LIVE REVIEW: The Black Angels, The Dandy Warhols, O2 Acdemy, Glasgow, 01/10/2024
The Dandy Warhols had opened their tour in Dublin a couple of nights previously and now it was the turn of Glasgow to be entertained by the Portland, USA band but there was a twist … The Dandy’s weren’t actually headlining tonight, instead they swapped places with The Black Angels as it turns out that this is actually a co-headline tour between both! That wasn’t the only surprise of the night, when we entered the O2 Academy and tried to take a seat upstairs as normal we were told that the balcony was closed off for the night. Now this may have been due to low ticket sales as it’s the first time that we have ever experienced this at the O2 but as the night went on it made perfect sense to keep everyone on the floor to help create a unique atmosphere, and that it did.
Formed in Portland, Oregon in 1994 The Dandy Warhols are Courtney Taylor-Taylor (vocals/guitar), Peter Holstrom (guitar), Zia McCabe (keyboards, bass and just about everything else) and Brent DeBoer (drums) who replaced Eric Hedford in 1998, Brent is also Taylor’s cousin. The 30th Anniversary Tour begins with Good Morning and Ride, the latter being the only track played from the Dandys Rule Ok album, the crowd are very subdued here so definitely no mosh pits tonight! It’s not long until they play two songs from March 2024 album Rockmaker, Summer Of Hate sounds great live as does I Want To Help You With Your Problem but two tracks from the latest album is a poor return really.
The second half of the set wakens the crowd up at last as McCabe shows off her mesmerising multi-talented musical abilities during STYGGO, one minute she is playing keyboard while whacking the tambourine off her leg and next minute the bass is out, hats off to McCabe for tonight’s performance, she was the liveliest person in the venue the whole night! Next up is the song that many would have come along to hear tonight and is by far their biggest song – Bohemian Like You – a song that is heading toward 200 million streams on Spotify and finally we see some movement from the crowd … well this guy was moving anyway. Godless is played so well and is the highlight of the set for us, some of the guitar solos were incredibly memorable. Zia ends the set with some spoken words. The Dandy Warhols missed out a few songs that we would have loved to have heard tonight such as The Last High, Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth and Every Day Should Be A Holiday, but a thirteen tracks set is still a good return … for a support band! We’re looking forward to the next tour already. 9/10
Some people were actually leaving after the Dandy’s set maybe thinking that was the end of tonight’s show, it did all feel quite peculiar really but at 9.30pm The Black Angels made an appearance and the venue was filling up nicely for the psych-rockers from Austin, Texas who consist of Alex Maas (vocals/bass), Christian Bland (guitar), Jake Garcia (guitar), Stephanie Bailey (drums) and not forgetting multi-instrumentalist Misti Hamrick. Forming in 2004 this could be considered the 20th Anniversary Tour for The Black Angels, their music can be described as 1960s psychedelia-infused rock, Alex Maas gets the crowd onside straight away with History Of The Future, El Jardin and the Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven opening what would be a very lively sixteen-track set. Alongside Maas drummer Stephanie Bailey is a standout but as with The Dandy Warhols the multi-instrumentalist Misti Hamrick steals the show turning her hand to keyboards, bass and acoustic guitar. The middle part of the set is where the band excel with tracks such as Young Men Dead, Empire and The River entrancing the audience helped along with strobe lighting and multiple images flashing across the screen at the back of the stage. Albums old and new are covered tonight with six songs played from 2022 release Wilderness of Mirrors, the excellent night of music ends with the big hitters such as Entrance Song and Black Grease finishing off with Molly Moves My Generation. 9/10
Written by: Alan Brown
