Music > Live Reviews

The John Langan Band at OPEN

17/11/14

'Would anyone be offended if we played a song about incest?' John Langan asks through chipper Scottish articulation. I nearly spit a mouthful of beer down the back of the chap standing in front of me as I stifle a laugh. We're a few tracks in and I just about regain mastery over my oesophagus as Langan and his fellow music makers - Dave Tunstall and Alastair Caplin (I defy you to find a better, more rock and rolling named trio than John, Dave and Alastair) - plunge into another Romani Gypsy riot of sound. It's a night of offbeat, carnivalesque joy.Langan and co. take you on fanciful trips to places strange and delightful, driven by a rattling convoy of guitar, fiddle and double bass. Here, the only thing that makes sense is to forget that you ever had any inhibitions at all and, instead, let yourself get pulled in and start throwing the most marvellous of shapes. I get whirled around by the crooked arm of a stranger. There's a guy in wellies and a vest... twerking, I think? (What an almighty and calamitous collision of cultures that is) There's a summoning of an almost unreal level of kinetic energy from their acoustic instruments, with Langan himself a striking visage of long, narrow limb behind his six-string. The delivery is clean and berserk, entirely convincing and mind-befuddling intricate. Stylistically there's something enthrallingly, deceptively simple about the entire thing. It would work anywhere, and it works fantastically.If you go to their website they claim that if you're not dancing like a professional ostrich then you get a refund. I can't really phrase it better than that. So go and get your ostrich on.