El Presidente / The Hussy's

After the Stereophonics cancelled their live performance at The Glasgow ABC this became the official launch night of XFM’s five night stand where Ocean Colour Scene, Primal Scream, Starsailor and El Presidente were each performing at intimate venues to mark the launch of the radio station.

It was also Burns Night, a traditional festival where the Scots feast on Haggis in a bid to keep the population of the little furry creatures down to a minimum. Oh, and there’s something about poetry too but that’s hardly important.

Tonight’s support The Hussy’s have to be a candidate for worst name in the music industry. It appears that there aren’t enough good words in the Oxford dictionary to satisfy the amount of artists that need to be called ‘The somethings’. It wouldn’t be so bad if the band were full of sexually promiscuous women as the name suggests, but instead they are five geezers and just the one female, and she looked more like a teenage goth than a hussy anyway.

Her backing band looked rather like an assembly of 90’s Britpop throwbacks. This, oddly enough isn’t too far from the truth. The formation of The Hussy’s is largely down to Ex-Supernaturals front man James McColl. The Hussy’s lyrics and chirpy piano enforced sound is full of similarities to The Supernaturals ‘Tune a day’.



The Hussy’s come across as an irritatingly happy pub band with tuneful melodies not to dissimilar to The Lightning Seeds. They offer the same light tone and guitar pop that many consider to have been the backbone of the 90’s but they conduct themselves with such a cheerful disposition that it’s difficult to criticise them. Fili’s vocals fit well to the style of the music but at times I worried that they were sounding very Ace of Base.

The subject matter of their songs included cult film Napoleon Dynamite and the website Friends Reunited. You get the impression that they’re not to be taken too seriously. ‘Tiger’ is the type of song that you’d expect the milkman to whistle along to and is actually more annoying than being awakened at four in the morning by the sound of glass on your front porch.

If you’re feeling depressed go and buy the Hussy’s new EP. It’ll cheer you up. Just don’t listen to it too much or you may end up becoming a milkman.

Dubbed by every other member of the music press as Scotland’s answer to the Scissor Sisters El Presidente are possibly the campest band to actually survive in Glasgow. The band has created a sound which is like an 80’s disco remix of some classic T-Rex songs, but they’re definitely more rock n roll than the Scissor Sisters ever will be.

Visually El Presidente aren’t really anything like Scissor Sisters, there’s no confusion over whether the girls in the band are actually girls or not, and although frontman Dante Gizzi is a showman, he’s definitely not on the same level of campness as the Scissor Sisters lead singer.



Nothing El Presidente do is particularly original, but does vary from the catchy, danceable disco tunes to the downright tacky and awful. ‘Hanging Around’ is a funky guitar and synth dance number that’s great to dance to, whereas ‘If you say you love me’ is a cheesy attempt at 80’s pop and should be avoided at all costs. Thankfully, there is more of the good stuff than the bad stuff. Single ‘Without you’ has a memorable summery guitar hook and infectious chorus whilst ‘100mph’ is a song that could have been ripped directly from any of T-Rex’s back catalogue. Their best track ‘Rocket’ stood out a mile, although Dante’s impression of a soaring rocker looked more like a distressed sparrow.

In the spirit of Burns night Dante performed a little bit of comedy poetry. I’d tell you what he said but I couldn’t actually hear most of it and didn’t actually get the joke. But I think I might have heard someone in the second row laugh.



El Presidente finished off their set with a cover of Pulp’s Common People. I should probably mention at this point that the atmosphere was fantastic. The crowd certainly weren’t afraid to have a go at mimicking Dante’s dance grooves and there was an altogether party atmosphere going down in The Alloa Town Hall. Dante himself was apparently more than a little inebriated, and struggled a bit through ‘Common People’. It still sounded better than William Shatner's version though.

FUTURE GIGS

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