A steadily more popular haven on the airwaves for fans of time-honoured and emerging alternative sounds, it seems strange now to think that BBC 6 Music was on the verge of closing seven years ago. The station’s annual city festival came to an unseasonably sunny and warm Glasgow this year to celebrate its position left of centre on the digital radio dial, soaking up and exalting diverse aspects of the local scene from composers to record shops and labels, and presenting of major touring acts, including a 100m record-selling band in a famous venue they haven’t played since 1984.
The Barrowland Ballroom on Friday night seems an appropriate place to start, and with a throwback to vintage Creation Records, a label with firm Glasgow roots. Ride showcase material from their forthcoming first album in 21 years, alongside shoegaze perennials such as Like a Daydream and Vapour Trail, all played with power and precision. It’s hard to speak as generously of a gnarled-sounding Jesus and Mary Chain, but you can’t argue with hearing five songs near successively from the timeless Psychocandy.
At the Tramway Saturday daytime session, there’s a permaqueue to get in to a curiously tiny room for talks with the likes of Edwyn Collins and Limmy. But that at least means bigger crowds for big-haired psych-rock revivalists Temples and cosmopolitan pop party-starters Sinkane. 6 Music’s funk and soul custodian Craig Charles’s DJ set makes 4.30pm feel like 4.30am. John Lydon in conversation with Mark Radcliffe is upgraded to the main stage, and serves a reminder of the fine line between punk provocateur and a guy who says dodgy things for the sake of it, be it apologising for Trump or suggesting Patti Smith should shave.
Indie-grunge two-piece Honeyblood make a gutsy showing at the O2 Academy, presenting a younger face of Scottish music underrepresented at the festival’s evening shows. Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle puts his unusually sparing banter down to warning signs requesting no swearing on a live broadcast, duly prompting a barrage of expletives from the audience to be hurled at the microphones. The Shins hurtle through a melody-bathed set at rousing pace. There’s a much younger demographic in for the SWG3 warehouse club night than elsewhere, but electronic dance institution Optimo tie things up neatly with a reference point all generations can agree on in David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.
On Sunday at Tramway, Father John Misty is in sparklingly clever and witty form and in a mood to build bridges following a car-crash 6 Music interview last year, thanking Radcliffe and Maconie for playing his new track Ballad of the Dying Man “despite what a miserable wretch I was on their show”.
Nobody seems quite able to believe Depeche Mode at the Barrowland is actually about to happen until it’s happening. At 54, tattooed, leather-vested preacher-pervert Dave Gahan remains one of those great frontmen with the air of someone who’s done all the bad stuff in life so you don’t have to. Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence go off like Roman candles in a tin can, as Gahan contorts his wiry frame, twirls balletically, strikes Christ poses and touches himself in post-watershed places. It’s enough to reduce some fans to tears, and leave 6 Music with the welcome headache of wondering how they top this next year.
