Gig review: King Creosote, Glasgow

BY WAY of a song which seemed ad-libbed on the spot but which surely must have been tightly-rehearsed, Kenny “King Creosote” Anderson appeared to ‘fess up to what his non-appearance at the weekend’s Fence Gnomegame seemed to suggest.

King Creosote

Glasgow Oran Mor

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In his own lyrical words: “When I left Fence Records back in November 2012 it felt like a rash decision… I realised I had nothing to do but clean up our office in Cellardyke.” Hobbled by the broken ankle which was picked up shifting wood and which kept him in his chair last night, he’s apparently spent the last two months of non-affiliation with the label with which his name is synonymous developing some mean online gambling skills and watching Six Feet Under boxsets.

That and writing yet another new record (“I’m making lots of records,” he bemoaned, “it’s just that nobody’s buying them”), from which a large section of this low-key but packed-full acoustic date – just Anderson on guitar and a bongo player alongside him – appeared to be culled. New tracks like Impossible to Resist and Future Wives were downbeat but not melancholy, just another strain of the wide emotional range of which he’s capable.

Despite the ankle and the split, though, he was on good form, dipping into those songs from his catalogue most suited to the format, including On the Night of the Bonfire, Homerun & a Vow, his Latvian radio hit Third Swan and Not One Bit Ashamed, and telling us he has a new label named – as far as we heard – Vour, geared towards releasing his own music in physical form. “It’s not cheap,” he said, “you could get a cab to Central Station for what I’m charging.” It’s worth it, we’d wager.