(Photos by Bruce Cowie. Video by TheFudlip)
Just over two months ago on December 1st, 2013, The Red Paintings played in Edinburgh and last Sunday they were back already. There are local bands that don’t play Edinburgh that often, and knowing that The Red Paintings come all the way from Australia makes this a respectful feat; in my books at least. Last time they played a short set supporting Mindless Self Indulgence, and this time they were playing a headline show, so I was quite excited to see a longer set and show and at quite a small venue. Sneaky Pete’s is a very different venue than the Liquid Room though, as it is one of the smaller Edinburgh venues. Having played at Sneaky Pete’s numerous times myself I know very well how ‘big’ the stage is and I was curious to see how The Red Paintings were going to fit their band, stage props and human canvases and painters all on a stage of about 10 square meters in space.
But before I got to find out the stage was set up for two local bands. It was nice to see local talent supporting a big touring band and first up were Universal Thee, a five piece who played a pleasant and cheerful mix of indie pop/rock songs. They have 2 vocalists, one female and one male, and at times this gave them a bit of a Belle and Sebastian sound. Their latest single ‘Aranis Natas’ was a highlight of their set and it made me very happy to see them play with joy and lots of fun. It is all about the fun and they demonstrated this very well. The second support band was Pilotcan and similar to Universal Thee I had not heard of this band before. Their music was a bit more alternative and rockier, reminding me at times of Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr, mixed in with a bit of new wave. They played well, but they didn’t smile as much as Universal Thee though. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing them again
At this point The Red Painting’s frontman Trash McSweeney was waiting in the venue to get the stage set up for his gig and I asked him how they were going to fit everything on the stage, to which Trash laughed and replied that they had to cut down a fair bit of the new Egyptian themed show. Drummer Andy Davis was dead serious about the stage size and the venue and he just said that it was going to be a fucking loud one. Good, I like loud gigs.
After a 10 minutes delay due to some technical problems with the bass, The Red Paintings kicked off with an older song, ‘Feed the Wolf’, which set the scene quite nicely. The sound was a bit of a mix still during this opening song, but that soon changed during ‘It Is As It Was’, taken off their latest album The Revolution Is Never Coming. I had anticipated a big crowd considering the press they have been getting over the last couple of months and successfully touring with Mindless Self Indulgence, but to my surprise only around 40 people managed to challenge the Scottish winter gales and make it out on a Sunday night. Actually, maybe not that surprising after all as it was a Sunday night in Edinburgh, not a night of the week known for a vibrant live music scene.
Anyway, one thing that differed from the last time when I saw The Red Paintings was that they didn’t have their cellist on stage this time, maybe she didn’t come on tour with the band or after seeing the stage size they might have decided to not include her in tonight’s performance. But it put violinist Alix Kol more in the spotlight and she played fanatically through the set, which contained more songs of The Revolution Is Never Coming, such as ‘Dead Children’, a beautiful version of ‘Streets Fell Into My Window’, ‘The Revolution Is Never Coming’ and ‘Wasps’. We got treated on a new song that will feature on the next album named ‘Arctic Is Screaming’, a song drawing the attention and focus on the decline of the Arctic polar bear population. Due to the slight delay at the start of the gig and Trash being on good form chatting to the audience in between songs, time was unfortunately running out and they didn’t manage to get to play their full set. Asking the audience what song they wanted to hear they finished the night with their cover of ‘Mad World’, with the majority of the crowd singing along. Unfortunately they had to stop there (that bloody Edinburgh 10pm curfew again!) as they nearly played ‘Hong Kong’, one of my favourite tracks on the album.
So, we got a headline show that contained “only” 8 songs. Thought the intimacy was fantastic and it was great to be able to see this amazing band on a small stage at a small venue. I’m not sure this will happen again in the future as they will no doubt get bigger, especially with their second album hopefully coming out this year. Trash showed what a real gentleman he is by taking his time for every person at the gig after the show, signing various merchandise items and getting on photos and just having a nice chat to the band’s fans.
Hopefully The Red Paintings will come back soon again as I will be there for sure!
