Review finds three-band gig of contrasting styles at city venue Tooth & Claw

REVIEW: Hannah Finlayson, Be Like Pablo and Silver Coast

Tooth & Claw

Inverness

4 stars

There was the air of excitement you used to get at multi-band gigs years ago, as you entered the black womb of the Tooth & Claw for the re-emergence of Silver Coast, a name that had faded a little from the live scene in recent years, though much has grown hazy over the Covid lockdowns.

Together since 2012, Silver Coast returned to playing live to mark 10 years together – a big occasion for any band.

The live set came after an almost three-year gap, the band’s singer Aaron Murray had revealed when sharing the news of the planned gig – and so much can change in that length of time.

But it seemed the gap of Covid and lockdown had seen the band being anything but idle. It gave them the chance to work on their sound, redoing the album until the band was happy with it. But Silver Coast was also subtly altering the band’s familiar alt rock to take in the influences of newer members, the more pop-punk influence of bass-player Aly MacKintosh and arrival of guitarist Kyle Mackenzie.

But the music that appears on their recent album When The World Starts Falling which came out a couple of months ago, is as attacking and emotional as some of their early influences, such as Feeder – who they have supported in the past – and Twin Atlantic.

And for this gig there was a real sense of expectation about how Silver Coast’s sound would crack out of the pupae stage of their fresh incarnation.

The Tooth & Claw opened the night with Hannah Finlayson in a no-frills one-woman voice and guitar set, offering insights on the sometimes treacherous territory of romance. Opening song Over The Wall – bristled with lines to remember – "Leave now or it will be the last you see of me.” The next untitled song made the most of Hannah’s self-contained presence, allowing you to sink into a world where Hannah respected herself “livin’ in the fast lane ... I worship the ground my own two feet walk on”.

And speaking between songs, the singer-songwriter reeled in the crowd, teasing those who weren’t quite paying attention. “Fancy a cover?” she asked. “Here’s Wonderwall and I’d like a few of you to sing along,” she said, before swivelling into her own take on The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me Baby, triumphantly wrongfooting the lads in the front.

The best was saved for the last song, though I missed the title, Hannah tongue in cheek: “I’d say I will slow it down, but it’s already quite sad-girl-songs”. And a refreshing sense of self-preservation bordering on the selfish powered up the lyrics of this one – “It’s cool if you want to talk but it’s late and I like to sleep …”. An understated calling-card of a set left ripples rolling out across the room.

A complete contrast came next with Be Like Pablo whose “sunny powerpop” is timeless, with its DIY ethos yet super-sophisticated perfect pop songs. Why the band – with Ewen Watson’s unique light-voiced vocal and their cute videos and songs to sing along and dance to – have not gone stratospheric, has always puzzled me. And there was a chance to muse on the matter, right under their noses at the front and missing nothing in their set which included the perfect closer Julianne when the time came – but also Karen McLaughlin on keyboards ringing the changes singing Call You Back.

Who else has a song where you are encouraged to adopt the surfing position for Do You Wanna Go Surfin’? Whose lyrics are to love, bursting with bittersweet tales – “She reads sci fi when she can’t sleep at night … in her eyes there’s no such thing as romance”. It’s My Kind Of Girl, of course.

Their music pulses with a summery thrill of melody – and the best news is that there’s going to be a new album in 2023.

With a frenzied activity to get the stage ready for Silver Coast, the space in front of the stage also filled up fast with barely room to breathe as ‘their’ crowd fought for the space to get as close as possible to the band on the low and compact platform of the Tooth & Claw.

But launching in with a big full-on opening after their sassy intro music, Dreamers (Young At Heart) was a great place to start a story, the first of nine tracks from the new album being showcased for us.

Maybe it’s where every set should begin, a song where love’s gone wrong – with some great guitar riffs – the story starting somewhere whimsical and full of hope, yet looking back at something that couldn’t last forever.

Or as the lyrcis go: “I’m standing in the rain, You’re like a hurricane …” … “We were young at heart cos we were dreamers, baby. I know it drove you crazy, I don’t know why…”. The lines embed themselves in your head spinning round in there and the band powers on with the strangely optimistic melody, Silver Coast’s attack reminding you of great departed North band Bloodlines.

In that one song, you could see a tiny glimpse of all the work and the passion that have been pumped into this line-up – now standing in front of you – over the last three years, a time of mostly enforced silence thanks to Covid and lockdown. But behind the scenes, making their album three times until they were happy with it, they have clearly been busy.

But comparing the songs of last EP Seasons from 2015 which were mixed through the set, you could see the shift between the newer songs of the album and the older ones. Latest songs have less drifting with the woozy charm of “moments and memories” in a song like Pictures. And maybe the newer songs leave behind the sentiments of older ones like Seasons, a hymn to faith with its words “we’re holding on to love/ holding onto trust”.

Stylewise, there’s a broadening to embrace metal – maybe even borderlines of emo, unless I’m going crazy – and the pop-punk Aaron namechecked in his newspaper interview previewing the gig. It means for that gig certainly, the music itself was never at risk of covering the same ground twice, which made the performance creatively an exuberant experience.

And the territory of their new songs? There’s a lot of honesty being revealed behind a human's need for another person, and the compromises everyone in any kind of relationship has to make. The songs of this album present a masterclass in it – and it isn’t always pretty.

A lot of the songs’ emotional pull comes from frontman Aaron Murray’s laser of a voice searing through even the biggest guitars. It’s your guide on a song like You Can Have It All – “Let go and you could have it all” is the good news, before he cuts to the chase – “Because you’re dragging me down and down.”.

As on the album, the song is followed by Another Happy Song About Spite, a song spotlighting betrayal. It’s another song where the lyrics aren’t pulling any punches: “Your love is pulling me down but you never even notice/ It’s too late to say ‘You didn’t want this’. You let me go”. And just to emphasise the building anger, there’s an exhilarating moment when Aaron’s voice slides upwards. And it’s a signature vocal swoop you find from him elsewhere in the songs, Say, I think and one other. Another of the album songs, it’s looking back: “Seven years passing by still I try to work out why, knowing still you are in my mind.” Then there’s a shift into a more sinister gear: “You’re voice holds me like a promise, controls me, but the strings are getting tied around my neck – Asphyxiating. Still you will not crush me!” Live, the guitars make it a spaced-out epic.

Part of the challenge must be seguing the newer songs seamlessly into the same sonic family as the older ones from the 2015 EP, which are different in feel. But on the evidence of the love-in with their crowd, Silver Coast’s song transition is convincingly embraced.

Sadly, the heat and the energy of the adoring crowd chased me out before the end of the gig, sacrificing my perfect spot at the front. From the back, you could see the band in light on the stage, their happy faces floating above the manic moving black silhouettes of the fans.

The end should have been one of 2015’s biggest anthems, Wake Up – it’s a phrase that pops up in a few of their songs – and the song would be a triumphant choice you’d save for your big moment, the end of the movie song.

I imagined I could just hear it starting as I headed down the venue’s stairs into the fresh air, sorry to miss it – but pretty sure to be hearing it plenty in 2023.

Silver Coast are back …

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