Carla J Easton, Glasgow review: 'telling it like it is'

Carla J Easton, Rum Shack, Glasgow ★★★★

Carla J Easton is just telling it like it is. On her merchandise stall, she was selling a t-shirt where bore the legend This T-shirt Funds Music.

Thanks to rising costs, this was her first tour in eight years (on the road soundtrack: S Club 7).

But if touring has become an unaffordable luxury, Easton remains a prolific and determined artist, who has just released her fifth solo album, I Think That I Might Love You.

After 20 years as a keyboard player, Easton has taken on guitar, inspired by the female bands she profiled in her acclaimed documentary Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands. Now she can appreciate the pros and the perils of her increased opportunities to move on stage.

She has also recruited a four-piece indie band for a full, confident sound, as showcased on stomping opener Red Kites in the Sun and the instantly catchy Scotpop of Never Really Wanted to Stay.

READ MORE: Ray Lamontagne, Glasgow review: ‘abundantly soulful'

The deceptively named Really, Really, Really, Really Sad, co-written with cult twee pop artist Darren Hayman, was a little bit glam, a little bit girl group and all rollicking, while Let’s Make Plans for the Weekend was proper funky Friday night fare with a bubblegum pop chorus and Easton in silky vocal mode. Moth to a Flame reined in the pace but built in melodrama.

Easton rounded out her set with one of her “greatest non-hits”, the 80s-influenced Get Lost, as well as the epic chiming Number One from her band Poster Paints and Lights in the Dark, a track dating from the heady olden synth days, before she encored in the company of her guitarist Paul Kelly with a cover of Ivor Cutler’s I Worn My Elbows, transformed into a declamatory country rock number.

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