A young man with a mullet plays guitar in the spotlight, and sings about electric kisses and razor-blade smiles. Such natural charisma threatens to give a bad haircut a good name.
Jacob Slater, frontman of Wunderhorse – one of the buzziest bands in UK indie – is formerly of snotty teen noise-mongers Dead Pretties, defunct since 2017. Although he is only in his mid-20s, his songs ache with bruised nostalgia. In interviews, he has explained that he stopped taking drugs when he split his old band. His writing, perhaps as a result, has the tender gaze of a sober artist looking back at his earlier life, and the lives of peers, with a clarity absent at the time. The keynote, always, is compassion, whether for the troubled home life of the girl in Purple or the too-much-too-young sexual experience described in Butterflies.
Slater’s gift for singalong hooks connects with an audience not much older than the people in the songs, so that when he performs Teal – “And we were together when we were 15 /But nothing is real then, you know what I mean?” – the young Glasgow crowd is swept up in that rush of teenage invincibility. Yeah, they know.
The debut album Cub came out little more than a year ago, but already a third of the set is drawn from an unreleased second record – a statement of artistic confidence. Midas has a snarling, cascading Dylanish feel, while Arizona’s big-chorus magic should make it a festival favourite come summer. Superman, with which the band close the main set, is an epic ballad that brings early Radiohead to mind.
Could Wunderhorse, like that band, make the jump from indie success to proper stardom? There is a strong sense that they’ve already moved on from Cub, even if the fans still love it. Just look at how they encore – with a space-rocky reimagining of Poppy drawn out to almost three times its usual length, a showcase for the skills of bassist Pete Woodin and drummer Jamie Staples.
One last roar and Slater leaves the stage. He had complained earlier about losing his voice. It feels, though, like he’s found one.
