Music review: Young Fathers, Barrowland, Glasgow
Young Fathers, Barrowland, Glasgow ****
It’s been a triumphant year for Young Fathers. Their Mercury Prize and Scottish Album of the Year Award-nominated album Heavy Heavy has reeled in fresh acolytes to their distinctive, layered soundworld and their current celebratory seven-piece live experience is as powerful as it comes.
Callum Easter has been with them all the way, as band member and support act but, like his compadres, he makes a point of refreshing his approach at regular intervals.The guitar and gospel combo from earlier in the year has been swapped for accordion drones in front of a silver foil backdrop, adding a cajun edge to the rollicking mantra of Feelings Gone. The almost diffident swagger remains and the blues is a constant, affecting thread through his work.
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There was blues too from Graham “G” Hastings, opening Young Fathers’ set lustily on Only Child before the group whoop of Queen Is Dead, with Ally Massaquoi adding distorted guitar, Hastings disrupting the electronics and Easter on haunted organ effects while the shamanic Kayus Bankole tore up the dancefloor.
Stand-up drummer Steven Morrison has been a driving force for years but their newer recruits, the brilliant backing singers (fronting singers surely?) Amber Joy and Kim Mandindo were always in the thick of this intense but joyous experience, joining Hastings in a communal haka, forming an evil kid's choir for Only God Knows and throwing spontaneous shapes with Bankole.
Four albums in, they have the goods to stuff their set with bangers, should they choose to do so. They chose to do so. From the cathartic I Heard and punk blast of Be Your Lady, to the tribal throb of In My View, the glam stomp of I Saw and the climactic nosebleed electro Toy, their set was orgiastic as always. "Barrowland, what you do to feel better?” they questioned on Shame. Attend a Young Fathers show, obviously.