Dutch Uncles
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow
28/02/2011

King Tut’s made a dangerous move when selecting the support bands for tonight – all equally unworthy of name-checking. Tut’s: have a think, you have a reputation to uphold.

Dutch Uncles are our eccentric headliners and fare infinitely better than the opening acts. Having already established themselves in the new-ish Manchester wave of intelligent alternative, they have steadied themselves among good friends such as Everything Everything. Their live show is full of poignancy but there’s a slight awkwardness to it too, and while the lead singer’s outfit harks back to New Romanticism, the whole band’s sound speaks of a more innovative time in pop/prog. Or prog/pop if you prefer. Dutch Uncles’ performance sits somewhere between swaggering and stumbling tonight; the troughs as deep as the peaks are high. Forthcoming debut ‘Cadenza’ is fully showcased, with ‘Twelfth’ and ‘OCDUC’ just two highlights. The former is a track publicly dedicated to Interpol, the grinding bassline reminiscent of their NYC heroes, and the latter makes a bold statement of where things could go for the outfit. A wild, almost manic piano line steers the song and distracts us from the fact that the frontman’s voice is not quite cutting through the whole sound.

‘Face In’ still thrills with its hypnotic and gorgeous guitar lines, all the better that it is Dutch Uncles’ new single so we’ll hopefully hear more of it over the next few weeks. With a burgeoning fanbase, very evident at this gig, there is no reason why these icons in the making won’t go on to do very big things.

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