Gig review: JLS, Glasgow

“WELCOME to Goodbye,” Marvin greeted us, to not the first nor last ear-piercing screams of the night.

JLS, seen here performing at the Forth Awards, played at Glasgow's Hydro. Picture: Phil Wilkinson

The Hydro

***

London dance-pop foursome JLS are calling it a day after seven chart-storming years together. But first, the farewell tour, announced in April, which also comprises promoting a greatest hits LP and their own fragrance.

You can hardly grudge JLS one last hearty financial feast at the top table of British pop before they go, and you have to admire their decision to quit while ahead, especially since One Direction came along and showed them how whopping success by an X Factor runners-up boy band is really done. As this typically amiable turn evidenced, they will be missed, even if a lot of their very middling material probably won’t.

The Club Is Alive sent several thousand kids bananas, even if many of them are nowhere near old enough to have yet set foot in a club. Potentially short attention spans presumably in mind, many tunes were knocked off in abridged versions, giving more time for light banter and stagemanship. Be it singing Happy Birthday to JB (screams), or jokily revealing that JLS actually stands for “just love Scotland” (louder screams), or Aston doing multiple trademark backflips (loudest screams).

Following their best song, the pulsing Beat Again, smart suits were donned for the finale of finales: Boyz II Men’s End of the Road sung atop a slowly rising hydraulic platform and ending in a group hug, then a mass sway-along to Everybody In Love. Farwell JLS, at least until the inevitable reunion tour.