Praise be to the parents of the four lads in local combo-most-likely-to Twin Atlantic for showing up at this album launch event and sparing the chap with the reporter’s notebook from being the oldest human in the room by several decades.
With fans queuing for entry wristbands at city record shops from early on Monday, this was a gathering of the young and besotted.
They deserve the attention, specifically because the LA production job John Travis has done on Vivarium is no more than an accurate reflection of their live sound.
The Winter Gardens (itself, of course, a vivarium, although thankfully short on reptiles) is an acoustic nightmare, yet the sound was good and within a few songs the quartet had got the measure of the venue sufficiently to be able to do that loud/quiet/loud thing with confidence.
But then confidence is something no-one on stage seems to lack. Good-looking frontman Sam McTrusty oozes it.
He believes himself to be part of the “best band in the world” and doesn’t sound smarmy saying so. Bassist Ross McNae seems to be the one the others look to for a nod in their complex arrangements and he and drummer Craig Kneale are the busy foundation on which guitarist and cellist Barry McKenna builds chiming or swooping lines.
Current single You’re Turning Into John Wayne is probably not the most immediately appealing of their songs, but for these fans it’s the album that counts.
As one of only a few signings to the record label recently set up by fizzy-drink-to-Formula 1 business Red Bull, they have financial muscle behind them. Watch them fly.
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