Music

The Girl Effect #2

Mono, Glasgow

Keith Moore, Four stars

Girls and boys came out to play and to pay tribute to the great girl bands of our time in a charity event for Scottish Women’s Aid. With twelve bands performing two songs apiece, Thursday’s event, organised by Glasgow foursome TeenCanteen, was fun-filled as both established and up and coming bands reinterpreted well known, or sometimes obscure, songs from the rich canon of female recording artists.

Credit where credit’s due to The Just Joans, Andy Ross of Randolph’s Leap, Bodyheat, Sharptooth, Broken Records, Jo Mango, Cairn String Quartet, Skies Fell, Honey & The Herbs, Kathryn Joseph, BMX Bandits and TeenCanteen themselves for turning in some stunning and occasionally unexpected performances.

Sharptooth, a Glasgow all-girl quartet, created a head-on collision of syncopated finger snapping and hand claps mixed with some goth guitars on the Shangri-Las Remember (Walking In The Sand) before sonically assaulting us with Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl. In contrast the Cairn String Quartet’s take on Rachel Sermanni’s Waltz, was easier on the ear, while remaining rhythmically compelling.

Skies Fell, a clean cut all-boy Glasgow four piece, were jaw dropping with a crowd hushing version Shakespeare’s Sister’s Stay With Me. And there were classic tight harmonies underpinning the BMX Bandettes’ cover of the Marvelettes’ That’s How Heartaches Are Made and the Royalettes 1965 It’s Gonna Take Miracle. Honey & The Herbs, who describe themselves as "tropical barbershop prog boys", impressed by doing exactly that with a melancholic Soft Sands, originally recorded by the Chordettes, before showing their other side with the angular grooves of Dance by 1970s Bronx no-wavers ESG.

Last up, TeenCanteen nailed Shampoo’s Trouble and TLC’s Waterfalls before breaking the rule of the night by performing one of their own tunes. Hosts’ prerogative, I guess.