Sad Songs Say So Much: Glasvegas, 'Glasvegas'

IF AN UNINTELLIGIBLE brogue spits depressed lyrics through a forest of reverbed guitars, will anyone become emotionally available enough to understand them?

In the case of Scotland's Glasvegas, the answer is yes — eventually.

While the band's self-titled debut should come with subtitles, the songs' dark emotional cores, James Allan's deep velvet voice and sonic mixture of early Jesus and Mary Chain-like chord changes, wall-of-sound production and stadium-rock reach will keep the tunes spinning through your brain. At some point, you'll decipher Allan's Glasgow accent and connect with the emotional tales he tells, inspired by the rough-and-tumble Dalmarnock neighborhood, a dense enclave defined by working-class culture, brutal knife fights and the sort of economic deprivation Americans associate with neglected inner-cities.

This audio cousin to "Trainspotting" is filled with stories so dire that it feels strange to croon along with to songs such as "Flowers and Football Tops" — written after the 2004 kidnapping and racially motivated knife murder of Glaswegian teen Kriss Donald — or "Daddy's Gone," a song about divorce that covers the bases, from heartbroken anger to angry heartbreak. The bleakness continues on "Past, Present and Future" (which seems to be about rape), "Geraldine" (about a social worker) and "Stabbed" (guess).

But Allan's talent for words is matched by his melodic skills, making "Glasvegas" one of the saddest sets of sing-along songs since Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks."