Gig review: Kid Canaveral, Glasgow

EDINBURGH-based boy/girl quartet Kid Canaveral should, by rights, be performing to huge crowds around the world.

Edinburgh band Kid Canaveral deserve to be more than a popular cult

Kid Canaveral - Broadcast, Glasgow

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Their infectious brand of melodic post-punk bubblegum deserves to be more than a popular cult. And yet I can’t deny that witnessing them in a tiny basement venue such as this is an ideal scenario.

After all, they’re indie-pop to their very core. Their 2007 single, Smash Hits, even references legendary Glasgow venue The 13th Note. Theirs is a world of warm beer, low ceilings and broken strings, where ear-splitting guitars meld seamlessly with open-throated, tuneful choruses.

Affable and self-deprecating, they often come across as a more approachable Pixies. But whereas Frank Black deals in surrealist psychosis, singer/guitarist David MacGregor is more concerned with matters of the beaten heart.

Despite the upbeat sheen of songs such as You Only Went Out to Get Drunk Last Night – with its la-la vocals and reedy fairground organ, it sounds, winningly, like The Banana Splits reforming on The Tube – Kid Canaveral’s music is underpinned with a uniquely Scottish melancholy.

Granted, vocalist/guitarist/keyboard player Kate Lazda is English, but the likes of Low Winter Sun are infused with an urban, dusky sadness which seems to ooze from these streets at a certain time of night.

It’s telling that one of their new songs rails against killjoys who can’t wait to note how the nights are drawing in as soon as the longest day of the year is over. Kid Canaveral are keeping summer alive, forever.

Seen on 04.07.14