LIVE REVIEW: The Road To The Great Escape, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, 10/05/2025
Another long day was on the cards as day two of The Road To The Great Escape took place at the iconic King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut on St Vincent Street in Glasgow city centre, a venue that became famous for Alan McGee discovering a particular Manchester band all those years ago. The early start for work was soon forgotten about as we headed up to Glasgow in glorious sunshine to watch eight bands that would play The Great Escape Festival in Brighton the following weekend.
Indoor Foxes were first on the stage today at 3.15pm to showcase their music to a busy King Tut’s, this is the project of singer/songwriter Martha Barr with the band making the final for the showcase event that is Scottish Artist of the Year, Becky Sikasa was the eventual winner but Indoor Foxes did gain a slot at this year’s TRNSMT Festival for their efforts and are definitely ones to watch. They played a couple of new tracks alongside the more well-known ones such as White Rabbit and Maggot Brains. 7/10
Next up and all the way from Nashville via New York is Annie DiRusso who released debut album Super Pedestrian in March of this year. The talented singer worked through a set with tracks including Coming Soon, by far her biggest song to date with over twelve million streams. This is our first time seeing Annie but we had a good listen to the back catalogue beforehand, if was more of an acoustic set that allowed the artist to be more intimate with the crowd and for someone playing in Scotland for the first time today the crowd reaction was very good. Declan McKenna took the band out on tour as support on the USA leg of his tour back in 2022 and we can understand why, both musicians were very connected to the crowd throughout, for us the pick of the tracks were Back In Town, Wearing Pants Again and the aforementioned song Coming Soon where we even get a wee final dance from the duo, Annie comments that she loves Glasgow and promises to come back. 8/10
Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy brought some fun to King Tut’s with their quirky style of music that was anything from folky to indie to rock during the half hour, the drummer was a standout during the performance. We hadn’t heard of Westside Cowboy before today but we will be looking out for them touring. 7/10.
A quick exit to eat was followed by the first of tonight’s two Irish bands as Men An Tol play a solid set that is a mixture of Irish folk music that comes to life eventually sounding more along the lines of Fontaines D.C. or Gurriers, we could certainly hear those influences in their music. NW1 and Set In Stone were the best of the set, they were the surprise band of the night for us and we were looking forward to the next Irish band Cliffords now. 8/10
Picture Parlour took to the stage at 7.15pm and we had been looking forward to seeing the band for the first time, hailing from Manchester Picture Parlour are a band that don’t hold back! It would be rude not to introduce the band who are Katherine Parlour (guitar & vocals), Ella Risi (guitar), Sian Lynch (bass) and Michael Nash (drums). Vocalist Parlour is in the traditional highland tartan jacket as she captivated the audience with a unique style as they play latest release Who’s There To Love Without You that went down really well with the now packed and sweaty room. Norwegian Wood is by far their biggest track to date and it sounded fantastic tonight alongside Face In The Picture and Judgement Day. We’re definitely looking forward to seeing Picture Parlour play a headline show now. 8/10
We were seeing Cliffords two Saturday’s running now after their explosive performance in the Arts Club Loft last weekend as part of the Sound City festival in Liverpool gained them a lot of new fans. We had the opportunity to interview Iona Lynch and Gavin Dawkins from the band during the day so look out for that shortly. They have just announced a new four-track EP that will be released at the end of May – Salt Of The Lee is the title – two songs from it have already been released, Bittersweet is one of the best tonight while Dungarvan Bay is growing on us. Sleeping With Ghosts and Feels Like A Man were the pick of the set for us, the crowd were very lively. What more can we say about Cliffords? Well we can confirm that they are indeed named after the big red dog (if you have kids you might understand!), they are playing more than a few festivals during the summer and they are being tipped as one of Ireland’s most promising up and coming bands of 2025. During the interview they boldly stated that an album was coming next year although they hadn’t written it yet, we hope to see a UK tour alongside it in 2026. 9/10
A quick trip to the bar and it was soon time for the penultimate band of the night, YES AND MAYBE, made up of a Scot and a Frenchmen they began writing together in 2022 and have promised an album release this year, Train To Nowhere being the title, they only have one release on the streaming platforms in God Isn’t Real so it is all fresh music for us tonight and it is delightful on the ears as they work through a half-hour of indie-inspired songs. 8/10
The main reason we headed to the all-dayer was for Glasgow band Bottle Rockets and they didn’t disappoint! We saw them play a sold-out show in this very venue in 2024 and the performance was flawless, tonight’s set was around the thirty-five minute mark but that was enough time for Kenzi Murray (vocals), John Tamburrini (guitar), Andrew Cummings (bass) and Sam Rae (drums) to showcase a few new tracks. They also higlighted some more established ones such as Community Service, Limerance and personal favourite Winter Baby, new song Video Call is also on the set and sounded great. Vocalist Kenzi is cool, calm and collected throughout the performance and some of the guitar playing on the new tracks makes us look forward to hearing them once released, could there possibly be a debut album on the horizon from Bottle Rockets? We hope so! It won’t be long until music fans latch on to this band and when they do watch them rise. 10/10
The Road To The Great Escape was a very successful event that we are glad we came along to and the crowd were respectable and responded well to each band that took to the stage.
Written by: Alan Brown
