Hailing from Philadelphia, Greg Mendez is making not just his Glasgow debut tonight, but his Scottish debut. Quietly unassuming, Mendez takes to the stage and sits on one of two chairs set out. He begins his set solo, opening with Donut Shop, a heartbreaking track where he sings the words \u2018I\u2019ll take care of you \/ Until you don\u2019t want me to\u2019. Setting the tone for the evening, the crowd hangs on every word he sings; early into his set, the air con units are fortunately switched off so as not to drown out an incredibly intimate performance.<\/p>\n
Mendez is joined on stage by V \u2013 who accompanies on keys that emulate an organ, as well as bass guitar; they had sourced the instrument over Instagram that day. Before V joins, Mendez takes a turn on the keys on First Time, taken from last year’s First Time \/ Alone\u00a0EP. It\u2019s heavy, but delicate at the same time. The vocals are fraught with emotional weight, calling to mind Elliott Smith.\u00a0Long Division sees Mendez tackle beautiful, soaring harmonies with V, with tongue-in-cheek lyrics like, ‘You would’ve told ’em they could fuck right off’. It\u2019s not angry, however; there\u2019s something so profound about the performance, with gently finger-picked songs played on acoustic guitar \u2013 it\u2019s easy to feel totally entranced.\u00a0Given that, there\u2019s not much banter or crowd interaction \u2013 at one point Mendez takes a swig of a can of original Irn-Bru, describing it as \u201cbubblegum root beer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Overall, despite the warmth outside, tonight’s show feels almost autumnal or wintry, like something you’d listen to in a state of yearning. Mendez\u2019s songs are short but deeply impactful \u2013 so it feels like you\u2019ve been gut-punched emotionally, with little time to recover between songs. When the intro for Maria starts towards the end of the set, someone in the crowd goes \u201caw yes!\u201d The song, highly praised by Pitchfork<\/a>, is perhaps his most recognised track. Again, it’s swift but still incredibly raw and poignant. Greg Mendez delivers an understated, ethereally lo-fi performance that feels incredibly special for those lucky enough to bear witness to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hailing from Philadelphia, Greg Mendez is making not just his Glasgow debut tonight, but his Scottish debut. Quietly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-376569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115098540398901214","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}