Summer Sessions

Bellahouston Park

Alanis Morissette

Wet Leg, Skunk Anansie, Lucia and the Best Boys

Tuesday 30th June 2026

Lucia and the Best Boys opened the show with a short four-track acoustic set. Save for ‘Perfectly Untrue’, the rest came from their forthcoming album Picking Petals. In this setup, the standout was Lucia’s voice. I cannot wait until they bring the full show to Barrowland in October.

Skunk Anansie brought the energy up a gear. Skin was in ferocious form, with the band behind her sounding incendiary throughout. Her conversations and manner with the crowd are such that you can’t help but lean in further, ready to hear her sermons between songs. Before ‘God Loves Only You’ she told the crowd they had written it in 2010, then gave the drummer a one-word cue: “detonate it.” ‘Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)‘ had the crowd hitting the high notes in the chorus alongside her. She talked about writing songs as the best therapy there is to failing relationships, the kind that outlasts whoever wronged you. ‘Weak’ followed. Then ‘Twisted (Everyday Hurts)’. The mosh pit opened up. Skin worked the barrier, then jumped into the crowd, complete with “Skin Cam” relaying the antics on the big screen behind the band. The closing salvo of this, then ‘Tear the Place Up’ was a perfect ending to a set that nobody wanted to end.

Wet Leg followed, leaning heavily on their second album. Rhian Teasdale led with the same confidence that has carried the band since day one. Though the loudest reactions came for the songs the wider crowd really knew, obvious hits like ‘Chaise Longue’ and ‘Mangetout’. The band have lost none of their prowess, but they lost the crowd’s attention between those peaks; this audience was not hanging on every word the way they had for Skin, or would for Alanis. On a bill built around 90s-rooted acts, they were the odd fit, younger, sharper-edged, less concerned with nostalgia. But they belonged in spirit if not in sound.

Then Alanis.

A video reel opened the set, tied to the themes she’s carried since Jagged Little Pill, a battle of choosing matriarchy over patriarchy stated one clip, an idea that healing the world starts with a reckoning between both. ‘Hand in My Pocket’ and ‘Right Through You’ followed, songs that arrived thirty years ago as a young woman’s fury and matriarchal defiance ripping up the rulebook. Statistics flashed on screen alongside them. Little has changed. She wasn’t letting that go. ‘Reasons Why I Drink‘ was third. One of my personal favourite songs, the tone from the opening salvo shifted in this moment.

Midway through the set, and in contrast to an otherwise electric show, the band moved to stools for a three-song acoustic run, ‘Rest’, ‘Mary Jane’ and ‘Perfect’, that left the park almost completely silent. Not the good-natured murmur of a crowd half-listening. Actually quiet. A crowd that size doesn’t go quiet by accident, and it’s rarer at outdoor shows than anyone wants to admit. Most crowds this size can’t stop talking to their mates for four bars.

‘Ironic’ came next to much delight. Here we have one line changed. Not “meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife,” as recorded, but “his beautiful husband” instead. Small edit, a nod to the progress behind it. The crowd caught it immediately and reacted with huge cheers.

The harmonica came out for ‘You Learn’ and did more work than it had any right to. ‘You Oughta Know’ closed the main set, sounding funkier than the record, closer to the Chilli Peppers than anyone remembers it being. ‘Uninvited’ and ‘Thank U’ closed the encore, ballads built for reckoning rather than release, and her voice carried every ounce of weight they needed. I said “Jesus Christ” out loud without meaning to.

Four frontwomen, one stage, apart in age and background. Nobody needed to say why that mattered. It said it itself.

I first saw Alanis Morissette in 1996, at the height of the Jagged Little Pill tour. It has taken thirty years, almost to the day, to see her again. She meant something different to me then than she does now, but not less.

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Gareth Fraser

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