Saint Luke's
Calton, Glasgow
Sat
May 18, 2024
7:00 pm
BST
DF Concerts Presents
Aaron West
GBP20.00
Sweating under the spotlights at a ritzy club in Hollywood, scrappy frontman Aaron West of emo-Americana ensemble the Roaring Twenties, a bit out of his element, starts to slur his words. He’s lost more than he can count. His face burns with mounting anger––at the label, at his weary bandmates, at the sorry state of the world as it sputters back to life like a ’67 Mustang hot off cinder blocks, but above all at himself. The whiskey’s all he can do to quiet the pain in his hand as he strums, busted from pouring concrete. Even surrounded by the people who’ve taken him in when no one else would, this family he’s been given, he can’t seem to get it right. “Fuck building a bridge, I’m burning it down,” he screams on highvoltage rocker “Spitting in the Wind,” booze rough in his throat, “I’ll see you in the water.”
Longtime fans will recognize the bursts of Springsteenian horns, led by Chiemina Ukazim’s bombastic, stirring saxophone, that keep the pulse and grit of the working class East Coast close at hand. Louder and brasher than ever, and elsewhere even more intimate, more devastating, with keepsakes and callbacks––shorebirds, the hue of a certain citrus fruit, the interpolation of past horn arrangements––for those who’ve accompanied him on his journey from the beginning, Aaron West manages to stay as clear-eyed and wry as he’s ever been, the acid-spit humor that comes only from tragedy. IN LIEU OF FLOWERS isn’t about perfect choices, perfect endings, perfect people, it’s about fucking up, and learning how to be held again.
In the record’s shocking final moments, Aaron, wrung out and made new, returns to the beginning of his story, a place he never fathomed he would ever go again. But if you know how to look, every return to the past promises something previously unimaginable, something new. Like Aaron says, “Ain’t that the fucked up thing about hope?”
Strictly 14+, any persons under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult and bring photo ID.
Longtime fans will recognize the bursts of Springsteenian horns, led by Chiemina Ukazim’s bombastic, stirring saxophone, that keep the pulse and grit of the working class East Coast close at hand. Louder and brasher than ever, and elsewhere even more intimate, more devastating, with keepsakes and callbacks––shorebirds, the hue of a certain citrus fruit, the interpolation of past horn arrangements––for those who’ve accompanied him on his journey from the beginning, Aaron West manages to stay as clear-eyed and wry as he’s ever been, the acid-spit humor that comes only from tragedy. IN LIEU OF FLOWERS isn’t about perfect choices, perfect endings, perfect people, it’s about fucking up, and learning how to be held again.
In the record’s shocking final moments, Aaron, wrung out and made new, returns to the beginning of his story, a place he never fathomed he would ever go again. But if you know how to look, every return to the past promises something previously unimaginable, something new. Like Aaron says, “Ain’t that the fucked up thing about hope?”
Strictly 14+, any persons under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult and bring photo ID.