Dylan John Thomas

Forty million streams and 60,000 tickets can’t be wrong. The numbers don’t lie, and nor do the tunes – impassioned songs of love and regret, faith and fatalism, rejection and connection, realism and idealism.

After selling out six nights at the Barrowlands, Dylan John Thomas is Scotland’s worst kept musical secret. From pavement to arena, the DIY artist who did it all for himself, all the way to a sell-out homecoming show at Glasgow’s 14,300-capacity Ovo Hydro. A self-taught, multi-instrumentalist, mainlining the old-time rhythm of Johnny Cash (“boom-chicka-boom…”), the high-picking melodies of Simon & Garfunkel, the lyrical poeticism of Leonard Cohen – but all retooled with a twentysomething’s freshness, rigour and vigour, and the ardent fandom to match. Boom-chicka-BOOM.

His second album, Nothing Here Worth Taking, was recorded at Magic Box studios over the past year with Scotty Anderson (The Snuts). Entirely written by Dylan, with most of the instruments self-played too, the 10-track set is a rousing, carousing blast of brass, blues, banjo, piano and classic, retro-futureproof, singalong songwriting.