SINGLE REVIEW: REFUWEEGEE (THE HOUSE ISN’T FULL) BY SON OF THE RIGHT HAND.

Some songs arrive as statements of intent, others as acts of solidarity. ‘Refuweegee (The House Isn’t Full)’, the new single from Glasgow’s Son of the Right Hand, is both. Drawing on the defiant scenes on Kenmure Street in 2021 when hundreds of Glaswegians surrounded an immigration van to stop the deportation of two of their neighbours, the track is both a battle cry against Britain’s hostile environment and a love letter to the city’s long history of resistance.

It opens with bagpipes and a thick Scottish accent, intoning images of flight, bullets, tides and homecoming: a folk-poetic call of war and welcome. Halfway through a field recording from Kenmure cuts through the production: “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.” By the end, the line “the house isn’t full” repeats like a mantra. The arrangement itself mirrors the tension: bagpipes crash against brooding synths and martial drums. Here pride and unease intersect grief and defiance.

This song is an archive of struggle. To hear the events of Kenmure Street echoed back in art is to remember a day when ordinary people, neighbours and strangers alike, stopped the state in its tracks. It’s also to recognise how fragile those victories are. 

Only last weekend, outside Falkirk’s Cladhan Hotel, where dozens of refugees are housed, I stood alongside counter-protesters facing down racists holding “stop the boats” signs and throwing tomatoes and eggs. To be Scottish is to live inside that contradiction: the proud solidarity of Kenmure and Pollokshields, but also the shame of seeing far-right bile fester in our streets.

What makes the single powerful is it doesn’t shy away from either reality. It insists that Glasgow is a city of welcome, but also that welcome is an ongoing project, something defended in action not just sentiment. The band put their money where their music is too, donating 20% of proceeds to local refugee charity Refuweegee.

Culture is often stripped of teeth, but artists like Son of the Right Hand are carving out space for music as praxis. The song is not easy listening, its pipes jar, its synths brood, but perhaps that’s the point. Protest isn’t supposed to be smooth. It’s meant to catch in your throat, to remind you that “the house isn’t full” is not just a lyric but a demand: there is always room for more.