Music

Family

O2ABC, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

When Leicester's finest progressive rhythm and blues combo, fronted by the unique tonsils of Roger Chapman, reunited for a couple of gigs at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire at the start of 2013 - some four decades after the band had originally called it a day - there was electric feeling of celebration in the room. Many in the audience had only found the band through their recordings, while some of us had only just caught their final tour as a young teenager in the early 1970s. Add to that a line-up that, while it included four members from back in the day, only two (Chappo and drummer Rob Townsend) had played all the songs then, and there was an exploratory edge to the show that continued the group's musically restless heritage.

The best part of three years on, there is a remarkably settled and relaxed look to the nine-piece, two-drummer, chamber ensemble that returned to the city the band last played when the Apollo was still called Green's Playhouse. This time around, Chapman is quite shamelessly reading his lyrics from a music stand, and there are scores for other members, but the singer's expletive-strewn banter is more late-night club than concert hall, except when he chooses - apropos of not very much - to mention his regard for the young local lad Paolo Nutini, spoonerising his name for characteristic comic effect.

The time around the set does not seem to major quite so much on the later albums in Family's brief but prolific career, including a good number of songs from the 1960s. Weaver's Answer and Hung Up Down received storming renditions, but it was the range of the music that still impresses after all of these years.