Barbara Manning & Gerard Love @ The Glad Cafe poster & tickets!

Tickets >> here

Not Unloved presents: 30/07/2023 - Barbara Manning & Gerard Love @ The Glad Cafe (Glasgow)

Exciting news: Not Unloved is putting on a show at The Glad Cafe (Glasgow) featuring two of our favourite artists!

Barbara Manning 

Barbara has released music on some of the greatest labels of the indie-rock era (Matador, K, Siltbreeze etc.) both solo and with an array of fabulous groups (San Francisco Seals, 28th Day, World of Pooh, Glands of External Secretion etc.) and collaborated with some of New Zealand's finest. She also had the ultimate honour of gracing the cover of an  issue of esteemed indie zine/lifestyle guide, Chickfactor. I've written before about my love for her sublime "Optimism Is Its Own Reward" but there is so much to love across her stellar back catalogue including this sonically inventive ode to The Fall's 80s power pair, Mark E Smith and Brix, from her crucial debut lp "Lately I Keep Scissors":

This song is so great!

It's been many years since Barbara played shows in the UK so this is an incredibly rare opportunity to catch her in Glasgow. If you still need convincing, check out this cool Chickfactor interview from a few years ago. Anyone who dreams of writing a song for Kendra Smith is fine by me!

Gerard Love

Gerard Love needs no introduction having written and played on some of the most era-defining music of the last three decades with Teenage Fanclub, The Pastels and, most recently, with his group Lightships. I penned a few words that didn't quite do justice to the sheer loveliness of Lightships' "Electric Cables" upon its initial release in 2012 (wisely, it was restored to print on vinyl late last year). When Gerard returned to the stage in July, 2022 Not Unloved waited expectantly in the queue outside Glasgow's Stereo. Of course, his set was nothing short of beautiful. A subtly stunning return!

This is a thrilling version of one of the most brilliant songs to be released in my lifetime:

While I'm at it, how gorgeous is this Moondog cover?

Keep an eye out for the all the usual stuff like posters, Facebook events, ticket links etc. in the next wee while.

When: 30th July 2023 (N.B. That's the Sunday night after Glas-Goes Pop!, POP fans!)

Where: The Glad Cafe

Tickets: TBA

Hung up on a dream: Lightships

Sometimes you get hung up on a detail.  From the first play of Lightships' debut lp "Electric Cables" (Geographic) I was floored by the passage about two minutes into "Photosynthesis" where Gerard Love sings "Waited so long, Drifted off in a dream".  He only sings those lines twice but from the first time on that first spin I was convinced that it was the single most beautiful piece of art I'd heard or seen in 2012 and I remain convinced of it.  The rest of the tune is wondrous, all optimistic melodica, stuttering drums and a backgrounded keyboard that makes you tingle in the same way that the Bobby Reed sample on Saint Etienne's "Spring" makes you tingle.  I would love to hear what that group's Wiggs & Stanley would come up with were they ever to remix it.  I suspect it would be sublime.  It's not hard to see why Geographic released "Electric Cables" in spring.  So many of its songs are concerned with blossoming whether it be of a romance or of things in nature.  The air of gentle transformation and quiet noticing is completely enchanting.  It feels like the lp was conceived over repeated walks along a canal or by a river.  There are so many sounds - pretty much all of Tom Crossley's pleasingly non-hippie flute work, for example, or the skipping guitar figure on recent single "Sweetness In Her Spark" - and lyrics - "Gentle one, this world is yours", "I don't plan to let you down", "I sense the magic in her" to quote but three - that are utterly disarming in their easy beauty.  Everything is in balance, too.  For instance. "Silver and Gold" features the record's only chunky fuzz-guitar wash so Love adopts a particularly tender falsetto and the equilibrium is restored.  There won't be many warmer, more consistent or more human records released in 2012.  Taken as a whole or as a collection of lots of exquisite details, it's a record that I know I'll need to return to a lot over the coming months.

(Monorail has signed copies!)