Music

SUPERGRASS were always among the tightest and most talented of the Britpop bands who broke through in the mid-90s. If it wasn’t for the proverbial creative differences, they could have trucked along happily to this day but, after a ten-year absence, they have returned to the unbridled jubilation of the Barrowland masses, kicking off this exuberant comeback set with their punky calling card Caught by the Fuzz, one of the all time great debut singles.

Fans who never got the chance to see Whitney Houston in concert can now see the next best thing, as a hologram tour comes to Glasgow.

FROM the opening notes of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture – which conductor Nicolas Altstaedt ripped out of the SCO musicians, feet slamming on the stage and fists furiously snatching at the air in front of him – it was clear this was going to be a concert of blistering intensity, and so it proved. And while at times Altstaedt’s direction felt a little over-emphatic, it was hard not to be swept up in his unshakeable conviction and his raw sense of purpose.

Scottish trio Biffy Clyro have made a return with new single 'Instant History.'

North Lanarkshire Schools Novice A Pipe Band, which won a world title in September, could be scrapped because of council budget cuts.

The UK will crown its favourite artists from the last year tonight (18 Feb) with the 2020 Brit Awards.

Susan Boyle has said she is "very excited" ahead of her upcoming tour, which will include a return to the stage where her journey to fame began.

“If a sound engineer had an anxiety dream it would look like this,” said Stevie Jones with a smile in the direction of his own live sound technician and a gesture towards the seven-piece group of Glasgow luminaries surrounding him, whom he referred to as “the ludicrously talented musicians who indulge these madcap shenanigans”.

The annual RSNO St Valentine programme – simply titled Romantic Grieg this year – tends to be a package of potboilers with a common thread of romance. This one ticked the box, but beyond that lacked the spark of young love.

Missouri singer-songwriter Angel Olsen has expanded her sound – and subsequently her fanbase – with her shimmering soulful fourth album, All Mirrors, all the better to fill Barrowland with lashings of dark David Lynchian romance on Valentine’s Day.

“Are you still part of it?” quipped conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier, explaining that he’d finish the eighth and final concert in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s UK tour with two encores of British music. Joking aside – and despite persuasive accounts of the brief movements from Walton’s Henry V and Elgar’s The Wand of Youth – it did feel like a surprisingly long concert.

How does one address Julian Cope these days? The former Teardrop Explodes frontman has many guises – post-punk hero, indie pop troubadour, historical writer, esteemed academic, playful political commentator, gnostic rocker, Krautrocker, drone rocker, off his rocker – not to mention his numerous appellations: arch-drude (“self-styled” he added), Lord Yatesbury and now Grand Prince Julian, presumptive ruler of Sutherland, resplendent in his trademark hippy military chic. “I’ll try not to be too imperious,” he reassured his acolytes.

Fatherhood has concentrated the mind of Eigg-based musician and record label owner Johnny Lynch, who has a new album and a new perspective, he tells Fiona Shepherd