Put simply, the boys are on cracking form.
Spinning forward from their stint as the Panto at The Stand—Glasgow and Edinburgh no less—in December, here they are back at what they do best: a mix of songs and sketches. There are some familiar—Scotch Pie and The Seagulls of Aberdeen amongst them—and some very new material—including confessional, a dangerous piece of work for a West of Scotland group but carried off deftly—and the song dedicated to the Producer who tellt them tae swear less and be less Scots—the A to Z of Scottish swearing.
It was a Monday night, and in Glasgow the rain was belting it down. In Edinburgh, the sun was splitting the trees. And so, to be inside on a school night, even though it was the holidays, was always going to be a tough sell. It was not full by any imagination, and when I saw them two years ago at the Gilded Balloon, it was pure hoching wi folk.
Those that missed out missed razor-sharp delivery, harmonious harmonies and a relationship with their audience which was mutually working well. There is a lack of pretension about their performance which is filled with in-jokes and rivalry. Forcing each other to engage in their own version of daftness brings the silly out of them and the giggles and hearty laughter out of us.
But there is more. Their experiences over the last few years have tightened their delivery. There is little by way of hesitation and nothing by way of nervousness. They have found the collective funny bone and will for an hour mercilessly tickle it. There were people in the audience struggling to keep their selves together.
The writing has continued to sparkle, especially in their songwriting. It was always aimed well, but there is more here. This has craft added to the daft. It’s craft daft. But it knows itself. And so, getting someone in a cactus costume to enhance the two Glasgow cowboys is funny itself and also in text. But the cleverness, sheer genius, is the originality in the sketch about the Euros in Germany. To draw the crowd in through the one who doesn’t understand football is not only original but so, so clever. The song about Edinburgh is sheer genius and aye it is a joke. (Kinda…) The boabby song is exactly what the angst-ridden man of the moment needs whilst the run through songs with a Scottish twist—I am from Ayr—takes a swipe at so much that in the mecca of the shortbread tin, it’s good to burst a few baws.
The polis interview brings a new angle which probably needs more developed, whilst the Scottish Willie Wonka sketch—again an original take that takes it as a start and not as the whole thing—also needs a bit of work. Argyll takes you along the four-chord melody they drive with perfection—is that one chord more or less than Status Quo?
But the song about the Fringe… I thought Kevin P Gilday had the whole thing sewn up in his poem, but here we get another dimension.
To be fair, I was sold when we got a bit of Biffy on the way in, that the auld shell-suit might actually have a shelf life after all and was glad that this was for me, and I didnae go by it. And just to be sure, they sang that to us.