encore:

thanks, matthew, karen and phil.

support from errors.

'cody' was listed as the first song of the encore but not played.
live debut for 'acid food'. second and last performance of 'emergency trap'

reviews/comments

from matthew crothers:

absolutely brilliant. after the disappointment of the last belfast show i was a bit dubious about last night, but as soon as they walked on and launched into 'glasgow mega-snake' i knew it was gonna be special. highlights were definitely a superb 'stanley kubrick' and sparkling 'hunted by a freak' which was ear shatteringly loud and nearly tipped the capacity crowd over the edge. the new songs were particularly impressive live. 'folk death 95' is fast becoming a firm favourite of mine, and the noise and power of 'we're no here' was enough to rival the 'gwai's best performances of 'mfmk'. stuart introduced 'hunted by a freak' as a song about "the murder of jill dando". 'friend of the night' had to be restarted courtesy of john fucking up.

special note should be given to the ridiculously cheery and talkative nature of the band. stuart was on top form - a ray of sunshine in fact - plenty of banter from the wee man who was clearly enjoying himself. the banter between the band was also heart warming. indeed, they all seemed to be enjoying it a hell of a lot more than their last visit.

at the beginning of the encore, stuart hushed the crowd, saying that he wanted to say something important. in reference to the large joshua tree era photo of u2 which adorns the back wall of the spring and air brake, he claimed that he had been particularly inspired by bono, 'the drummer' and the edge!

a top performance all round. a lot more rock than i've ever seen them before. if you've got tickets for the london shows then you're in for a reall treat.

bring on the beast!!

from gary gillespie:

great gig. most of the new tracks were really amazing live. 'glasgow megasnake' is really powerful and 'we're no here' just destroys everything in a cloud of noise, speaking of which 'we're no here' is definitely best experienced live.

my favourite track from the new songs, 'travel is dangerous', suffered a bit due to the vocals being pretty much non-existent, but it was still one of the highlights and the crowd seemed to lap it up. 'folk death 95' was also a highlight among the new material as was 'friend of the night', despite it having to be played twice due to john messing it up halfway through the first attempt (by his own admission).

as for the older stuff, well there wasn't much of it but i didn't expect there to be. 'ithica' and 'hunted by a freak' were recieved very well by the crowd, as was the final song '2 rights make 1 wrong'.

other notable mentions are that stuart was a lot more talkative than i expected, there was an addition to the live band that i didn't know about (graeme, who was introduced a few songs in) which meant most of the new songs had three guitarists playing on them. also worth mentioning is that the opening band errors were pretty good and are worth watching if you get the chance.