Review: People, Places, Maps - King Tut’s, Glasgow
“We know some of you have come a long way,” he said to those from his home town, “Dunfermline’s a barren wasteland.”
He might have overplayed that one a wee bit, although visions of his mates braving Mad Max 2 on the M8 just to see a gig in Glasgow on a Sunday night were leavened by the fact that People Places Maps are a band of quality, who do the soundtrack of escaping provincial doldrums into the wide world outside so well.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdMcGlone personifies this sensibility, a young and faintly nervous guy with jet-black hair and a tendency to physically emote by stamping on the spot and fluttering his hand against his heart as if he were Mariah at the Superbowl.
His voice is a robust, thickly-accented holler, a real find in such an unheralded group.
The five musicians playing alongside him (including three guitarists and a drummer in a Vaccines T-shirt) back his unstinting if occasionally slightly overblown lyricism with a dynamic sound that makes a feature of consistently notching up tempo and volume throughout a song.
In particular the fiery I Get So Cold I Get Nervous, the sun-kissed twang of Plans and expansive album title track The Distance Tricked Us seem intent on staking this group’s claim to be the new Idlewild.
RATING: ***