Gig review: Honeyblood, Glasgow School of Art

IT’S been a defining couple of weeks in the career of Scots duo Honeyblood, so much so that a busy Friday night in the main room of Glasgow’s Art School union felt like a relatively tiny showcase for singer and guitarist Stina Tweeddale and drummer Cat Myers.

Honeyblood opened for the Foo Fighters at Murrayfield. Picture: Contributed

Honeyblood

Glasgow School of Art

Rating: ***

Less than two weeks prior to this show they had opened for the Foo Fighters at Murrayfield Stadium through in Edinburgh (Tweeddale’s home city, although the pair are based in Glasgow), earning comradely kudos from Dave Grohl, while on the very day of this event it was announced that they will be supporting fellow Scots Biffy Clyro and Idlewild at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay.

So at once, this show felt both small-scale and agreeably intimate. Despite the lack of instruments, the pair are sonically versatile, flipping from the sparse and personal – their cover of Lana Del Rey’s High By the Beach was moodily atmospheric, and Tweeddale’s solo Kissing On You at the start of the encore worked hard to fill the space – to a more raggedly noisy sound which throws together the slow-burning embers of grunge and Riot Grrrl.

It’s a style which is deliberately loose, and if it sometimes feels as though there might be something missing from the live set-up, Tweeddale’s force of personality as a performer carries most of their songs. Her tone was bittersweet, with a serrated twang which is as much LA as EH. “I will hate you forever,” she hollered on Super Rat, a put-down that was as lacerating as the feisty punk-pop spirit of new track Babes Never Die or set stand-out Killer Bangs.