Enjoying excellent sound in Edinburgh's finest live venue the touring sextet of The War On Drugs brought Lost In The Dream to a near sell-out Scottish crowd for the second time in only four months.

Appearing before a crescent channel shape backdrop of ever changing colours there was at times a feeling that you were watching a performance from some Seventies TV showcase, something the transparent orange drumkit with Charlie Hill sat behind it like a diminutive John Bonham did little to dispel. Seldom has a drummer drawn my attention from the foreground players as much as his performance did last night, although having an elevated position from which to watch the show obviously made that easier.

Not that it was easy to take your eyes off of Adam Granduciel as he delivered a performance that really brought the guitar work from Lost In The Dream and Slave Ambient to its obvious limit. Not fully experiencing an album until you witness it's tracks delivered live was certainly the feeling you gained right from the start. Having apparently been a bit off form and irritated by photographers at the tour's Newcastle show he was totally relaxed and enjoyed an ongoing dialogue with the audience about ice cream, nut allergies and the correct pronunciation of the city's name.

As the Usher Hall isn't the sort of venue to seek two crowds per night with a club after gigs there was no sense of the band being rushed to wind things up and, including the encore, there was practically two hours of performance which is pretty good going by any reckoning. Criticism from fellow audience members on the way out of the show focused mainly on the front-loading of the set with the band's faster numbers, causing the final third of the main set and the encore to be mid-paced rather than building to a crescendo but the impression remains that the same size of gathering would turn out if they were to come back in another four months.

Support tonight came from Amen Dunes for half an hour. They also enjoyed very clear sound for their performance but were a bit dwarfed by the size of the hall and possibly a too laidback choice in terms of actually warming up the audience (or the 50% that bothered to be in the hall to see them), despite speeding things up as they went through their set. The slightly more intimate surroundings of the Liverpool Psychfest last year suited the likes of 'I Know Myself' (from current release Cowboy Worship) better but they didn't seem to mind.

Further images from the gig can be found here.

Twelve months have wrought a few changes to the Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. The Camp & Furnace venue now has a usable upstairs area, meaning there was a larger merch space and all food sales are now in the (fully cordoned off) exterior area, making for more audience space in the Furnace area. At least one more bar had been added inside as well as interior toilets, the Gents of which even had functioning sinks by day two. A lack of available tap water in the Blade Factory & the impossibility of bringing water bought on site back in whether opened or not were the only niggles across the weekend, other than those moans crowds always express about portaloos.

Most importantly the sound in the Furnace was vastly improved (i.e. clear & bright) from what was on offer last year. This made for thoroughly enjoyable sets in here on the Friday from Amen Dunes, the Allah-Las and the extremely youthful Pow! Amen Dunes’ expansive though Mogadon-strength sound benefited greatly from the space afforded them whilst the Allah-Las kind of went the other way, given that their sound is far more pop than psych and much lighter because of it. Pow! though were a riveting, short sharp punk blast to the system. Band names seldom come more apt.  

Our experience began though with catching the final couple of numbers in Spectres’ set in the Camp – a fitting introduction to proceedings given how fuzz-drenched their efforts were. Attendance was clearly up on last year (especially on Day Two) & this was nowhere more evident than in the Blade Factory. Whereas in 2013 you could more often than not wander in there at anytime during a performance and at least manage to see those on stage, let alone worm your way to the front of the crowd with not too much effort, this time around you were left craning your neck from back at the bar within less than a song’s length for practically every act.

As a result we heard far more of the filmic sounds of local act Barberos and the extended stoner wig-outs of Black Bombaim (like Spectres another perfect exemplar of the event’s core element) than we were able to catch sight of. Porto-based Jiboia, with their ethereal vocals allied to a Casio-&-kitchen-sink approach to their musical element, Proved very popular later on. Klaus Johan Grobe was the final act of the night in here, enjoying a dedicated crowd & a more intimate space than he was afforded last year which allowed for a greater appreciation of his work this time around.

As expected the light shows in all three performance spaces were of the high quality in evidence in the past. Whilst the oil employing effects seemed to have been handed over to machines in the Camp the projections at the rear of the stage were as retina defying as could be hoped for and the Furnace stage lights relied on far fewer eye level strobes, making for a less confrontational and more inclusive atmosphere. The Vacant Lots, The Early Years, Young Husband and The Besnard Lakes therefore all benefited from backdrops ranging from the sinister to the insane via the spaced out.

The Vacant Lots’ electronica-meets-original-rock ‘n’ roll sound was a big hit whilst London’s Early Years continued their return to live performance with as intense and motorik a set as you’d expect from these original pioneers of the capital’s resurgent krautrock scene an almost unbelievable eight years ago. Young Husband are more than just a pair of good sideburns – classic shoegaze influences were artfully melded with their own melodic leanings provided the perfect jumping off point for The Besnard Lakes to carry the crowd over from Friday to Saturday. What, after all, is there not to like about a band whose bass player sports an Iron Maiden guitar strap? Jace Lasek was clearly eager to get into it as the soundchecking compelled him to ball "quit fuckin' around an' let's do this!" Harshly described later as sounding like "late-Simple Minds with more bombast" theirs was a set of power & melody that left the lighter elements of their sound on the shelf for the duration. An uplifting climax to the opening day.