Low, My Latest Novel

No, I've not been taken over by prolonged exposure to the OU's creative writing community... My Latest Novel was Low's support band last night at Birmingham's Academy 2.

Very much our sort of venue: a stage, a bar, a floor - what more could you want? We'd bagged our usual places at the front, determined not to be shouldered out before the main act & quite prepared to be subjected to whatever weirdness the promoters wanted to inflict on us.

This was Scottish weirdness of the highest order. I wouldn't say they quite lived up to their billing as Glasgow's answer to Arcade Fire, but they were certainly different, stomping their way through folksy rants (The Reputation of Ross Francis), winsome interludes (Learning Lego: "crushed by a plastic lego man" was possibly lyric of the night & the melodica added a certain je ne sais quoi) & the wonderfully pseudo-gothic When We Were Wolves. We were genuinely disappointed at the set being cut short after keyboardist Laura was taken ill.

Low would have been worth the wait anyway. It was great to see Alan Sparhawk looking more in touch with some kind of reality than February 05 (when, as we now know, he was on the verge of a breakdown induced by overdoing the dope). We were treated to a relaxed & polished set of mostly familiar numbers, the usual mix of exquisite close harmonies, guitar effects & enigmatic lyrics, including a whole new song built around repetitions of "there's not enough for two - Sarah, you're lazy". The poetry's in the sound, not the words....
Pity they chose to play 'encore bingo' (you know, the sort where they pretend to take requests, but wait till somebody shouts out the titles they were going to play anyway!)

The evening was nicely rounded off by supper back at HOP's house & discovery of Garstang Blue - not another band, but a blue version of Lancashire cheese: inspired!