John Grant, Glasgow review: 'he can get away with almost anything'

With a voice as rich and reassuring as John Grant’s you can get away with almost anything. Moody noodling followed by vocoder, keytar and slap bass to kick off a two-hour set in your favourite venue? Yes, even that. The playful electro funk of All That School For Nothing, from new album The Art of The Lie, sat comfortably with the wry vitriol of an older favourite Black Belt, with its Soft Cell-like synthesizers and metronomic bassline.

Caustic humour runs through Grant’s music like a coping mechanism but the mode of delivery changes and sometimes he just needed to leave those synth squiggles and hip wiggles, not to mention his stylishly moustachioed band to one side, don a kimono and emote solo at the piano in classic balladeer style, offering succour for the coming storm of the US election with the stunning Glacier and his take on an autumnal funeral march with another new song Zeitgeist.

He reached back to his debut solo album for a spine-tingling rendition of Marz, a sublime, soaring ballad coated in the same quirky modular synthesizer sounds which turned the desolate It Doesn't Matter To Him into an alternative torch song and made Pale Green Ghosts such an opulent and, yes, haunting experience.

The world of the MOR balladeer and the alt synth pop wit came together beautifully on the proggy Child Catcher, with bonus guitar shredding, while the funky set closer Chicken Bones featured some particularly tasty funk keyboards.

Grant returned to the stage in a choir robe to hymn his friend Laura Lou before closing the show with perennial favourite GMF (standing for something pretty rude), another primo example of his ability to make an audience snort in recognition while losing themselves in a melodic reverie.