ROLL UP: Last Sunday night King Tut's hosted an evening of rock and roll featuring blues rock trio Pariah Soul and the sensational indie glam rockers The Struts! Here's a little review!

 

Last Sunday one of Glasgow's most famous music venues played host to an incredible, raucous, modern rock and roll show! The venue was of course the brilliant and intimate King Tut's Wah Wah Hut and the band was The Struts! Support on the night came from Franklin and blues rock trio Pariah Soul!

 

Unfortunately we showed up after Franklin's set but we have posted a review of the remaining two acts below!

 

Enjoy!

 

 

First up were local boys Pariah Soul. The trio immediately impressed with a future blues rock anthem in the form of "45". The tune and the performance of the band demonstrated a simplicity lifted from punk rock bands such as the Ramones and the Pistols combined with a slightly more complex approach hinting towards great blues rock bands such as Led Zep. The set continued in this vein and reached a climax with the final song to be performed. The track was entitled "Let The Rain Fall" and was a definite highlight in the set.

 

All in all, Pariah Soul are definitely a band to look out for and their tunes will continue to grow and become bigger and better. But for now you can enjoy their debut EP on their Soundcloud page and hopefully front man John McGuigan will be able to invest in a new pair of jeans! For those who were there, you know what I mean!

 

 

Next up were The Struts.

 

For those unfamiliar with them, they are an indie rock group who are influenced heavily by the golden age of glam - bands like T. Rex and Slade. In interviews they have stated their sound and image to combine "the swagger of The Stones" with "the sophistication of Queen".

 

Sure, that's quite a big statement to live up to BUT The Struts do it and more. Everything from their intro music (the epilogue from Guy Ritchie's Rock n Rolla film) to the show they put on is top and incomparable to anything else around at the moment.

 

They opened with "Roll Up" and the shear catchiness of this tune, combined with Luke Spiller's energetic showmanship, certainly got the crowd going. This was followed up by a trio of the biggest, most anthemic singles of 2014 - "Could Have Been Me", "Kiss This" and "Put Your Money On Me".

 

"Could Have Been Me" was simply off the scale and that tune will certainly be filling stadiums one day soon. Anthemic is the only word that you could possibly use to describe it. "Kiss This" demonstrated the brilliance of Adam Slack's guitar licks which add a lot to the overall Struts sound. "Put Your Money On Me" did not fail to impress and the danceability (yes, that's a word!) of the track left no one in the audience stationary.

 

The rhythm section of The Struts (bassist Jed Elliott and drummer Gethin Davies) are world class also and provide the song's with their driving power. After some more crowd interaction from Mr. Spiller, containing some X-rated humour, the band launched into "She Makes Me Feel". The song's melody references "Waterloo Sunset" but a 100 miles an hour faster - so the wordy 'catchy' springs to mind again!

 

More songs from the "Everybody Wants" studio album were played, including a sensational rendition of "My Machine", before the band came to a cover. Which was of course a song from the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, from "The Slider" album - "Get It On". This again demonstrates the tightness and expert instrumentation of Adam, Jed and Gethin (not to mention Luke's showmanship which still hadn't let up). The rendition of this song was, quite simply put, perfect and even featured a bit of improvisation when Luke came down and (literally) sat down amongst the crowd.

The main set concluded with the high adrenaline anthem that is "Black Swan", after which Luke immediately collapsed clutching the mic stand! (all part of the theatrics I assume, I hope...) anyway, the mic was lucky to survive the fall!

 

 
 Luke and Adam returned to the stage a short while later to perform an "acoustic" rendition of Kiss This b-side, "Matter Of Time", but on an electric guitar... This was definitely a great sing-along moment though.

For the finale the whole band returned to the stage for the pogo-along, sing-along, dance-along glory that is "Where Did She Go". Which is, yep, you guessed it, catchy as hell! The final chorus seemed to be repeated endlessly and Luke found time to bring the whole venue to their knees before instructing them to "get up and dance" one last time for the final chorus!

urely amazing, most definitely the best live show of the year and my advice would be to catch this band shortly, in a nice intimate space before they take to the stadiums!
 

 

Pariah Soul Setlist

 

45

Bring Me Down

Don't Come Easy

Tears Ain't For Running

Lies

Let The Rain Fall

 

The Struts Setlist

Roll Up
Could Have Been Me
Kiss This
Put Your Money On Me
She Makes Me Feel
My Machine
You & I
Dirty Sexy Money
Get It On
Let's Make This Happen Tonight
Black Swan
-
Matter Of Time
Where Did She Go
 

Hope you enjoyed this feature on Pariah Soul and The Struts, be sure to check out our previous feature on The Empty Hearts!

You can check out The Struts at the following link - http://www.thestruts.com/

You can check out Pariah Soul at the following link - https://www.facebook.com/Pariahsoul

Keep up to date with future interviews and reviews at the following link - https://www.facebook.com/aldorabritainrecords

 

AB RECORDS