Review: People, Places, Maps - King Tut’s, Glasgow

SINGER Ryan McGlone gratefully thanked all the friends who had journey the breadth of Scotland to see his band propping up the bill at one of King Tut’s series of January-enlivening New Year’s Revolution band nights.

“We know some of you have come a long way,” he said to those from his home town, “Dunfermline’s a barren wasteland.”

He might have overplayed that one a wee bit, although visions of his mates braving Mad Max 2 on the M8 just to see a gig in Glasgow on a Sunday night were leavened by the fact that People Places Maps are a band of quality, who do the soundtrack of escaping provincial doldrums into the wide world outside so well.

McGlone personifies this sensibility, a young and faintly nervous guy with jet-black hair and a tendency to physically emote by stamping on the spot and fluttering his hand against his heart as if he were Mariah at the Superbowl.

His voice is a robust, thickly-accented holler, a real find in such an unheralded group.

The five musicians playing alongside him (including three guitarists and a drummer in a Vaccines T-shirt) back his unstinting if occasionally slightly overblown lyricism with a dynamic sound that makes a feature of consistently notching up tempo and volume throughout a song.

In particular the fiery I Get So Cold I Get Nervous, the sun-kissed twang of Plans and expansive album title track The Distance Tricked Us seem intent on staking this group’s claim to be the new Idlewild.

RATING: ***