Godspeed: Vinyl LP Glasvegas

GLASVEGAS return with their triumphant fourth album ‘Godspeed’, which will be released digitally on 2nd April 2021 – the music we all need right now. The latest single Shake The Cage (für Theo) sums up the dazzlingly eclectic sound of Godspeed perfectly – this is an electronic barrage with devastatingly powerful spoken word lyrics which call to mind I’m Gonna Get Stabbed from the band’s astonishing debut.

The single is perfectly positioned at the end credits of Alan McGee’ new movie ‘Creation Stories’, written by Irvine Welsh and executively produced by Danny Boyle. Hand picked as the only current track to grace the music mogul’s biopic, it is a kind of dystopian, free-associative ‘Choose life’ sermon (’Stand on a wave / calculate quantum mechanics / Surf, dance / Believe in chance”) set to the escalating dread and claustrophobia of a John Carpenter murder-chase.

Launched on their own label Go Wow Records, Godspeed takes place, “all on the same night, just as the sun’s going down,” The album presents a fragmented portrait of a single evening’s events, one James half-jokingly compares to‘American Graffiti’, director George Lucas’ 1973 coming-of-age classic, “where everything happens in one night, and nothing major goes down plot-wise, but you still love the characters and the world.” Each song in its own right as diverse as the next, pulling James Allan into each world with free reign to experiment in this latest masterpiece.

James Allan is first and foremost an artist and his refusal to be bound by convention, by rules, by accepted limitations, by society or by boundaries of any kind makes Glasvegas a band who at times defy categorisation. What other band could be responsible for such diverse tracks as Shake The Cage (für Theo), Keep Me A Space and My Body Is A Glasshouse (A Thousand Stones Ago), taking examples only from the Godspeed singles you’ve heard so far?

Simply, none. There can be only one – and they are Glasvegas.

For James, who has spent an agonising seven years crafting this album, from writing to demoing, recording to producing and engineering, starting when he was living in Sweden, and finished it in lockdown in his spare-room studio in Glasgow’s east end. That ethos of listening only to what his heart and soul tell him is the key to everything. It’s the only rule he will even consider listening to. He said: “If you follow your heart and your instincts, it might be difficult and you’ll trip yourself up at times – but usually, it works out. Making this album has probably made me understand myself a bit better as a person, to be honest. And it’s the hardest I’ve ever worked on anything in my life.”

From strident techno to joyous singalong anthems, Godspeed captures that quintessential Glasvegas essence – incomparable, uncategorisable, and ultimately music that actually means something.

For that alone, welcome back Glasvegas – we really need you right now.