It's not unusual to leave a show at the Bowery Ballroom with your ears ringing, but after last night's show by Scottish rockers Glasvegas, the crowd spilling out onto Delancey Street was seeing spots. The band, which played a short, sweet set, employed a set of insanely bright lights to punctuate its songs, leaving more than a few audience members covering their eyes as they sang along to the Wire-by-way-of-the-Shangri-La's tunes.
The dude-heavy crowd ("But isn't this girly music?" asked my companion) knew a surprising number of the songs by heart, especially for a record that was only officially released yesterday. And, as bassist Paul Donoghue promised, the songs that come across as slow on the band's self-titled record had a much greater urgency on stage. "Go Square Go," my favorite track on the record, had the audience pumping its fists in the air and singing along as if they were seeing Agnostic Front at the Continental, and "Daddy's Gone" popped with the energy that was apparent on early recordings but went missing in the studio.
The band's time as darlings for the NME-reading set seems to be coming to an end. With a March show at Webster Hall already booked and nighttime talk shows slots scheduled, the band seems poised to hit the stadium scene—and why not, it's already got the lights for it. Still, it was particularly appropriate to hear one fan yelling out a song title—"Fuck You, It's Over"—that doubled as a farewell to keeping the band his own little secret.
Photo by http://flickr.com/photos/wonker/
