Their hype on their sleeves

Not every teenage boy in Dundee tonight is parked up outside the Lidl store, comparing spoilers and waiting for the next batch of entrants in the Tayside's Shortest Skirt Contest to trollop past – although many are.

But many more are crammed inside Fat Sam's and counting down the minutes until the club resounds to the hot, sweet, mournful sounds of… Westlife?

OK, not really Westlife, but in the VIP lounge at 'Fatty's' the four members of Glasvegas are perched on high stools and bassist Paul Donoghue just can't resist the impersonation. "And then we jump doon like this," he says, "and slip so f****n' effortlessly into the key change: 'YOU RAISE ME UP!'…"

Three hours from now, such corny stagecraft will have no place in the Glasvegas show. Caroline McKay will produce a drum sound as tall as a tower block. Rab Allan will produce a guitar sound so fuzzy-coated you could sell it alongside deep-fried Mars bars. And James Allan, his cousin and the leader of the band with the incredible hype, will sing his heart out while a blue spotlight throws his silhouette on to the back wall. His hair has been gelled horizontally, and he's stooping.

The stoop is fascinating. He stands this way for photographs, one Adidas Samba in front of the other, but on stage there's a sadness to the pose. It's like he's a benign silent horror-movie monster. No, it's like he's weighed down from holding aloft a small boy – but where's the boy?

I may be getting carried away here. Glasvegas's showstopper is 'Daddy's Gone', a song about absent fathers featuring the heart-tugging line: "Remember times when you put me on your shoulders/How I wish it was forever you would hold us." But if I'm getting carried away, listen to this lot…

"I love that song, I love Glasvegas," says Ross Coutts, 16, from Livingston. "There's not another band that can touch them for passion." Scott McLaughlin, 17, from Kirkcaldy, loves 'Daddy's Gone' too, adding: "My dad's not gone but every time I hear it I want to cry."

From tomorrow, fans can buy a whole album's worth of Glasvegas passion, sung in the local vernacular, so "dad" is "da". As we've established, this isn't Westlife – it's Eastlife: Glasgow's East End in its glory and its glaur. Violence (with knives, with fathers cheerleading) is a theme and 'Stabbed' and 'Go Square Go' seem to have been issues almost before they've been songs, in the same way that Glasvegas have been

a phenomenon first,

and a band second. Glasvegas, the 11-track album, brings welcome perspective and knits everything together; Van Gogh inspired the front cover.

So what exactly is it like? Big, melodramatic, gallus, doo-woppy (that's 'Lonesome Swan'), reverby, sentimental, funfair-cheapo ('It's My Own Cheating Heart'), frequently thrilling, always rooted – and unafraid to finish with a holy racket of guitar distortion, a condemnation of racism and sectarianism, and ice-cream-van yearning as a metaphor for a desire for a better society ('Ice Cream Van').

Earlier, back in the dressing-room where there's Buckfast in

the fridge, James stuffs some crisps into pitta bread and tells me he's "fair chuffed" with it.

"The day after recording finished (in New York] we were driving round the Dakota building in a 1949 black Cadillac and I'd just bought a new Italian suit," he says. We were done and maybe we should have been crying but we were all chilled oot. We'd nailed it." And how did he feel when he was finally given the album to have and to hold? "It was like the scene in Pulp Fiction when the briefcase is opened and everything goes white. I could hear choirs of angels!"

Right now, James is sporting a grey hoodie but we cannot photograph him like this, sitting behind a Doritos mountain, and must wait until the entire band is dressed in Johnny Cash black. Lots of groups are controlling about image but – because everyone wants a piece of Glasvegas right now – the band could claim they're merely taking what is theirs, although they seem to be coping with the hullabaloo pretty well.

"We cannae complain," adds James. "Other bands who're struggling to get heard would justifiably say: 'F**k off!'" The other members of Glasvegas crack jokes. James is more serious, although he has his moments, such as when I ask what it's like to have quit one dream job for another and he replies: "You mean the plumbing warehoose?" I mean football, of course – he used to play professionally. "There are similarities between being in a dressing-room before a game and being here," he continues, "but I prefer this because there's more freedom of expression. As soon as footballers make money they're wired up and turned into robots. Still, I'm glad I got to try both. There's not a day goes by when I don't think: 'You lucky bastard.'"

None of the guys in the band has ever voted and James says: "I wish I was less ignorant about politics." But his songs are full of the politics of the street as they affect many working-class Scots. 'Stabbed' isn't about the 'Blade Britain' of recent tabloid headlines; Paul points out that knife violence has been a Glasgow problem for far longer. 'Flowers And Football Tops' isn't a direct tribute to racially-motivated murder victim Kriss Donald – "If it was, I'd have made it much more beautiful," says James – but that track touched the lad's family and that made its composer the proudest he's ever been.

Tonight at Fattys, 'Daddy Gone' will get the biggest roar, the loudest singalong, and maybe it always will. "That's the one that makes folk pour their hearts out to us," reveals Rab. "It's sweet but some of them are really lost and I'm never sure what to say." James confirms that the man who inspired it, his daddy, is still alive. "It's nobody's business but I'll tell you: I don't know if he's heard the song but I love my dad. I just don't see enough of him."

James sees plenty of his sister Denise – she's become Glasvegas's manager since quitting work as an addiction counsellor along with colleague Geraldine Lennon, who now sells £15 T-shirts at the gigs. This is the 'Geraldine' of the song and she says: "When I heard it I was completely blown away. It's probably going to be the most special thing that anyone will ever do for me."

Amid the hype, everything about Glasvegas has been analysed and over-analysed, including a name some think is naff ("It's sugary and it rolls off the tongue – like Knight Rider," reckons James) and accents which make the Proclaimers sound as Scottish as Hinge & Bracket ("We think we're beautiful and exotic!"). Glasvegas, the phenomenon, makes proper assessment difficult; with the album imminent, they're looking forward to being Glasvegas, the band, each in their own way. Paul can't wait until the tour rider gets more decadent – "Nae mair Toffee Crisps, lets have puppies!" – but James is just trying to freeze-frame every moment.

"One day I'll be 50. If I tell my son I used to be in a band he's going to say: 'Aye right.' I want to be able to tell him all about it." Hoisted on his shoulders, of course.

Glasvegas (Columbia) is released tomorrow.

www.myspace.com/glasvegas