• Euphoric Heartbreak

You look like someone who appreciates good music. Listen to all your favourite artists on any device for free or try the Premium trial. Play on Spotify. Heartbreak, I'm not holding your hand any more Why can't you understand? Euphoria, take my hand Euphoria Your ways, my ways Never, always The future, the past.

Allan’s swooping melodies hint at a Roy Orbison style flair for reshaping classic rock into heartbreaking epics, and lyrics enacting the political as highly personal dramas. It’s like a marriage of the Clash, the Smiths, the Pixies and the Jesus And Mary Chain, delivered with a passion and purpose that makes much-hyped rock saviours the Vaccines sound as vacuous as they really are. At a time when questions are being asked about how posh rock music has become, Glasvegas are staunchly working-class heroes.

Allan grew up in a single-parent family on an estate in Glasgow, experiencing years of unemployment and poverty before forming this band with his cousins. He is a tortured, sensitive soul, who clearly struggles with a lot of the prejudices of his environment.

The heart of their superb 2008 debut was Daddy’s Gone, a song of abandonment. Here too he sings with aching bewilderment about such themes as desire and loss, but he also embraces the kind of difficult topics that might force some sections of his audience to confront their assumptions. I Feel Wrong and Stronger Than Dirt are subtitled Homosexuality part 1 and 2.

As the titles suggest, there is nothing arch or clever about Allan’s writing, but in its bold stating of sincere feeling lies its true power. Glasvegas are a band their audience can believe in, and that is exactly what rock needs right now.

Euphoric Heartbreak

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