Right from the off the Velvet Underground influences noticed when Ultimate Painting supported Parquet Courts earlier in the year are firmly to the fore on their debut album: the title track's awash with them. As is 'Talking Blues'. Thankfully the rest of the album is far less derivative (although it should also be pointed out that the aforementioned tracks aren't weak in any sense).

The band's own voice is particularly strong on the likes of the sparse 'Riverside' and the mild melancholy of 'Rolling In The Deep'. Given the pedigree of the players involved in the project this is hardly surprising and, whilst the album never gains the heights of the more raucous moments which were on display at that gig back in May, the song's are generally mature and work together well as a whole package.

Whether the intervening months have found the band deliberately reining back their more rock star urges to refine the recorded versions of their compositions or the live sphere is a place where they make the effort to toy with the sonic possibilities of otherwise restrained material is unknown but the likes of 'Jane' certainly hold within them the potential to be cranked up and belted out on stage.

As experiments with your mates go then this, much like The Last Shadow Puppets outing, is a well crafted and repeatedly enjoyable listen that has evident appeal to fans of melodic guitar pop far beyond the bounds of the guys' other work in Mazes & Veronica Falls. 

Ultimate Painting is released on October 27 and available from amazon & iTunes.

Much like the city’s subway Parquet Courts have circled back to Glasgow to kick off their European tour for new album Sunbathing Animals, having played the last date of their previous tour there on Hallowe’en 2013.

Playing for an hour straight, with no encore, the newer songs are predictably a little less well known by the crowd, which spends the first half of the show largely static but by the time we’re graced by fiery renditions of the likes of ‘Light Up Gold’ there’s a serious amount of pogoing and general pit mayhem at the front of the stage. Oddly, despite having paid good money to get in and probably shelling out the eye watering £4.50 for a pint, one crowd member feels the need to heckle bassist Sean Yeaton at one point by telling him to shut up in no uncertain terms. By the end of that encounter though it’s band & 99% of fans 1, dickhead nil.

Parquet Courts suffer a bit from less than clear final vocals for the bulk of their set but musically there are no flaws in 60 minutes packed with the maximum amount of songs and the bare minimum of chat, other than that mention of the circular nature of their kicking things off here, a mention of the summer solstice and a possible dig at the timing of the show by way of mentioning that it’ll still be daylight at the end of it, something that anyone travelling from outside Glasgow by public transport could be quite happy for, given the venue’s distance from the city centre. They were great tonight and no doubt will only improve on that as the tour progresses.

Tonight’s only support act were newcomers Ultimate Painting, playing their first ever show. Not that you’d have known without being told as they’re a tight unit that has clearly spent a lot of time playing together and working on their songs, one of which may have been called ‘Freak Beard’ (that muddy vocal issue struck them too). With a sound taking in elements of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and Ride theirs was a good performance, let down only by the fact that some of their songs are a tad on the plodding side. Their livelier numbers are though cracking songs and exhibit enough variety that by rights should see them go from strength to strength through the coming months and bring them to the stage as headliners in the not too distant future, should their schedules for Veronica Falls & Mazes allow.