Three Blind Wolves @ Stereo, 10 Apr

“Who’s that writin’?” wails frontman Sean Cumming of the John Knox Sex Club, leading the four chanting a capella voices in their inspired rendition of John the Revelator, a classic American blues and gospel song, stripped down for some heavily accentuated light and shade – clapping dissolving into a wall of sound. With something reminiscent of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Cummings performs like an embittered yet hopeful preacher/sinner, pacing the floor on crowd-level in front of the stage, and embracing audience members to a sonic backdrop of primal blues.

To a crowd still reeling from this dark sermon, French Wives play their couldn’t-be-more-different light hearted indie disco, opening with Give Him America, a song which could easily be a flaccid indie hit with its catchy chorus building into a not entirely unpleasant crescendo. What French Wives lack in consistent song writing, they make up for in energetic musicianship and their hefty band, complete with competing violin, trombone and guitars, manage to spin some quite danceable tunes.

Nothing makes the crowd dance more however, than the bagpiper playing the Highland Fling, opening for a very excitable and fairly intoxicated Three Blind Wolves (“we’ve been on the snakebite!” confesses guitarist Davie Cleary). With their folksy-bluesy rock, straight out of the swamps of Louisiana...err, sorry... Glasgow, Three Blind Wolves’ shtick is as aurally pleasing as it is simple: strip down the guitar, up the impassioned, bluesy vocals then hush them with some ‘good ol’ fashioned’ heavy rock & roll and repeat. “This is probably our best gig, Dundee was shite!” shouts frontman and resident Glaswegian livewire Ross Clark, before comforting a disenfranchised Dundonian, “ach well, you’re here now, aye?” Aye, and the band's not bad, either. [Rachel Bowles]