Scottish Live Music Highlights: December 2022

Firstly, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, The Skinny-shaped elephant, that is. ICYMI, we are throwing a big 200th Issue Party on 1 December at Summerhall to belatedly celebrate 200 issues of our lovely publication. On the night there will be three rooms of excellent live music (one curated by new Edinburgh zine Chün) that we can’t tell you about until the night. Soz. And we’re raising money for Tiny Changes in the process. You should come.

Other celebratory events taking place in December include the Lost Map Christmas HUMBUG! shows at Glasgow's The Old Hairdresser’s (16 Dec) with Catgut, Maranta, Brenda, Fell and Sulka, and Edinburgh's Summerhall (17 Dec), with live sets from Ballboy, Martha, Susan Bear, Fell, Alliyah Enyo, Former Champ and L.T. Leif. Tommy Reilly’s All Star Christmas returns too for its seventh outing, taking place at The Rum Shack on 22 December. 

Alliyah Enyo

Earlier in the month, the Scottish Alternative Music Awards return to Glasgow’s St. Luke’s (8 Dec) to celebrate the talents of Scotland’s alternative music scene. On the night there will be live performances from VLURE, The Honey Farm and Becky Sikasa, the latter of whom is nominated in this year’s Best Acoustic category alongside the likes of Linzi Clark and Lewis McLaughlin. Other nominees include Psweatpants, Dutch Wine, AiiTee, Kaputt, Brooke Combe, Tzusan and Uninvited who, incidentally, you can catch live on the same night at King Tut’s. 

Less celebratory, but still worth shouting about, The Cure roll into town with local lads The Twilight Sad in tow for a huge arena show at the OVO Hydro on the 4th, while on the same night Mykki Blanco plays The Garage, clipping. play La Belle Angele and Eyes of Others plays Sneaky Pete’s. The night before in Edinburgh, you’ll catch Glaswegian upstarts Humour celebrating their debut EP at Sneaky’s, while on 7 December AMPLIFI returns to The Queen’s Hall with performances from Queen of Harps, Stephanie Lamprea and Sagnick Mukherjee.

Also in Edinburgh, The Beta Band's Steve Mason plays The Caves (14 Dec), local shoegaze newcomers No Windows play Sneaky Pete’s (15 Dec) and Mogwai play Usher Hall (21 Dec) as part of a tour which also stops by Aberdeen’s Music Hall (20 Dec) and Glasgow’s Barrowlands (22-23 Dec). Glasgow also welcomes tours this month from Canada’s BADBUTNOTGOOD (QMU, 13 Dec), NewDad (King Tut’s, 19 Dec), Joey Bada$$ (O2 Academy, 20 Dec) and Idlewild (O2 Academy, 21 Dec), while Be Charlotte makes a return to the live stage this month too, with an intimate show at Dundee’s Gallery 48 on the 15th.