16th October 2024
Glasgow Barrowlands
The estimable J. Willgoose, Esq and his band of merry pranksters opened their 2024 European tour promoting their latest record (as JW put it) The Last Flight, at Glasgow's Barrowlands Ballroom. For this jaunt the band were joined by Norwegian singer/performer Anna Lena Bruland (or EERA, to give her her stage name) and a trio of horn players.
The new album tells the story of Amelia Earhart's ill-fated attempt, in 1937, to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. The Lockheed Electra carrying Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on a flight from New Guinea and the intended destination of the tiny Howland Island.
Such a grim tale sounds perhaps an unlikely topic for the generally upbeat Public Service Broadcasting chaps to tackle, but much of the music celebrates Earhart's earlier flying achievements, and her Just-Go-Do-It approach to life.
At a low key pre-tour gig in Edinburgh earlier this month, the band had opened the set with a hefty chunk of the new material. Tonight however, they chose, rather sensibly I thought, to break up the songs from the new album mainly into two chunks: three played to open the set, and a further three midway through. With the jewel in the crown of the new release, the beautifully poignant A Different Kind of Love retained as an encore.
People, Let's Dance and Gagarin followed the above, with the three-chap horn section hilariously hamming it up for all they were worth. The whole business concluding with a relatively sedate rendition of Everest which, after the raucous silliness of what had immediately preceded it, did appear a somewhat anticlimactic climax (if that is not too mutch of an oxymoron) to the show.
Set list
Towards the Dawn
Electra
The Fun of It
Theme From PSB
Night Mail
Sputnik
Progress
People Will Always Need Coal
The South Atlantic
Arabian Flight
Monsoons
Blue Heaven
Spitfire
The Other Side
Go!
Encore
A Different Kind of Love
People, Lets Dance
Gagarin
Everest
Support act for this evening was a young lady by the name of Halo Maud, she backed by a marvellously tight rhythm section. I rather enjoyed her spiky guitar work. Her vocals had that elfin Bjork feel to them, but at times got lost in the cavernous Barrowlands Ballroom, I felt. Not that this prevented the quality of such songs as You Float and Celebrate from shining through.
