Bon Iver and Iron and Wine The Glasgow ABC

It’s a well known fact that Glasgow is more stylish than Edinburgh. In Edinburgh anything more flamboyant than a jeans/t-shirt combo in muted beige screams raving queen to the forward thinking Auld Reekie style police. Now Glasgow is a different animal altogether- embracing all things au courant, from skinny jeans to curly perms. And that’s just the lads. No surprises then that Glasgow outdid herself when the nouveau folk style gauntlet was thrown down by Monday’s much anticipated Iron and Wine/Bon Iver gig. The Glasgow ABC was awash with a fine array of magnificent beards. By the looks of things some definitely started when tickets went on sale 2 months ago, but even the style lightweights were sporting a tributary couple of days growth. The question is, did our visiting folksters deserve their fuzzy homage? The answer is, yes and no.

The Bon Iver album For Emma, forever ago was released here last Monday, but if you’ve been anywhere near the internet since its US release you will have undoubtedly already heard it. The album is like a quiet spooky cry in the darkness, so it was weird that the first thing that struck me on Monday was how loud it was- you know, more of a big loud wail in the darkness. The audience seemed kind of stunned at being allowed to see something so, well, soul baring. By the time Skinny love ended we were all in love. When we were asked to sing the refrain of ‘what might have been lost’ on Wolves, I tell you, I felt like one on those hippies in the John Mills Quatermass mini series, having a semi hysterical mass religious experience. The only downside is that after promising us 2 more songs the gig suddenly ended, and before my favourite song Re-Stacks. Short as it was though, it was going to be a pretty hard act to follow. Still, Iron and Wine started off pretty well with some nice acoustic numbers, they even played my favourite leaving Japan song ‘Passing afternoon’ which definitely brought a ‘that was then but this is now’ tear to my eye. Sadly my favourite song also heralded the arrival of the band which turned out to be their undoing. It put me in mind of when me and V.23 went to see Michelle Shocked in Preston after the Campfire tapes came out and the whole thing was smothered by a thick layer of crap band- plodding drums, boring arrangements, 70s electric piano, you know the kind of thing. I guess the moral of the story is that if you get yourself a pub band to play with you, you will sound like, well you know, a pub band. Let the Phoenix Nights version of the Proclaimer’s Letter from America be a lesson to us all. Suffice it to say, Iron and Wine’s band took away more than they gave, drowning all that delicate prettiness in a sea of bland. To make it worse, they were given more and more noodling time as the night wore on, which left the audience scratching their beards and wondering (as Justin Vernon might) about what might have been lost, and wishing we could get him back for the songs we had missed.