Music Like A Vitamin is apart of the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival and tonights event is curated by Rod Jones of Idlewild fame, he's hand-picked some of the finest performers in Scotland to perfrom in order to reduce the stigma and promote understanding about mental health through music. It's an ambitious event with another to follow tomorrow with Emma Pollock (The Delgados) at the helm, the cause that is being represented is something that a lot of musicians have dealings with in their own lives and can lead to some thought provoking music two names spring to mind in Brian Wilson and Daniel Johnston that have had to persevere through mental issues for their art.
And so tonight gets off to a fairly furious beginning, anyone who has witnessed The Twilight Sad before or even just taken in their debut album 'Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters' will know that they unleash a pretty potent noise. 'Walking For Two Hours' awakens in an eruption of reverb and crashing drums and singer James Graham's Scottish squall. The cacophony continues through ' That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy' and ' Mapped By What Surrounded Them' before the live almost church-organ like ' And She Would Darken The Memory'. The band end the night with an at first slow crawl intro to 'Cold Days From The Birdhouse' with James on his own singing, personally i miss the slow build-up the album version has with the band and feel it could have been served well here but eventually the crescendo is reached and the band flay into a roaring ending leaving a lot of the crowd in bemusement at what they had heard but no doubt willing to give it another go.
After a short interlude with readings from author Alan Bissett, it's time for the sun to shine and the pop bubble to emerge from the haze of reverb currently washing over the crowd as Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub strides on acoustic guitar in hand and Dave McGowan in tow. Running through 'Did I Say' and 'I Don't Want Control Of You' before treating us all to a new song in 'Baby Leah' which he procedes to forget the words to but he's forgiven as it's a typical Fanclub song that puts a smile on your chops. Ending on a cover version of surf-pop group Cabin Crew's 'She Named A Yacht' Blake has warmed the evening up nicely for the main act.
Sons & Daughters have grown in stature over the last 3 years with their latest offering 'This Gift' earning critical acclaim and tonight they play a homecoming show minus new mother Ailidh Lennon but the set is not worse off for it as they plough straight into opening combo 'Guilt Complex' and 'Goodbye Service' with singer Adele Bethel shining in all her sequined glory trading smoulders with Scott Paterson who continues to scare with his frazzled guitar playing. Fan favourite 'Johnny Cash' is wheeled out in all it's new pimped-out glory it now thrashes along with more stomp and vigour than before, a lull follows with latest album efforts 'Flags' and 'The Nest' before the football sized lungs of Adele wail in scattergun harmony with Scott on 'Rama Lama' with a sublime Dance Me In' and a final 'House in My Head' where Adele again strains to keep that wailing in check no doubt bursting some poor sounds guy's ears in the process, Sons & Daughters are gone and have left everyone in a daze and baying for more that is forthcoming.
Out come Rod Jones and he brings with him a sort of mini Scotish supergroup (minus the Proclaimers of course!) featuring at various times most of tonight's performers and songs from Joy Divison, Brian Wilson, and Johnny Cash are dispached with a glorious 'Ring Of Fire' and Blondie's 'Hanging On The Telephone' highlights.
The night is over and the music has been a joy and i think many folk will leave tonight with some sort of awareness of what this event was all about and that is the general idea in the end.
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Music Like A Vitamin: Vitamin A Live 9th Oct, Glasgow ABC
