National Park @ The Vic Café, Glasgow School of Art, 11:02:98

Those who talked and shouted through National Park's set should be subjected to some kind of very severe punishment, because theirs is music that deserves an awed silence. Glasgow bands are good at being wee and squeaky and cute and knocking about playgrounds wearing hand-knitted jumpers, but few of them ever even attempt this kind of scope; this is a great big heart-rending sweep of sound, all cymbals and clashing guitars and vastness.

The emotional breadth and impact of these songs, the effortless balance of almost uncomfortably intimate moments of hush with all-out blissful guitar noise, recalls Spiritualized or early Jesus and Mary Chain; John Hogarty's lyrics, audible only in snatches, are fragments of some epic, tragic, narrative, while the country-tinged guitar solos and haunting minor chord melodies evoke a landscape considerably grander and more desolate than that of the Vic café.

This is music to leave you with a lump in your throat. This is a Glasgow take on a Wim Wenders film soundtrack. This is, above all, something you should seek out and experience very soon.

Hannah McGill