Gig review: Toploader

Published on Tuesday 22 September 2009 18:58

TOPLOADER ** KING TUT'S, GLASGOW

IN CASE anyone has been asking, Toploader are back – the one with the hair, the one who was married to Gail Porter, the whole gang. Apparently, they took six months off and it turned into five years.

A vocal portion of the crowd at this show rejoiced at their comeback but, although there was a time, way back at the turn of the century, when they sold cartloads of albums, their initial reign as one of the UK's most popular bands was shortlived – hence the need to build from the grassroots up again and re-engage with the more bijou end of the gigging circuit.

The white soul of opening number Let The People Know is actually well suited to a club setting, even if it does sound like it hails from another era – even ten years ago, this would have sounded old, like a relic from the mid-1980s.

For all the vaguely hippyish connotations of their lyrics, Toploader are essentially a pub rock band who got lucky with a couple of tunes and snowballed from there.

Their best song is still the one they didn't write. They dropped the feelgood pop tonic Dancing In The Moonlight at around the half-way point when their pedestrian set of AOR plodders was crying out for a lift.

As far as the audience was concerned, there was only one other song which could compete as a lusty singalong, the sub-Oasis strains of their debut single Achilles Heel. If Toploader have nothing more arresting than this to offer second time around, they may be in for a long slog.