The Garage Attic, Glasgow
April 1st, 2025
What a treat it is to live close to Glasgow, whose native love of live music both produces talent, & invites to its cultural urbanity a heady cocktail of international flavours. Last night, at the great venue that is the Garage Attic, I experienc’d both aspects of this appreciation, catching the last 3 songs of the magnificent & liltingly-toned local soloist, Roisin McCarney, follow’d by the heavenly heaviness of Aiko, another female singer, but this time back’d up by an epic bag-of-tricks guitarist-geezer; & her girlfriend, Kat Almarago, pounding out some phenomenally impulsive beats on ‘er drums.
Roisin McCarney
The maddest thing was, by the way, like, the fact, y’know, when two women turn up at the same party wearing the same dress – well, that pretty much happen’d tonight. I mean, they were slight deviations, but white shirts, black ties & short tartan skirts aren’t your normal attire for ladies anytime of the week. Definitely a zeitgeist defining moment, that one!
“You need to like yourself before anybody else can like you,” riff’d Roisin to rapturous appreciation, & she must bloody like what she’s doing a huge amount, ‘cos I liked her a huge amount. I’ll have to catch her another time, to fully explore her audio-anima, but I was there, really, for Aiko, a true western Eurasian. Born in Moscow, rais’d in the Czech Republic, & now living in Brighton, she has already given the world an epic opening to her oeuvre, several album’s worth of quality compositions in the bag by the age of 25.
Aika
So, to her performance, an opioid combination of her best tunes, zapping out to us via an incredible amount of visual theatre – the way she accompanied her singing with Jaggeresque, ballerinary physicalities was an absolute joy. As I stood in wider-eye’d meditation to her music, the overall sound felt to me a mixture of the primal roar of the forest, juggernaut grooves, neurotic lyrical narratives, sonic thunderclaps, dramaqueeniness & superpower balladry.
There was also a fair share of pre-recorded stuff, lots of strings & sounds, raising our cerebral appreciations to a higher pitch. It’s like Aiko has found her own cave on the higher slopes of Mount Rock & Roll & fill’d it with loads of cool stuff she’d pick’d up on the climb. Then decorated it with rainbow streamers, Kurt Cobain dolls, stuff like that.
Aika
The set also display’d elements of holiday-camp style audience participations – such as when Almarago leapt off-stage, helping everyone to hug each other; or when this lassie was brought on stage by Aiko to discuss starsigns – apparently Virgo Moons are the most toxic. This exchange then introduc’d Gemini, a great tune (I’m a Gemini Fire Dragon myself, at least the coolest sounding of all the western-eastern combos), while another stand-out was Cleopatra.
Another of Aiko’s tunes, Pedestal, was the Czech representative at last year’s Eurovision, showing her international reach, which, last night, finally reach’d – well the live version of – Glasgow. I now know for certain I will be seeing her sassy-strutty live spectacle again, whenever I’m within 50 miles of her tour dates, she & her band were very impressive.
Damo
themumble.uk 