LEARNT FROM OUR ROADTRIP
TO GLASGOW NO.4: Chatting
to one band during the show means missing another band’s set we’re really sorry
Eliza and The Bear!
Twin Atlantic
pulled off something remarkable without even stepping foot on the stage. Before
their grand entrance the crowd was treated to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, in its
full glory, and the arena was more than happy to play along blaring out the
words as if there were a band up there.
Then the main
attraction burst on to the stage in an explosion of streamers.
THINGS I LEARNT FROM OUR ROADTRIP
TO GLASGOW NO.5: Twin
Atlantic are HUGE fans of streamers and confetti and balloons and basically
anything it is okay to throw at an audience.
THINGS I LEARNT FROM OUR ROADTRIP
TO GLASGOW NO.6: Twin
Atlantic fans are HUGE supporters of having stuff thrown at them.
As they launched
into 2011’s Make A Beast of
Myself (which may well be the
best opener of all time) it
was obvious how much this show, and the whole tour, meant to Twin Atlantic.
Even people in the very top tier of this 13,000 capacity arena could feel it
(like us).
“We might have
taken the long way round” admits front man Sam McTrusty, and yeah, he’s
probably right (but then so did we). In any event they ended up right where
they were supposed to be, headlining the best venues at home and across the
country.
What makes this
band so special is the broad spectrum they range across. They can fire out
trashy rock songs like Make A
Beast of Myself and Free but stretch out towards power-pop-anthems
like Hold On and Heart & Soul. They can even deliver spotlessly
beautiful heart warmers like Oceans and Crash Land. They do all of it
quite brilliantly.
Take a look at
the extensive list of bands that Twin Atlantic have supported (sometimes being handpicked
by the headliners themselves) and it becomes pretty clear how they do it. My
Chemical Romance, Blink-182, Limp Bizkit. Twin Atlantic are influenced by an
array of legendary artists stretching from one end of the rock world to the
other and that’s really paid off for them.
It was one of
those gigs where you would have been more than happy for the headliners to carry
on into the morning. I would have listened to Twin Atlantic play every song
they have ever written and I was a little bit gutted when they exited the
stage.
We sort of
crawled back to the hotel and then collapsed there in a pile of exhaustion.
Most people would probably tell you that it’s a little bit stupid to drive 400
miles for a gig. Anything could have happened to us. The car could have broken
down (and to all extents and purposes it probably should have done), we could
have ended up in a horror hotel and wish that we were back in London, we could
have got lost in Glasgow never to return with only a life of kilt wearing ahead
of us.
THE ULTIMATE THING I LEARNT FROM
OUR ROADTRIP TO GLASGOW: It’s
a risk worth taking, to have a life worth living (Twin Atlantic, Hold On, ‘Free’ 2011).
Lonely The Brave are not the types for stage shenanigans.
They don’t need to be. The stunning nature of their sound ticks all the boxes
on its own. 
