Photo Credit: Liam Woolcock
Just two days after seeing Adelaide duo Teenage Joans at Liverpool’s Sound City Festival and having a lovely chat with them we now see the band play their first headline show outside of Australia and what an entertaining show they put on at Glasgow’s Nice n Sleazy on Sauchiehall Street. Our interest in the band was sparked a few months ago when we saw that they were supporting Biffo Clyro for a few shows in Australia, they have also toured with Nothing But Thieves, The Foo Fighters and Sum 41.
It’s a later start tonight with support band Hell Hotel from Brighton taking to the stage at 8.30pm, the band had a ten hour journey to get here so we had to make it worth the long journey. The music of Hell Hotel can be described as emo or alternative rock and it is loud, we had to quickly grab a pair of ear buds from the bar to tone down the decibel levels a little! Demi Jay on vocals and Tom Maxfield on guitar enliven the small but enthusiastic crowd working through a set that included latest release Am I Nothing Now? and the excellent Smile. The guitarist comes out to the crowd for last track Promises ending the set on a high, Hell Hotel left a good impression on the crowd. 7/10
Teenage Joans broke through in Adelaide in 2018 with debut single By The Way followed by their most popular song Three Leaf Clover in 2020 and later in 2023 debut album The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest was released. The duo Tahlia Borg (vocals & drums) and Cahli Blakers (guitar) appeared on stage at 9.30pm with the crowd having grown somewhat by then. We would be treated to a few new unreleased songs tonight being played live for the first time … and the announcement that album number two was complete and would be released in the near future. The set began with an introduction audio before Hospital Bed and Coming Up From Hell – the latter song was released only today and sounded great live – next up was Candy Apple that had a few enthusiastic crowd members jumping along while Bandit had some decent guitar riffs from Cahli Blakers who was very chatty throughout the set, telling us that they had tried the popular Scottish Irn Bru soft drink today.
Cahli lets us know that they find it hard to understand our Scottish accents and comments “this dude interviewed us the other day and we could barely understand a word he was saying”. That dude was me! Having interviewed Teenage Joans at Sound City only two days previously we then draw attention the fact that we are here and the crowd then duly beak out in applause … bizarre situation or what! Anyway back to the music, they ask if it’s ok to play some new songs and this is met with a resounding “yes” from the fans and we get a taster of some tracks from the upcoming album namely Soft Spot, Superglue, My Melting Comet and Strange Weird Dream, we can confirm that all four of the new songs sounded great and noticed that there is an element of heavier guitar work in there too so we expect album number two to be louder than ever. We are taught some lyrics to My Melting Comet and join in with the line “my little sunshine glow after midnight”.
The twelve song set ends with three from The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest – Sweet Things Rot, Ruby Doomsday and 5 Things I Can Taste being the songs – ending a very lively show where the crowd encouraged the duo at every opportunity. Look out for our interview with Teenage Joans in the near future. The tour continues in England and an appearance at The Great Escape Festival ends the bands time on our shores but we are sure to see them again soon when the album is released. 9/10
Written by: Alan Brown
