Tide Lines, Glasgow review: 'a milestone performance'
This special 10th anniversary show combined youthful optimism with bittersweet nostalgia, writes David Pollock
Tide Lines, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★★
It’s now been ten years since Tide Lines first embarked on their journey as a band, a trip which has taken them from the Highlands of Scotland to their adoptive home of Glasgow. On the way there have been three UK top twenty albums and a place at the vanguard of a youthful revival of Scots traditional sounds.
“Glasgow, this is the night we've been waiting for quite some time,” pointed out singer Robert Robertson early in the gig. They played their first headline show in this city to around 300 people at the Art School, he later said, and they’ve since played most of Glasgow’s major venues, including the Barrowlands, “but we never thought we’d play the Hydro”.
With a rig of blazing lights behind them, and seven high screens showing animated landscapes, the quartet’s style is perfectly suited to this huge hall. They opened on a wave of youthful optimism with The Young and the Restless and 17 Again, both songs which blend bittersweet, heart-filling nostalgia with a certain rootsy innocence, and followed up with the hearty singalong Walking On the Waves and the infectious, rhythmic train song Any Heart in a Storm.
At various points it was hard not to think of Big Country, the older band’s trademark ‘bagpipe guitar’ sound now effected through Ross Wilson’s keyboard or by guitarist Ally Turner’s actual bagpipes. Robertson’s a compelling natural frontman, a young Caledonian Bono straight out of the School of Celtic Rock, whether playing the wistful Since I Left This Town, about his move to Glasgow, or Wild Mountain Thyme.
Played partly on a B-stage at the back of the hall, making this space about as intimate as possible, their special anniversary set also incorporated euphoric pop songs like Cherry Blossom Sunset, These Days and Far Side of the World, all anthems worthy of such a milestone performance.
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