Afterhours live – Glasgow
Saturday February the 2nd, at the Barfly in Glasgow; three bands on the bill, I won’t name the first two because in my opinion they sucked immensely. The first one had a set of bits and pieces oddly tied together with no coherence. And a pretty bad guitarist as well. The second band was just… bad. Pure noise, although they define themselves “punk-metal”, which I usually am OK with. And a whiny voice as well.
The third band, the one I was there to see with a bunch of (Italian) friends; yes, directly from Milan, Afterhours. They are pretty big in Italy, I mean seriously big, probably the leading national rock band. Here, they are close to being no one. I’m not a huge fan. Not that I don’t like them (not at all!), but they never were one of those bands that made me want all the CDs and such: I just liked them, I own a couple of albums (those everyone has – Germi and Hai Paura del Buio?), I went to see them live whenever they came somewhere close to where I was living… that kind of thing.
Well, after having started their career writing songs in English and then moving on to Italian (which helped them reaching the success they had, I suppose) they recently went back to English with their latest Ballate per Piccole Iene, also recorded in English as Ballads for Little Hyenas. And therefore they embarked on a small UK tour (London, Birmingham, York, Glasgow).
Small venue, not many people present, a bunch of Italians and some… erm… alickadoos, plus I suppose some friends and fans of the other bands.
The band, strong of the usual guitars/bass/drums/another guitar played by the vocalist, also features a violinist and a… urm… a guy who plays keyboards and basically any kind of instruments you blow into (no obvious jokes, I know him, OK?).
They start of course with some songs from the new album, very good and extremely rock’n'roll, as you would expect from them. Then they played some older songs, most of whose I remembered either from the two albums I have or from having heard them live. Manny (on vocals) is pure energy, he can play great guitar and seem totally natural, channelling the various feelings that he wrote about in the lyrics, playing his guitar and WITH his guitar, at times using his voice as another instrument. The backup is great as well although the sound engineer is obviously not much used to working with wiolins and saxophones, as their volumes were never ideal except for the very end.
I appreciated the fact that, besides a bunch of Italians, there also were several Scots who clearly enjoyed the gig, they were dancing and trying to sing along (as you do when you don’t know the song but it has a strong chorus).
After the gig I managed to have a word with the drummer (I didn’t try to stalk them, I’m not such a big fan, although I loved it) and ask him how does it feel to start everything again basically from nothing. He said it’s great, it proved them that they still love playing and touring. Which is good.
Only bad part? That f**king purple stage light pointing straight into the eyes of the audience!
So, great value for 5 quid… check them if you happen to!
