Prides are three young men from Glasgow who have not let the fact that they’re “as rock and roll as a flannel” (their words) stand in the way of stadium-sized ambitions. If you’ve heard their single Messiah – they performed it at the Commonwealth Games last year; it cannot be unheard – you’ll recognise the paradigm of Bastille in their driving keyboard lines, compressed snares and non-specific choruses (“I want to hold it... I want to feel...”). Vocalists/instrumentalists Stewart Brock and Callum Wiseman, and drummer/producer Lewis Gardiner would probably prefer to cite the synth rock that Simple Minds and Tears for Fears used to pummel arenas with in the mid-1980s, and they reproduce it with some facility. What makes it unbearable is the horrible X-Factor sheen of the delivery. Still, it’s sure to turn the heads of sentimental festival-goers, compilers of sporting montage sequences and Brit Awards judges before long.
