Wednesday 06/06/07 Tiny Dancers, Slow Club, Make Model @ King Tuts, Glasgow

With a string of festival appearances lined up, it’s obvious that Make Model are on the rise. Half an hour of the Glasgow based six piece’s polished, kaleidoscopic power pop shows why. They’ve got a great knack of conjuring up catchy hooks and lush male/female harmonies that bounce around your head in a cheerful way, assimilating God knows how many styles as they go. However, despite the disparate genres that flow through their work, at heart Make Model are a big shiny, thumping pop band of the highest order, especially on stompers like ‘Sickness’ and ‘Czech Neck’.

Slow Club aren’t as immediately easy on the ear as Make Model but do have some charm. The duo’s rootsy pop has a melancholic feel to it and despite the fact that vocalist/guitarist Charlie is a dead ringer for all-round irritant Colin Murray, there’s enough in the way of quirky melodies to see the band through. Sadly, a blandness does get in the way of their songs at times, a dryness that, while not dreadful, means that Slow Club’s music is nice enough to listen to in passing but not worth further investigation.

If Slow Club were quirky, then Tiny Dancers are firmly piloted at the mainstream. This is stuff to conquer the airwaves, to nestle onto supermarket shelves and to attach itself to TV ad campaigns. Indeed, listening to Tiny Dancers makes you wonder if they’ve deliberately set out to be as un-trendy as possible. Their lineage goes back to the Beach Boys, the Band and the Byrds, out and out summertime sunshine pop. There’s a bit of a glam stomp and some folk whimsy chucked in too but that doesn’t distract from their poppiness. Yet, that isn’t a bad thing, especially when they can produce tracks like ‘Hannah We Know’, an addictive slice of energetic, joyous exuberance. Or ‘Big Stones’, which takes a glam riff as an impetus and rattles along. Adding to the sense of fun is the band decorating the stage with pictures, flowers and a stuffed tiger, while tossing balloons into the crowd too.