The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Big guns out for Summer Sessions
The past and the present are set to collide in a big way when Scotland’s annual Summer Sessions gig extravaganza gets its Dundee debut this weekend.
Organised by former T in the Park promoters DF Concerts, the event follows in the wake of a series of big shows staged at Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens in recent years, and at its original home at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow.
With the Clydeside concerts on hold, Dundee’s being given the chance to step into the limelight with two days of outdoor crowdpullers at Slessor Gardens, headed up by ’90s veterans Noel Gallagher and Stereophonics.
Oasis founder Gallagher will be appearing tomorrow with his High Flying Birds backing band six years after co-headlining Summer Sessions in Glasgow. The guitar hero effectively went solo following the acrimonious split of Britpop legends Oasis in 2009, with his first High Flying Birds material.
A self-titled debut album and the singles The Death Of You And Me and AKA What A Life surfaced to largely positive reviews in late 2011.
His psychedelic-leaning outfit includes the Britpop icon’s former Oasis compadre Gem Archer as second guitarist and another long-time collaborator in drummer Chris Sharrock, as well as a host of other accomplices including scissor-playing backing singer Charlotte Marionneau.
Gallagher’s trio of charttopping “solo” albums to date include 2015’s Chasing Yesterday and Who Built The Moon?, with a first studio LP in five years due to appear later this year.
Best known for a string of hit singles going all the way back to 1996, including Maybe Tomorrow, Dakota and Graffiti On The Train, Sunday’s headliners at the waterfront venue, Stereophonics, have maintained a relatively high profile among Dundee’s music fans in recent years.
The Welsh rockers played at the Caird Hall as recently as last December, on top of a solo show by frontman Kelly Jones at the same venue back in September 2019. Raspy-voiced Kelly and his cohorts Richard Jones, Adam Zindani and Jamie Morrison most recently went to No 1 in March with their 12th studio album Oochya!
Summer Sessions are playing it safe with their choice of headliners, with massive crowds guaranteed to roll up to see both Gallagher – whose last Courier Country appearance at the BBC Biggest Weekend at Scone Palace in 2018 was disappointingly dreary – and the rather more energising ’Phonics.
Most prominent among the bands playing beneath this weekend’s big two are Irish pop rockers Inhaler.
The Dublin outfit have been hyped to the eyeballs over the past year or so, aided in no small way by having none other than U2 messiah Bono’s son Elijah Hewson as their lead singer. The four-piece’s debut album It Won’t Always Be Like This went straight to the top of the UK’S album charts last July.
They’ll be looking to seize their moment on the big Slessor stage by potentially stealing some of Gallagher’s thunder, with Glasgow troubadour Dylan John Thomas and upcoming Dundee songbird Theo Bleak also on tomorrow’s bill.
Nottingham songsmith Jake Bugg is supporting Stereophonics on Sunday, when there’s also a chance to catch indie rock favourites Circa Waves and fast-rising Glasgow noiseniks Voodoos.