Amy MacDonald – Garage, Glasgow 08/10/07

Due to train delays, I didn’t manage to catch the support act unfortunately. Nevertheless, got to the venue at half eight and only had to wait fifteen minutes for MacDonald to come on. When she did, she started off with upbeat numbers; ‘This is the Life’ and ‘Poison Prince’. Amy capitalised on many opportunities throughout the set, to show off her amazing voice. 

Amy also had a lot to say in between songs which was interesting as it gave an insight into the background of the songs explaining when, where and what their all about.  In particular ‘Youth of Today’ which she says she wrote it when she was 15 and was intended to be tongue in cheek.  She went onto have a dig at reviewers who interpreted the songs differently, thinking that she was having a rant.  The latter is exactly what I thought when listening to and later when reviewing that song on the album.  But what I feel this does show is a miscommunication on Amy’s part.  In my opinion the song does have a dark feel to it and its difficult to detect any sort of ‘I am only kidding’ tone in the song at all.  Not that anyone would be offended by it anyway as it is an age old thing where no matter what generation you were born in, your always going to have that difference opinion between older and younger generation.  At the end of the day, it’s all about advancement; things change all the time and if we didn’t have these sorts of disagreements life, it wouldn’t be the same.  Anyway I can confirm ‘Footballers Wives’ is officially a rant!  And I certainly have no qualms with that song.

As the evening went on, Amy’s set began to feel like a greatest hits set as no song felt out of place, with a refreshing rendition ‘The Killers’, ‘Mr Brightside’, along with her single which propelled her career – ‘Mr Rock & Roll’.  Before singing the ‘Road to Home’, she announced that it would be used in as the official song in Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games bid.  When you hear it you can see why, as it has a real Scottish feel to it.  You can picture the adverts for it with a mixture of the Scottish flag, images of athletes, scenic backdrops and this song uniting it all.  The set finished with my personnel favourite ‘Let’s start a band’, which I was delighted when the trumpet came out for the intro, as it’s a great start to a cracking tune.

But the evening wasn’t over yet as Amy returned to the stage for the encore with a cover of ‘Caledonia’ and last but not least she finished up by setting her gig in December up nicely with a rampant edition of ‘Barrowland Ballroom’.

Although it was only an hour, (which is understandable only having one album out), I was impressed with not only her live performance but also her patter in between songs.  I knew before the gig she had the songs, but now it is clear she has the confidence and the ability to take her show to a bigger stage.