Sparrow And The Workshop
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow 
04/10/2010

Nottingham five-piece Fists bring their psych-skiffle to Scotland for the first time and perk up a Monday night crowd with gleeful tunes like ‘Ace Is The Way’ and ‘Cockatoo’, a single featured on the Rough Trade Shops 2009 Compilation. Their twangy sound and Johnny Cash-isms are complemented by singer James Finlay, whose performance is never less than full on, but Fists’ greatest asset is their unpredictability; as demonstrated on ‘Weekend’ from recent EP, ‘Olympic Hits’.

Headliners Sparrow And The Workshop, a Glasgow-based gothick folk-rock three-piece, seem to have toughened up their sound since the release of their debut album, ‘Crystals Fall’; with Chicagoan singer Jill O’Sullivan’s voice falling somewhere between Hope Sandoval with an attitude problem and a young Stevie Nicks. They pepper tonight’s set with new songs like ‘Snakes In The Grass’ and the aggressive ‘Black To Red’. These seem more ambitious than their earlier material and yet there is still room to make their blend of alt-country and mountain folk a lot darker, sexier and more extreme. Of the tracks from their album, ‘The Devil Song’ and ‘Your Gun’ stand out the most, but they’re neither quite angry enough nor sweet enough to make a really big impact.

Despite protestations about it being a school night and an (adopted) home town show, the band are confident and composed throughout their set tonight; teasing drummer Gregor Donaldson about his lack of a set list and name checking new songs as they go along. We’re sure that Sparrow And The Workshop do have it in them to be mysterious and brooding, they just need to work at it a bit more.

Lucy Brouwer