Gig review: Hard Rock Rising - Soar, Glasgow

“SO HAS anyone ever been to a gig in the car park at Braehead before?”

Scottish fourpiece Fatherson are tipped to go far, but the Hard Rock Rising gig isnt likely to increase their fame or fanbase

Hard Rock Rising - Soar At Intu Braehead, Glasgow

*

Fatherson frontman Ross Leighton, with tongue in cheek, quizzed the small audience who stuck out the cold and drizzle to see them headline this Hard Rock Café marketing junket new bands showcase, which took place on a lorry-turned-stage in a location none more soulless than the tarmac outside a shopping centre.

The absent response to his question said it all. Quite whom organisers had expected to attend the event, free as it may have been, was baffling. Less than 100 people occupied a pen big enough to hold ten times that number. Sure, it was raining, but that’s an eventuality any outdoor gig in Glasgow need prepare for. The compere could barely give away competition prizes, so flat was the mood.

Which was little reflection on the bands who performed, The Carnabys, We Were Kings and The River 68’s being the other three groups to appear. The latter, a retro rock’n’roll-minded Glaswegian fivesome with chops as precisely manicured as their hair, arrived straight off a European tour and could barely have landed home with a harder bump.

Fatherson for their part similarly made the best of a bad situation – the Frightened Rabbit and Biffy Clyro worthy majestic choruses of Lights and First Born couldn’t have sounded more at odds with their mundane surroundings. Generously, they even threw in a hot-tempered Coldplay cover (God Put A Smile Upon Your Face) in a shopping-centre-suitable spirit of MOR populism. Fatherson’ll go far, but it’ll be no thanks to bloodless heavily-branded showcases such as Hard Rock Rising.

Seen on 17.05.14