Sparrow And The Workshop, Mono, Glasgow

Sparrow And The Workshop singer Jill O’Sullivan joins her friend Jenny Reeve’s band, Strike The Colours, for some gentle harmonies in their opening set. It highlights just how many Glasgow musical projects she is involved in – Reeve and O’Sullivan also perform together as Body Parts – but in Sparrow And The Workshop her vocal persona is tougher, rockier and has been compared to Grace Slick – her transplanted Chicagoan tones adding authenticity to that comparison.

O’Sullivan briefly gets to free her inner Stevie Nicks on ‘Shock Shock’, the first cut from the band’s third LP, ‘Murderopolis’. It tumbles stop-start rhythms and lives up to its radio-worthy pedigree. The song offers a template for much of the new album, but in this live setting O’Sullivan’s acoustic guitar and high vocal get rather swallowed up by the beefy bass and drums of her band mates.

‘Murderopolis’, released on Edinburgh’s Song, By Toad Records, makes up the majority of this launch gig. ‘Valley Of Death’, the album’s opener, is robust but the ever-present acoustic guitar keeps it from rock excess. ‘The Faster You Spin’ is tough and loud and sounds like she is accusing someone of being a “fame whore.” Her strident and sometime lacerating vocals are not to be messed with.

“I will break you,” is among plenty of threats embedded in their songs. Sparrow have a uniformity of purpose and approach that makes it refreshing when they introduce a bit of light and shade. Drummer Gregor Donaldson’s addition of a hidden instrument, christened ‘the beast of peace,’ brings a welcome sheen of synth texture. Buried in the heavy mix are some smart riffs and even some whistling, they also know how to make the most of a dramatic pause.

‘Murderopolis’ with it’s “fie fi fo fum” motif is a staccato stomp, spiralling like its protagonist “running round without my head”. Sparrow’s songs creep up rather than grab, and as an introduction to their third album with its urban feel – a break from the bucolic folk of some of their earlier work – this live show has a hardness to it that makes it difficult to soak up the feel of the record. So many songs about unknowable characters and the puzzles they cause can make entry into their world tricky.

When they push their envelope, with stand out track ‘Flower Bombs’, there are spaces in the music to let you in, it entreats you to “pull yourself up”. Tonight they need more guitars and more textures to recreate the record’s variety – the older tracks sit more comfortably than the new ones yet to be bedded in.

Passing a whisky bottle into the crowd, O’Sullivan wants to get a party started but it doesn’t quite kick in until they unleash their cover of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, which plays the cruel trick of having more energy than anything that has gone before. Freed from the pressure of her own material, she can emote with a directness that was earlier smothered. She jumps and dances for the first time, the bass and drums are even tighter than they have been all night, a powerful machine that’s just found its highest setting.