Gig review: Adam Green and Binki Shapiro, Glasgow

“We’ve got a few more songs,” announced Binki Shapiro with an uncertain smile towards the end of the set, “then we’re all going to get back to our drinking.”

Adam Green and Binki Shapiro

Arches, Glasgow

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The comment was aimed, at those fans who issued forth beery but well-intentioned heckles throughout the show.

“I love you!” hollered an excitable bloke at one point in the direction of Shapiro, who was plainly dressed in trousers and shirt but waif-like with looks reminiscent of Kate Moss.

“My wife loves you!” yelled another shortly after in the direction of Adam Green.

The pair shared guitar parts, vocals and even the odd verse, bouncing words back and forth off one another, throughout an hour and a bit of lurching rhythms (What’s the Reward), lo-fi balladry (Nighttime Stopped Bleeding) and chamber guitar rock epics (Collage).

Yet when Green was let off the leash a pleasantly affecting gig became something stupidly transcendent, a festival of impassioned mucking around which would have made even the pair’s most addled followers pause. The highlights in this respect were the crowd-surfing, ludicrously dancing Dance With Me and the off-the-wall seedy romance of Getting Led, suggesting the audience would have perhaps recalled “party animal Adam Green” more than “the famously above average Binki Shapiro” – their own descriptions of one another.

david pollock