Broadcast

PCL & Celtic Connections Presents.
HIBOU
+ Home$lice
+ Raeburn Brothers

Wednesday, 29th January 2020
Broadcast, Glasgow
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DOORS 7PM
18+ ONLY
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Tickets on sale 10th October via SEE and Tickets Scotland:
https://www.seetickets.com/event/hibou/broadcast/1439911

Amidst an atmosphere of melancholia, Peter Michel has thrown himself into a lifetime’s worth of writing, recording and touring belied by his young age. At just 17, the Seattle-based musician toured extensively
with dream pop outfit Craft Spells, and most recently met critical acclaim with his personal project, Hibou.
In ‘Halve’, Hibou’s third full length album, Michel creates a characteristically ethereal record addressing the dichotomies between childhood and adulthood, self and society, authenticity and superficiality. The outcome is a work filled with swooning, hazy reflections on loss, love, nostalgia, and joy from a 10,000 foot view. Michel’s vocals comfortably twist from echoing whispers to punkish accusations; his guitar from
dizzying surf hooks to lush 80s-inspired chords. Control—and the lack of it—reverberates throughout the album, and the consequence is a set of ten deeply vulnerable songs that will find you romanticizing your own childhood, your own teenage years, your own morning.

PCL AND CELTIC CONNECTIONS PRESENTS:
MIDAS FALL
+ Wyldest
Tuesday, 28th January 2020
Broadcast, Glasgow
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DOORS 7PM
AGE 18 +
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Tickets available now via SEE:
https://www.seetickets.com/event/midas-fall/broadcast/1459518

Combining elements of electronica and alt-rock with progressive and gothic undertones, Scottish band Midas Fall have carved a distinctive and captivating sound, creating taut, shimmering soundscapes led by the hauntingly melancholic vocals of Elizabeth Heaton – a sound described as “powerful yet fragile, devastatingly beautiful and beautifully devastating” (The Founder Magazine).
Midas Fall will release their fourth studio album in 2018 on Monotreme Records. In September 2015 Midas Fall released their third album on Monotreme Records, followed by a European tour with Canadian musician Raised by Swans. The record, mastered by legendary engineer Ed Brooks (Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie) featured nine new tracks and was released in digital, CD and limited edition vinyl formats.
The Menagerie Inside’ has been exceptionally well-received with glowing reviews from critics across the world.
“The Menagerie Inside will not disappoint. Sit down, plug in, and be prepared for an onslaught on your emotions. Both musically and lyrically.” – Echoes and Dust

“Their best and most accomplished album yet…I hope this is the record that finally takes Midas Fall to the heights of commercial
success they so richly deserve. 4.5/5.” – 17 Seconds
“A beautiful, lonely, haunting, abrasive, intelligent set of songs by a band who really do deserve the future to be theirs. 9/10.” –
Reflections of Darkness The Menagerie Inside bridges prog and dreampop in a way that hasn’t quite been done this way before…a splendid album.” – Pop Matters
“Taut, emotive instrumental drama pervading the album is balanced by Heaton’s rich, bright tone…a breathtaking album…” – Factory Worker Media Concrete compositions and gripping performances – Rocking GR 2014 Saw Midas Fall complete a Balkans mini-tour and begin work on their third album.
In 2013 Midas Fall followed up their second album, with the release of 3-track EP. ‘Fluorescent Lights’ with a UK and
European tour.
The EP showcases all of the elements that fans of Midas Fall have come to know and love: the combination of thundering melodic rock guitar with electronic flourishes and Elizabeth Heaton’s soaring melancholic vocals in ’Low’, the delicate confessional intimacy of ‘Tracks’ and the epically ascending pop of title track ‘Fluorescent Lights’ 2012 saw the band perform in Switzerland, share the stage with labal mates 65 days of static and Reigns in London at the Monotreme Records 10th Birthday party, perform headline slots in London and Budapest.

2011 saw Midas Fall complete their first European tour, including a slot at Belgium’s Dunk! Festival, sold-out shows in Athens, Sofia, Glasgow, Manchester and London and play Germany’s Dark Spring Festival.

Their debut album Eleven Return and Revert had its worldwide release with Monotreme in April 2010. Garnering numerous glowing reviews comparing them to the likes of Portishead and Explosions in the Sky.

The track “MovieScreens” featured on BBC3’s Lip Service soundtrack – a soundtrack which charted in the UK’s top 20 and has since been released in Canada and Australia, increasing the bands overseas following.

Anton & The Colts live and dangerous at Broadcast for Celtic Connections 2020.

Support from Al & The Bad Decisions & Sarah Jane Scouten

“The Glasgow lot bring the country-fried soul-meets-bluegrass ruckus with the occasional thunderous edge.” The Skinny

John Edge & The Kings of Nowhere celebrate the release of their debut album with a special Celtic Connections show. The band provide an energetic live show with songs about love, truth, death, and the miraculous fragility of life. The Edinburgh and Glasgow based group are genre defying, yet perhaps best described as euphoric folk-rock. The band carry an abundance of raw power, melodious songs, huge dynamics, and all is fused together and driven by Edge’s enchanting lyrics and totality on stage. Everything they have to offer is poured out in their performance; passion is abundantly clear. Each of the members hail from the Scottish Highlands and the dramatic landscape of their upbringing can be heard in their songs.

CLASH ~ “Edge is a supple, entrancing songwriter. An artist of real power… Easy on the ear yet intensely emotional.”

CELTIC CONNECTIONS ~ ”John Edge & The Kings of Nowhere are increasingly gathering admirers for Edge’s winning delivery and the band’s crisp, atmospheric enhancement of his attractively moody songs”

SUPPORT:
GINGER are a 4-piece band bringing uplifting rock tracks, four part harmonies, funk and soul. They take inspiration from the likes of Weezer, Bon Iver, and The Rolling Stones.

PCL & CELTIC CONNECTIONS PRESENTS:
BROKEN CHANTER
+ Martin John Henry (De Rosa)
Saturday 25th January 2020
Broadcast, Glasgow
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DOORS 7PM
AGE 18+
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Tickets available via SEE:
https://www.seetickets.com/event/broken-chanter/broadcast/1459522

Broken Chanter is the adopted name of David MacGregor. MacGregor spent the past decade as the principal songwriter of
Scottish Alt-Pop darlings Kid Canaveral. Following the completion of touring for Kid Canaveral’s third record in late 2017, the natural break allowed MacGregor time to collect his thoughts, and some song fragments, and flesh them out into skeletal demos recorded in Ardnamurchan, Skye, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Ireland.

PCL and Celtic Connections presents.
Kate Davis
+ Kerri Watt
Friday, 24th January 2020
Broadcast, Glasgow
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DOORS 7PM
18+ ONLY
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Tickets available via SEE and Tickets Scotland now:
https://pclpresents.seetickets.com/event/kate-davis/broadcast/1440345

Kate Davis picked up a violin at age five, a bass at age thirteen. She entered the Portland Youth Philharmonic before puberty, the Grammy Jazz Ensemble before adolescence. By the time she graduated high school, Kate won the Presidential Scholar in the Arts Award and a full ride to the Manhattan School of Music. By the time she graduated college, ASCAP’s Robert Allen Award and slots at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. As a young adult, the virtuoso claimed enthusiastic endorsements from NPR, MTV, PBS and BBC as well as coveted invitations to the stage from Herbie Hancock, Ben Folds, Alison Krauss, Jeff Goldblum and the like. Most recently, she co-wrote Sharon Van Etten’s hit single “Seventeen” and contributed to the soundtrack for blockbuster ‘Five Feet Apart.’

Yet, Kate Davis considers her debut indie rock album her hardest-earned accolade to date.

Kate grew up as a jazz darling, but she grew into something significantly more dynamic. Days spent practicing and performing became nights spent writing — cathartic indie rock — music simultaneously informed by and rebutting of her training. Forbidden chord progressions emerged like diary entries, documents of an internal reaction to routine. Time intended for technique slipped into secret listening sessions of Beach House, Elliot Smith and TV On The Radio. In the same bright, arresting croon that ignited her youthful stardom, Davis created confessionals.

Now 28 and audibly matured, Kate is prepared to properly share the artifacts from her late night craft, a full length reaction to ritual required of perfection, an outburst from the pedestal. Throughout twelve tumultuous tracks, she poetically reflects upon the intricacies of what it is to live, ruminating on topics too close to her heart — identity, self-worth, loss. Trophy will be released November 8, 2019 on Solitaire Recordings.

In album opener “Daisy,” Kate confronts the death of her father with an ode as enthralling as it is devastating. Lyrically, she blends the hard work of questioning with the intuitive work of honoring, thoughtfully satisfying a desire to respect her deceased parent as well as herself. Melodically, she offers a lightness almost grotesque in contrast to the words it lifts. The process is uncomfortable, enveloping and beautiful — much like grief giving way to acceptance.

Oh seed
Pick your poison
While you’re down there in the ground
Father, father
What do I do when you
Are not around
And I feel like giving out
And crashing down to the ground
Backbone is battered as any
But show me my roots

Kate delves fearlessly into the aimless dread of early adulthood in songs like “Dirty Teenager,” an infectious romp refreshingly reminiscent of the early aughts and “rbbts,” a slow-burning anthem of need. The latter is named after a now-closed restaurant in Soho, which Kate frequented during a manic time in her life. She considered the establishment a safe haven then, but retroactively reduces it to metaphor — a healthless attempt to make comfort where it doesn’t belong. With ominous nonchalance, she articulates a despair for stability over growth.

Nothing lasts forever
you can’t ever hold on too tight
The skin will slip away
and in no time
we’ll see the light

Kate’s nuanced perspectives and inventive lyricism triumph in tracks like “Open Heart,” a danceable dirge that equates heartbreak to sterile surgery and “Salome,” a biblical rendering of interpersonal dilemma. Few writers so snugly meld the personal with the literary without compromising one moment of emotion.

now you’re upright
victorious and
barefoot with my head
in your hands
I warned you of the
evening’s malevolent
moon
she’s taken total
control over you

Kate lets vulnerability lead on “I Like Myself,” a delicately penned love letter to self. With a sobering level of sincerity, she recognizes her reliance upon others’ approval and the vicious toll it takes on self-esteem. She delivers her poignant epiphany with the tenderness of tone one might use when speaking to a mirror. Humility marks the standout song and echoes throughout the remainder of her debut.

I finally love myself
Cause she loves me
And since I think the
world of her
And she of me
I’m exactly who and
where I want to be

Kate’s observations are at once wise and inquisitive, treating confusion and conclusion with equal care, serving simultaneously as stories and studies. The songwriting resembles psychology — and hers alone. In deliberate escape from former record deals, partnerships and influences, the album was intentionally and exclusively created in accordance with her individual vision. Kate recorded it at Mission Sound in Brooklyn, with producer and friend Tim Bright.

Trophy — is exactly that — a shining culmination of personal lessons learned, an award acquired from the task of existing.

PCL PRESENTS
Daughter of Swords
+ Graeme Quinn
Thursday 23rd January 2020
Broadcast, Glasgow
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DOORS 7PM
AGE 18+
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Tickets available via SEE and Tickets Scotland:
https://www.seetickets.com/event/daughter-of-swords/broadcast/1459888

In 2017, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig began recording a set of songs about a breakup that had yet to happen. Her partnership had drifted into a comfortable state of indecision, stalling when it came time to make big life moves or chase new horizons. She had the sense that she needed to slip the relationship in order to pursue everything else life might have in store—more music,
more adventures, a general sense of the unknown. Those feelings drifted steadily into a set of songs that lamented the inevitable loss but, more important, outlined the promise of the future.

Recording the ten tracks that became her stunning solo debut, Dawnbreaker, under the new name Daughter of Swords gave Sauser-Monnig permission to go. Dawnbreaker began as the first phase of Sauser-Monnig’s return to music after stepping to the sidelines for the better part of a decade. Her college trio, Mountain Man, rose to quick acclaim for their peerless harmonies around 2010, but the friends slowly drifted apart, following their own interests to different coasts and concerns. While working on a flower farm as a farmhand, though, Sauser-Monnig realized that she missed the emotional articulation she found in writing songs and singing them and resolved to start again. She pieced together an album just as Mountain Man—now newly gathered in the fertile Piedmont of North Carolina—began to regroup for its second LP, 2018’s aptly named Magic Ship. Working with Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn, Sauser-Monnig shaped what began as quiet reflections into confident compositions, crackling with country swagger and a sparkling pop warmth. They were, after all, preemptive odes to the next phase of life.

Calling the ten tunes of Dawnbreaker breakup songs is to hamstring them with elegiac expectations, to paint them as sad-eyed surrenders to loss and grief. Sure, there is the gentle
opener “Fellows,” a hushed number that explores the turmoil of being unable to reciprocate the feelings of a wild and shy, tall and fine man. And there’s the blossoming country shuffle of “Easy Is Hard,” where Sauser-Monnig stands in the yard and sees her lover leave, his taillights fading into the night sky; she can’t sleep, so she gets up to turn the lights and stereo on, to “feel my soul coming down.”

Even there, amid the throes of a life convulsion, there is a wisp of hope and possibility, framed by the way “the dim light change[s] into dawn, rosy blue, pink fawn.” The very heart of
Dawnbreaker is not the impending breakup that inspired many of its songs but the sense of liberation and breaking out that the breakup inspired. Buoyed by the insistent patter of a drum
machine and rich acoustic guitars, Sauser-Monnig finds herself in search of new thrills during “Gem,” whether pondering the fleeting nature of existence at a waterfall’s edge or watching the
shapes of mountains seemingly dance beneath her headlights. The muted, harmonica-lined boogie of “Sun” begins with a vulnerable confession, a revelation of loneliness; it is, however, a low-key anthem for the open road, about giving oneself over to the infinity of solitude and an endless strip of asphalt. Sauser-Monnig captures these scenes with a painter’s eye and delivers them with a novelist’s heart.

There’s no better testament than “Shining Woman,” where Sauser-Monnig portrays a ropy woman navigating her “steel steed” up and down the bends and passes of California’s fabled
Highway 1. She openly marvels at that spirit and strength, wishing that for her own life. With Dawnbreaker, she has found it in some measure—the joy of something new, the excitement of
risk. Though Sauser-Monnig nearly recorded these songs as barebones folk ballads, she reimagined them with Sanborn and a top-tier crew of North Carolina friends, like fellow
Mountain Man singers Amelia Meath and Molly Sarlé, bandleader Phil Cook, and guitarist Ryan Gustafson. These vivid settings highlight the emotional contours of these songs, revealing the complexity that comes with knowing that, in order to live, you sometimes have to let something
as strong as love go.

At the start of “Human,” the undeniable climax of Dawnbreaker, Sauser-Monnig wakes up early and finds her lover in bed. She slips out of the room, watches the sun rise alone, and has herself a long think amid nature’s frozen splendor. What does it mean to leave? What does it mean to stay? Is she wrong, and is he right? As the piano rises and her voice multiplies, coming in now from all sides, she admits something crucial to herself: “You can’t will a love to life/But you can do the loving thing: Make like a bird and fly.” It is a moment of reckoning with one’s own liberation, of realizing that sometimes a profound loss is the only way to gain something else. That is the lesson of Dawnbreaker, an intimate document of what it means to set oneself free.

PCL & Celtic Connections presents.
The BellRays
+ Los Pepes
Wednesday, 22nd January 2020
Broadcast, Glasgow
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DOORS 7PM
AGE 18+
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Tickets available from Thursday, 24th October via SEE and Tickets Scotland:
https://www.seetickets.com/event/the-bellrays/broadcast/1453018

Blues is the teacher. Punk is the preacher. It’s all about emotion and energy, experience and raw talent, spirit and intellect. Exciting things happen when these things collide.
Bob Vennum and Lisa Kekaula made the BellRays happen in 1991 in East LA but they weren’t really thinking about any of this then. They wanted to play music and they wanted it to feel good. They wanted people to WANT to get up, to NEED to get up and check out what was going on. Form an opinion. React. So they took everything they knew about; the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, the Who, the Ramones, Billie Holiday, Lou
Rawls, Hank Williams, the DB’s, Jimmy Reed, Led Zeppelin, to name a very few and pressed it into service. It was never about coming up with a ‘sound’, or fitting in with a scene. It was about the energy that made all that music so irresistible. It was the history BEFORE Led Zeppelin that led them to that point. The Beatles thought they were playing R&B. It just came out like ‘Rubber Soul’. The Ramones were trying to be Del Shannon or Neil Sedaka and out came ‘Rocket to Russia’. With the BellRays there was no conscious effort to ‘combine’ rock and soul because they didn’t see them as divided in the first place. Blues was teaching. Punk was preaching. The BellRays were always
listening.

Celtic Connections & Holy Smokes Records presents:
Flew The Arrow
+ support

Flew The Arrow is the spiritual guise of Lee McGilvray, hailing from a small town on the West coast of Scotland and now residing in Glasgow where he has grown his reputation as an original alternative and contemporary folk singer/songwriter over the past three years.

Lee independently released his debut EP “If You’d Only Care To Listen” in 2016 and since has made his mark performing at festivals around the central belt, whilst honing his craft and building his network of listeners in the city. Having signed to 23rd Precinct Music Publishing in 2018, Flew The Arrow began 2019 performing for the Celtic Connections Hazy Recollections and Danny Kyle stages, followed by a signing to Electric Honey Records, which gave birth to his Double A-Side Single release in March (Come The Wind, Come The Rain/Trail Of Thought).

This was but the very start of a full EP set to release in December titled ‘Trossach’, and a new chapter in the flight of the Arrow as he expands his sound on record and on stage with a full band creating a soundscape of Cello, Fiddle and Flute that truly bring his songs to life, giving insight into the direction of his song-craft and touching on influence from traditional sounds.

“Melding fleeting fingerstyle melodies through an array of pleasant open tunings, accompanied by his poetic lyrics and powerful voice, that collate to for a warm sense of original acoustic songwriting that is yet to be discovered.”

“Flew The Arrow fills the room with warm timbres of his acoustic guitar and a soft voice that bristles just lightly with an Ayrshire twang, crafting earnest narratives of love an loss from romantic landscapes, who’s imagery weaves through each song like a subtle an haunting poem. His presence cuts a friendly, laid back intimacy, introducing each song with genuine enthusiasm.” – Rave Child

Broadcast / 28.01.2020

Fairweather Friends live at Broadcast for Celtic Connections 2020.

19.01.2019 // 7:30pm