The Rifles – Glasgow Òran Mór (Gig review)

In the mid 2000’s the UK music scene was buzzing with a plethora of bands that saw indie artists enjoy their biggest renaissance since the height of Britpop. Bands like Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, and Kaiser Chiefs all secured commercial success whereas the vast majority who failed to make a mark on the charts quickly folded. 

The Rifles appear to be an exception, despite 2006’s No Love Lost failing to conquer the top 40, here we are 20 years later for an anniversary tour, in a sold-out Òran Mór no less. One thing The Rifles have managed to rely on is a fiercely loyal fan base, part of this stems from them embracing mod culture and subsequently being given the stamp of approval from the modfather himself, Paul Weller. This is evident tonight with feather cuts and Fred Perry attire featuring heavily in the audience.

No Love Lost spawned five singles, and the two opening tracks tonight fall into that category, ‘She’s Got Standards’ and ‘Local Boy’ get things off to a raucous start with the Saturday night crowd confidently singing along.

Between almost every song a large section of the audience chant ‘Deano, Deano’ in reference to Dean Mumford on the keys. This brings a puzzled Lucas Crowther on guitar to ask ‘what’s so good about Deano? You are treating him like some sort of superstar’.

As is customary with anniversary gigs, the album gets played from start to finish and is finished off with a greatest hits encore. Tonight The Rifles choose to stick almost exclusively to their 2006 and output and follow up the album with B-sides and some chosen covers that they played at the time, (The Cure, The Specials, and The Jam). Frontman Joel Stoker is particularly delighted to see a couple fully embrace the track ‘Fat Cat’ and states that it’s made his night, given it is one of the band’s more obscure tracks.

‘Romeo and Julie’ from 2009’s Great Escape closes the set with aplomb and there is a suggestion from Crowther that their sophomore album will also get the anniversary treatment, ‘You can hear more of these in three years’. Based on tonight’s showing we can only hope they do.