5 days in & around Glasgow

I finally took a mini holiday this year! The destination was actually decided mostly because I wanted to go and see the band Neutral Milk Hotel. I won't bother much in trying to describe Neutral Milk Hotel for the uninitiated, suffice to say they made a cult album (in the sense that there is definitely an almost religious fervour about it that has developed over the years) in the late 1990s, then disbanded as their frontman went off to be a bit of a recluse. I don't think anyone ever expected them to play live ever again, especially not after nearly 15 years! I wasn't going to bother with the scrum of getting London tickets so I went straight away for Glasgow, which had the advantage of containing a very good friend. Serendipitously I discovered after booking my flights that two further friends had moved up to Glasgow and in with her!

2/3 of the friends I came to visit, through a random stained glass pane in their palace.

5 days was a bit short really, I didn't quite have the time to bed fully back into British mode. I was also thrown off by the weather, which was actually warmer than the weather I left in Vienna as we had a miserable streak just before I went away. With the built in assumption that Glasgow would be an arctic wilderness firmly fixed in my head, I was overdressed for the weather most of the time... I need to get my act together, I don't want to lose my blessed British gift of rain-tolerance!

Glasgow Uni...

I did manage to pack the 5 days full of exciting things though. Frankly, I would have been content with sitting the whole time in the palatial and vast flat I was staying in (seriously, it took me a while to realise that in my room there were PILLARS built in to the edge of the bay window area and echoed on the fireplace). And in fact we often did our best to make this dream a reality, but there were interruptions to wander through the many green parks of Glasgow, a party where I picked up a free Neal Stephenson book, cinema event of the year (ahem) Godzilla, and yet more wandering, including a trip to the model town of New Lanark, just down from the falls of Clyde. Here you can see not only waterfalls and large stone buildings that make up the old model mill community of New Lanark, but also close ups of Peregrine falcons nesting on the river cliffs. No eggs seem to have made it this year sadly, but one falcon was obligingly sitting on the ledge and gave amazing, BBC wildlife documentary quality views through a borrowed telescope at the viewing point.

The gig was interesting. When you have such a personal relationship with a single album, it can be difficult for a live band to add anything to your experience. Some of the songs on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea have just sort of reached the point where they are so iconic for me that whenever the song starts happening the whole thing plays itself out in my head. It was amazing to experience them in the presence of 1000s of others, but the versions of the songs weren't necessarily better. However, there were some incredible moments, and in a weird way, the gig just made me appreciate the band more. They really are just a big, wonderful mess, like a band falling down a flight of stairs but with way more rhythm than that implies. And more raoucous, crazy brass. And Jeff Mangum, the lead singer, well! Some people can't handle NMH due to his nasal voice, of course for me it is a huge attraction. I was thrilled to discover that if anything, his voice is more unique, droning and penetrating than it even comes across in the recordings! Some of the best live moments came when there was just this droning voice circling and circling, singing those chant-like and hallucinatory lyrics. The crowd sang along a lot, but there were points where everybody just trailed off, absolutely unable to make the same kind of noises that Jeff Mangum could...

The photos are up in the usual place!

Der Tom

PS on my return to Wien, found out that NMH will play here too in August! Utterly unheard of but quite welcome :-)