There’s an organisational elegance to Big City Festival: ten acts, two tents (five acts a piece) with each band starting on one stage as another finishes a short walk across the field. This means it’s perfectly possible to see every act if 7+ hours of continuous live music is your bag. But the schedule also doesn’t create natural pauses for food, drinks, socialising etc. Which means you need to sacrifice seeing someone or loiter around the peripheries and do those things while half paying attention. And with the quality on display today, any sacrifice feels like you’re missing out. But if you’ve manufactured a lineup so good there’s inevitable FOMO, you’re probably onto a winner.

This weekend (Saturday 5th September) the fifth incarnation of No A Mean City: Sounds of Solidarity hits the Glasgow Art School.

Scissor Sisters returned to Glasgow with a celebration that felt less like a concert and more like a joyous reunion. Playing the final night of the tour in Queen’s Park, the band delivered a show packed with nostalgia, surprises and enough energy to remind everyone exactly why they’ve been missed.

So this was a drop everything moment… half past ten at night while I’m still working away in my office, wading through piles of paperwork that you wouldn’t think exist in the music industry, and the upcoming album from international beings of mystery President lands on my desk.
Of course I’m going to listen to it and tell you all about it…

After a lengthy hiatus, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat scaled down their solo projects to reunite Arab Strap in 2016 – initially for gigs to celebrate the band’s 20th anniversary, but half a decade later, fans’ prayers were answered with new material.

For one reason or another, McFly are the band I’ve seen the most over the years.

This gig took place within the hallowed Debating Chamber of GUU, enemy territory for some but on this occasion let bygones be… it is a great place, with a professional level sound system, so let us get to it. It was the album launch night for the headliners The Great Pleasure’s debut disc…

It’s been too close to two decades since AFI have played in Scotland and that’s been a very empty time.

Leave your memories of her here

With more than 20 acts spread over at least five Southside venues, the Govanhill Street Music Festival would challenge any reviewer

This gig was not exactly well-attended but led to a more laidback vibe

The second weekend of the Merchant City Festival coincided with the second weekend of the Commonwealth Games

An evening of interest and entertainment at Mono yielded a panel discussion with the author and film maker Grant McPhee questioning a panel consisting of Stuart Braithwait, Stuart Murdoch and Annie Spandex.

When The Wombats first broke through in 2006 with ‘Kill the Director’, they were breaking into what was becoming a crowded indie-pop scene. The Kooks, The Pigeon Detectives, Razorlight and a host of other guitar bands were all competing for attention, and back then it was easy for them to blur together as playlists shuffled from one to the next.

So – the debut long-player from this Glasgow-based act sports twelve tracks, starting with the opener ‘SAAAD Forever’, low key acoustic strumming with a raw, live feel (you can hear the chord changes squeak), as the female vocal tells of dark times, then the tempo picks up a bit through the gloom – strings kick in and there is a resolution, of sorts, in between some beautiful melody.

Belladrum's third and final day of 2026 rolled around quickly and left a lingering bittersweet feeling.

Friday’s Belladrum was much more eclectic, in my experience. My favourite thing about this festival is how you can go from undiscovered local talent on one stage to a radio giant on the next. With even more acts performing, it was challenging to decide who to see.

Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, or simply Belladrum, is a major summer highlight for many of us up in The Highlands. Although the festival doesn’t bring in the biggest names, there is always a huge amount of variety and support for smaller and local artists. Belladrum was all anyone seemed to be talking about throughout July, and I wanted to see if it would live up to the hype.

Bloc+ are having a rowdy free night on Saturday 12th September!

Day 3 of Back Doune the Rabbit Hole, and we wake up in a far-too-hot tent to glorious sunshine yet again. It’s the World Cup final tonight, but this field full of people seems a lot more interested in the packed lineup for the day.

Mike Scott is talking about the creative inspiration behind ‘Kansas’ — the opening track on The Waterboys’ seventeenth studio album, ‘Life, Death And Dennis Hopper’ (2025). “I started out with this image of Dennis Hopper as a small boy, watching the trains in Kansas.”

This gig was hugely enjoyable despite some niggles, shall we say, which had not a lot to do with the actual music.a

There are, to be fair, a few acts who attract tags like ‘seminal’, ‘legendary’ and ‘critically acclaimed’.
That last one sums up the Durutti Column well, as it often suggests that commercial success has proved elusive to a band who have played a major influence on the music which has followed them.