Wednesday 24th Feb
Tuff Love & The Prettiots
£7 [+10% Booking fee]
Doors open 8pm
A special double-bill of two of the most exciting new bands comes to the Trades.
Tuff Love are Julie Eisenstein (guitar, vocals) and Suse Bear (bass, vocals) plus live drummer Iain Stewart (also a member of The Phantom Band). They come from Glasgow and they write dazzling, sun-streaked guitar pop songs with mesmerising lyrics, heart-wrenching vocals and dreamy melodies like the sound of pure summer. They make all their music in Suse’s flat, self-engineering and self-producing everything. Dregs is the latest, most confident-sounding and most compelling product of their increasingly sophisticated homespun craft – lo-fi in ethic but not in sound. From the distorted jangle of ‘Duke’, through the snapping ‘Crocodile’ with its wonderfully wonky outro organ solo and on to the woozily waltzing ‘Carbon’, Dregs is solid gold irresistible listening from first to last.
A packed spring and summer of 2015 saw Tuff Love personally invited to support first reformed shoegaze legends Ride on their first UK tour in 20 years and then later their most famous fan, Scottish soul-pop singer Paolo Nutini, at a special one-off outdoor show at Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park (also featuring legendary disco queen Grace Jones). Elsewhere on their travels they’ve shared stages with the likes of Perfect Pussy, Joanna Gruesome, PAWS and Real Estate among many others.
Tuff Love have played festivals including Glastonbury, T in the Park, Latitude, Wickerman, Indietracks, Long Division and many more. In November 2014 ‘Slammer’ – the lead single from the Dross EP – won the Rebel Playlist on Steve Lamacq’s show on BBC 6 Music by a landslide. That track and each of their new tracks released since, ‘That’s Right’ and ‘Groucho’, have subsequently been B-listed by BBC 6 Music.
The Prettiots are New York’s no-nonsense ukulele wielding ‘It Girls’ and undoubtedly your next crush. Brimming with all the charm and innocence of Cher Horowitz in Clueless, but armed with the attitude and precocious wit of Winona Ryder in Heathers, this all girl three-piece arrive with glittering, indie art-pop, on their forthcoming EP. With effervescent melodies faultlessly combined with colorfully upfront dialogue, The Prettiots paint an exceptionally vivid portrait of what it’s like to be young and living in New York City, using unabashed and no-nonsense songwriting as directed by frontwoman Kay Kasparhauser. Taking a cue from the tongue-in-cheek pop of The Moldy Peaches and the clever love struck lyrics of The Blow, all combined with the ye ye vintage aesthetics of The Shangri-Las, the bands’ sophomore EP bursts with shimmering pop songs about what most pop songs are about. The Prettiots may write songs about boys and break ups and feeling down and out – or, as Kasparhauser has so affectionately coined it, “the grumpies,” they do so with a flagrant, satirical nod to pop culture. Take track, “Stabler,” for example. ‘Boy you’re my saviour/you’re my Elliott Stabler’ muses Kasparhauser. And yes – she is referring to well known Law and Order: SVU character, Elliott Stabler, who, in Kay’s eyes is “the dreamiest hot headed former marine the NYPD has ever had.”
Bookings are not currently available for this event.