Gig review: Love and Money

WITH a new album, The Devil’s Debt, out early next year, the Love and Money revival is gathering momentum, even if sardonic frontman James Grant is too long in the tooth and cynically inclined to greet tonight’s appreciation for their performance with anything bar suspicion and mockery of their merchandise range. Sixteen years after disbanding, the Glaswegian band’s “hits”, as he sarcastically describes their fleeting chart-botherers, are holding up considerably better than most contemporaries’ back catalogues. Moreover, the new material suggests they can be a vital concern again.

I Never Touched Her is a moody mid-pacer with depth and longing, This Is The Last Time a strolling elegy revisited after an earlier recording as a Grant solo work. With the singer having ventured into folkier territory on his own, and with his fondness for a bluesy croon, they can certainly lay claim to a sweeping repertoire of styles. Inflections of jazz, soul and funk especially across the earlier tracks afford variety. Yet everything remains grounded in the compassion of Grant’s songwriting, typified by Clydeside lament The Last Ship on The River and the encore initiating Walk The Last Mile, dedicated to the band’s late bassist Bobby Paterson.

Up Escalator was danceable pop, Razorsedge gritty funk, with Fraser Spiers’ quivering mouth organ providing Looking For Angeline with an Americana twang. Standouts proved to be the more measured Avalanche and Winter, with Grant affecting some impressive rock god posturing and hollering for the swaggering Halleluiah Man.

JAY RICHARDSON