Kathryn Joseph, Glasgow review: 'songs of devastating heartbreak and witchy weirdness'

Roll up for the Kathryn Joseph Show: songs of devastating heartbreak and witchy weirdness, interspersed with stage chat which would make a working men’s club comedian blush. Except this time she has a sidekick, Lomond Campbell, who can match her in music and banter.

“Here's another sad song about f***ing,” announced Joseph in her wicked way. Without missing a beat, Campbell added “…my dad” and Joseph shot back, “I wish” - all by way of introducing the lovely quivering ballad HOLD., a song you might even call vaguely commercial in her singular canon.

Joseph has accessed her inner noisecore queen on new album WE WERE MADE PREY. In acknowledgement, she was standing at her keyboard for a change, facing off with Campbell on synth effects while a golden lightshow of some wattage fired off behind her. Together, they mustered WOLF., a throbbing gothic synthscape of John Carpenter proportions and the propulsive piano pattern and glitchy beats of HARBOUR.

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Beldina Odenyo Onassis, aka Heir of the Cursed, was remembered on the sparse but resonant BEL (II) with Joseph “speaking in tongues because that's what she would have liked”, while the bare but visceral ROADKILL. escalated to Gary Numanoid industrial punk levels.

There was more, much more, where that came from as the pair rounded off the set with some selections from an EP of Campbell remixes which transformed the tough matter of Joseph’s previous album, for you who are wronged, into something close to synth pop bangers.

The audience appeared reluctant to join the dance reverie but as the hands-in-the-air uplift of until the truth of you and the house music modulation of long gone rang out, the prospect of Kathryn Joseph as a “featuring” vocalist on a rave pop tune did not seem so far fetched.

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