6 Music Festival reviews: Goldfrapp/Sparks, Cate Le Bon and the Jesus and Mary Chain

Goldfrapp/Sparks ****

Academy, Glasgow

Review by: Fiona Shepherd

Top marks to the 6 Music Festival for conferring a sense of occasion on this weekend’s events, with the O2 Academy decked out in its best fake foliage finery and every act on the bill a draw in their own right, so much so that it didn’t seem entirely proper for Sparks to be supporting any other artist.

Still, the legendary art pop duo attacked their set like the glorious weirdo troupers they are, showing off their hip new band, largely comprising members of fellow LA outfit Mini Mansions, and a couple of new songs which confirmed that Sparks lyrics reach the parts which other bands wouldn’t even think to explore.

The poperatic Dick Around showcased Russell Mael’s remarkable vocal athleticism, although the biggest cheer of the night was reserved, as always, for elder brother Ron’s traditional dance along the footlights to their euphoric disco hit Number One Song in Heaven, part of a closing run of some of the most life-affirming and attention-grabbing pop singles of all time, including the heroic This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us.

Headliners Goldfrapp would need to work hard to top that. But work is not quite front diva Alison Goldfrapp’s style – in her theatrical world, it’s the wind machine that puts in the labour. Unlike Sparks, her new material was uniformly underwhelming, but the glam stomp of Train, heady electro of Ride a White Horse and irresistible throb of Ooh La La revved up the crowd most satisfactorily.

Cate Le Bon ***

St Luke’s, Glasgow

Review by: Paun Whitelaw

In many ways a typical heavy rotation 6 Music artist, Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon is fairly interesting in small doses when sampled during Lauren Laverne’s morning show, but repetitive and forgettable when indulged at length.

Headlining the first night of the 6 Music Festival at this intimate converted church in the shadow of the Barrowlands, Le Bon and her three-piece band slunk through a

no-frills set of clipped, crisp post-punk pop. Essentially a forensic variation on the same half-decent song, the performance was defined by jerky tempos, elastic art-funk bass, spurts and sparks of untreated liquid guitar strongly reminiscent of Television and Robert Quine of Voidoids/Lou Reed renown, and Le Bon’s distinctive vocals.

Her range is quite impressive, as she swoops effortlessly from glacial, hiccupping falsetto to commanding deadpan croon. Too cadaver cool for anything approaching stage presence, her black-clad, alabaster-skinned imperiousness was at least a visual fulcrum of sorts.

Yet that limited musical palette is a curse only occasionally alleviated by moments of interest. If one were feeling generous, you could argue that her commitment to resolutely cold, spiky repetition creates a hypnotic atmosphere. Or you could, with a cooler head, simply describe her as consistently boring.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with fixating on a particular sound, but Le Bon’s lack of memorable hooks is her undoing. Aside from Growing Old was the only song to emerge with distinction, mainly because it sounds like an angular facsimile of Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me).

Jesus and Mary Chain *****

Barrowland, Glasgow

Review by: David Pollock

The Barrowlands leg of BBC 6 Music’s impressively star-laden festival of music kicked off with a stunning bill of artists who each potentially could have headlined, although anyone who commented before that this was ‘music for indie dads’ wasn’t entirely wrong.

Opening to a small hardcore at an unusual start time of half past five, Nottingham’s rough-hewn Sleaford Mods are what happens if you take the Sex Pistols’ ‘anyone-can-make-music’ DIY rail against society and update it in 2017 for middle-aged men playing a lone synthesiser.

Their set was a simple yet incredibly rich tract referencing Brexit, Twitter, defunct department stores in BHS and Bad Manners’ reggae classic Lip Up Fatty on Jobseeker.

All of this contrasted wonderfully with Los Angeles’ Warpaint, the evening’s only group comprised of female members, whose set largely floated on a warm, dreamy indie-rock haze, occasionally veering into outré pop (Love is to Die) or limber, spacey funk-rock (Disco//Very).

Of a quartet which each offered a lot of satisfaction, recently reformed Oxford shoegazers Ride saw the fairly straightforward early ‘90s indie-rock of tracks from Weather Diaries, their first album in 21 years, keeping the jury out; certainly, the cagey curiosity which greeted new openers Lannoy Point and Charm Assault paled alongside the feverish response to the signature Leave Them All Behind and Drive Blind.

Finally, a band releasing their first album in 19 years closed the show, and East Kilbride’s own Jesus and Mary Chain were all that may have been wished for, from Jim Reid’s still-yearning voice on April Skies and Some Candy Talking to his brother William’s squalling, malevolent guitar lines through the cathartic Reverence and even the newfound live power in the somewhat anaemic comeback single ‘Amputation’.