Live review: We Sink Ships

The 13th Note, Glasgow
Friday 8 January

Tonight brings both celebration and sadness for We Sink Ships. Ostensibly a launch party for WSS Radio, the Glasgow based art and music collective’s new podcast series, the gig was also a farewell to the duo’s Neil Milton – whose contributions will now come from his new home in Warsaw.

It may mark a new chapter in We Sink Ships history but this promising line-up boasts some familiar names. Euan McMeeken opens without his Kays Lavelle cohorts, performing solo material as well as stripped-down versions of tracks from the septet’s upcoming debut album.

Without his colleagues, McMeeken’s music is a different beast – fragile, simple, like the sound of a Christmas card-perfect snow scene. It sounds like the city looks tonight – delicate flurries of piano notes fall like snowflakes and McMeeken’s voice is whispery and emotive despite microphone problems.

If McMeeken’s music is all Scottish winter love songs then Iceland’s Benni Hemm Hemm is going to see your silly Scottish winters and raise you some arctic permafrost. “I might be making fun of you for thinking this is cold,” says band foreman Benedict Hermmannson, introducing a song he claims is about “when you’re trapped inside because of the weather and the only thing to do is attack your loved ones’”

Sporting a reindeer emblazoned novelty sweater, he sings in a mixture of heavily-accented English and Icelandic with the benefit of brass accompaniment from the Second Hand Marching Band. Although the set dips a little in the middle, by the end voice and instruments combine in a way which can only be described as joyous.

Is it cliché now to joke that the Second Hand Marching Band are getting too big for the ‘Note? It’s just that when part of your improvised instrumentation involves your ukulele player using the ceiling as percussion it’s one that’s hard to avoid. There isn’t much that can be said about the many-headed group that we haven’t said before, unless it’s to remark that live their sound is even more charmingly ramshackle than it is on record.

While tracks from early EPs still dominate the set, new material sounds promising - there’s a gentle sea-shanty style song, with sweet male-female vocals, and the epic 'A Hurricane, A Thunderstorm' which closes the set. This is supposed to be the band’s last show for a few months, while they disappear to work on more recordings, and it’s a good note to end on.

We Sink Ships will appear every Tuesday on Radio Magnetic with top fives, sets from Neil Milton and Heidi Kuisma and guest DJs, as well as the podcasted return of Milton’s Too Many Fireworks label.

Words and photos: Lisa Marie Ferla