Live Review

Turin Brakes – ABC Glasgow

• 29th Nov 2011

Shut up and drive

It’s exactly ten years ago this year that dynamo duo Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian from the mighty Turin Brakes released their well-renowned debut album The Optimist. And to mark this auspice milestone, they’ve decided to tour the UK and play their decade-old album from start to finish. A truly genius idea.

I had the pleasure of attending one their latest gigs on a cold and very rainy (no, not summer rain) night at Glasgow’s abc on 20 November.

As soon as Olly crooned the first line from Feeling Oblivion, the miserable night outside was well and truly forgotten about. The copious amounts of cider consumed beforehand may have played a little part on this too. But on a serious note, the lyrics are profound and in answer to their question within this song: ‘will we still be rolling and feeling oblivion?’ Well, ten years on the answer is a resounding ‘no’ – your fans still love you!

Just as lyrically pleasing was the next song Underdog (Save Me), arguably the most well-known track from this album, followed by Emergency 72. True to their word the Brakes played the rest of the Optimist songs in the correct running order, finishing up with the aptly named The Optimist.

With The Optimist tracks all done and dusted, it was time to give the audience a taste of their other top-notch tracks, and what better song to start off the encore than Painkiller. The atmosphere was electric.

This was followed by the exquisitely trippy Fishing for a Dream, with all the die-hard fans singing in unison and smiling like cheshire cats. And who can blame them, the Brakes played it to perfection.

Next up was Long Distance and Last Chance, before finishing up with a track from their new LP Xerox, entitled Chim Chim Cher-ee. The proceeds from this song are going to homeless shelters.

If I’ve to be brutally honest, before I went to this gig I only knew a couple of their well-known songs and thought that the lead singer Olly bore an uncanny resemblance to the highly delectable Johnny Depp (I still think he does, despite being told otherwise). Now I’m hooked on them, like ‘painkillers’.

Here’s to the next 10 years, and then some. The last Optimist gig is on 10 December at St Mary’s Church, Brighton.