Matthew Dear @ Captain's Rest, 6 Jun

“Is it Monday today? Doesn't feel like Monday,” muses Matthew Dear rhetorically, midway through a triumphant set at a packed-out Captain's Rest. It certainly doesn't: it doesn't even feel like we're in Glasgow anymore. Great Western Road has been relocated to the Black City of last year's brilliantly crafted techno-pop concept LP, a metropolis simultaneously alluring, funky and strangely melancholy. Dear, the US renaissance man of contemporary electronica, remains dazzingly adept at everything from melodic techno to soulful, smoky ballads. He is, moreover, an irresistibly charming stage presence, with his boyish good looks, snappy dress sense and ear-to-ear grin.

This might all count for nothing, were it not for the alchemical magic of the live show, which seamlessly blends vocals, bass, trumpet, guitar and drums into the songs' techno foundations. Highlights are many, but You Put a Smell On Me's lurching arpeggios and insistently seedy vocals work particularly well in this context, as does Monkey's haunting goth-pop. Touring a techno record with a four-piece band may sound potentially perilous, but by the closing Don and Sherri, Dear has demonstrated conclusively that this is yet another task to which his prodigious talents are more than equal. [Sam Wiseman]