Good Flying Birds @ Nice N Sleazy, Glasgow, 30 Jun

Scotland’s own up-and-coming guitar-pop band The Cords are an apt choice of support for Good Flying Birds’ gig tonight at Nice N Sleazy. The duo, comprising of sisters Grace and Eva Tedeschi, candidly draw inspiration from the same jangling indie bands of the 80s and 90s as the American headliners, and their crisp, bounding tunes glimmer with a rosier tinge than the scrappy headliners.

Good Flying Birds are one of a wave of DIY guitar bands flourishing in the American Midwest, indebted to the dishevelled sound of Scottish C86-adjacent bands like The Pastels and The Vaselines, as much as any US indie rockers. Recorded on four-track tape, the group’s debut collection of tracks, Talulah’s Tape, sold 300 copies on cassette in under a month before it was released on streaming services last year. From the word-of-mouth buzz surrounding them to the silver duct tape mummifying frontman Kellen Baker’s guitar, their homemade image harkens back to pre-internet times without a shade of pretentiousness.

Hopping casually onto stage after The Cords’ set, the Indianapolis band rattle noisily through the short catchy tracks of Talulah’s Tape, Baker flinging inspired guitar riffs into every available gap in the melodies. Susie Slaughter’s frenetic tambourine fizzes alongside drummer Ari Bales’ breakneck grooves and springy basslines.

The angular riffs and warm-hearted melody of I Care For You is followed by a new track with a pop-punk gallop. The effervescent Wallace lurches between churning punk rock and dreamy guitar interludes. Unfortunately Baker’s and Slaughter’s co-lead vocals are barely audible over the caustic fuzz of guitar, meaning those in the crowd coming along to take a chance on an unknown band on a Tuesday night, which appears to be much of the audience, will struggle to make out a word of the lyrics.

It doesn’t dampen the enthusiastic applause and it doesn’t stop the appreciative head-bopping as the band jump from one playful scamper of a song to another. But while it’s the endearingly twee melodies floating over the scuzzy guitar that catch the ear on record, in a live setting it’s easier to close in on the skittish solos that Baker flies through.

A few songs in, he snaps a string and, with no spares to hand, he suggests they try Always Me (gidget) without the guitar at all, asking the audience to clap their hands rapidly to replace its wiry arpeggios. The playful experiment comes to an end when Eva Tedeschi of The Cords offers Baker her spotless mint-green guitar in lieu of his scratched and taped up black one and we’re back on track, and the new instrument’s cleaner look doesn’t stop him shredding up the next song with a lacerating solo.

The band hurtle into the night’s most exhilarating chorus on Dynamic, before closing the show in an all too brief 45 minutes with a cover of The Vaselines’ Son of a Gun. Mirroring The Cords’ choice to finish their set with a Velvet Underground song, the tribute neatly ties up the thread running between American and Scottish underground scenes over the decades, a zigzagging pathway exchanging and sharing the joy of raw, scrappy, open-hearted music.