Inside the Scottish Music Scene

If 2009 was Scotland’s cultural homecoming, then 2010 is the year its musicians need to pack their bags and finally move out.

For the bands that enthralled local gig-goers last year, the next twelve months are critical. Sure, the swollen cyber-palms of backslapping bloggers suggests a limited degree of success beckons, but true worth can only really be gauged if the tartan-kilted nest is vacated for a sojourn to more robust climes down south.

One glance at the upcoming gigs of our lauded young ‘uns shows a burning want to remain within the ball-court that begins and ends on both sides of the M8. Granted, there’s an admirable grit in believing success lies beyond fellating the barnacled cock of Big Ben, but even if the thrill of being sucked into a whorehouse of in-store shows and vacuous T4 slots isn’t your game, the possibility of discovering new audiences should be incentive enough.

In recent years, the most successful (and by successful I mean in terms of collecting critical adulation) Scottish bands to seep into the national hemisphere have been 4AD’s Broken Records and FatCat Records trio The Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Yes, they may be enrolled on national labels but these acts had already proven themselves as capable wooers of unfamiliar crowds; each band confident in its ability to unravel the crossed arms of cynics based purely on their music. And it’s this sort of confidence the new breed of Scottish act has to exude in 2010. They need to move away from the Scottish music scene’s cotton-wooled bosom and furrow a pathway through the UK, not just across the Central Belt. Almost certainly, many will fail and return to familiar haunts to be consoled by familiar faces but, hell, at least they tried; at least they can say they gave it a stab, even if they didn’t draw blood.

Positively, 2009 saw the likes of Meursault, There Will Be Fireworks and Panda Su make their first tentative footsteps south – 2010 needs to see this turn into a concerted effort on a broader scale. Many a promising Scottish act has rotted in the gutter because of a lack of national exposure. To avoid joining them, the new batch of Scottish music makers needs to grab its future by the balls because, quite frankly, no one else will.

So, this inaugural dip into the Scottish music scene is not a start of year tiplist. It’s more a roll call of the bands that are closest to being ready to step up and make the breakthrough from local heroes to national runners.

Conquering Animal Sound
The tightly woven swell of Conquering Animal Sound provides the perfect antidote to this year’s Siberian weather front. As enchanting as a pixie snake charmer, the resplendent chimes created by Jamie Scott and Anneke Kampman have caused a drooling melee in the ranks of Scotland’s indie press. Whooshing to the gentle hum of Scott’s deft guitar, each arrangement is blessed by Kampman’s pin dropping mew. With a mixtape down and a tour of the UK to come, you’ll soon find yourself being conquered by this animal sound.
www.myspace.com/conqueringanimalsound

Dead Boy Robotics
Like running your nails against a grater to pulsing tribal rhythms, Dead Boy Robotics (DBR) are very much an acquired taste. As co-founders of the semi-defunct BEAR Scotland collective Mike and Gregor were left toiling in the wake of their more accessible counterparts. But 2009 saw the synth punk duo crank up the engine from nihilistic electro-boys to resplendent lug-rapists, coarsely running against the grain of Edinburgh’s bulbous folk scene. With a new EP of abrasive hexagonal-sonics due to be unleashed soon, 2010 promises to be the year Dead Boy Robotics shunt the gear-sticks into overdrive.
www.myspace.com/deadboyrobotics

Dupec
If We Were Promised Jetpacks are the delinquent younger brother of Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad, then Dupec are undoubtedly their intellectual cousin. Bestowing a scree of math signatures and hexagonal percussion over James Yuill’s emotive tones, the Auld Reekie trio’s first two EPs helped soil the already befouled underpants of Scottish bloggers. Now with support slots alongside Rollo Tomassi and Crystal Antlers peeking over the horizon, as well as a much needed trek south, 2010 should be the year slip from the shadows of their more renowned, if lesser accomplished, compatriots.
www.myspace.com/dupec

Meursault
It may have bookended the Noughties, but Meursault’s Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues represented a new dawn on Scotland’s musical terra firma. Scruffy and ill-fitting, every cut embodied the fabled do-it-together ethos of Edinburgh’s Bowery congregation. Live, Neil Pennycook’s inimitable warble strikes the first blow; his masterful bellow strangling the airwaves just as readily as it soothes them. But it’s the group’s concentrated melodics that’s the real draw. By spinning together the frayed ends of parochial folk with wiry electronica, Meursault bleed a sound quite unlike anything in Scotland. Now with album number two on the horizon, this is a band that now has to step over the cusp.
www.myspace.com/meursaulta701

Mitchell Museum
When Mitchell Museum breached the lower echelons of Scotland’s toilet circuit last year, gas canister in hand (seriously), a jumble of words filtered into the brainboxes of easily amused hipsters: Collective. Animal. Wannabes. Thankfully, the Glasgow quartet proved to be so much more. A gargling waterboard of effects may cornerstone their effervescent cacophonies, but the bubblegum melodies and flash-gun rhythms cut a more populous pathway than Baltimore’s finest. Their debut album should rear its cranium in early spring and, with it, expect your ear sockets to be plugged with nothing else.
www.myspace.com/mitchellmuseum

Yahweh
Yahweh must be churning bile at all the Arab Strap comparisons. Desperate for a new miserable mainstay to call their own, musos up here have been flinging the tenuous simile Lewis Cook’s way over the past year. But buried within the Glaswegian’s cascading synths lies a beautiful songwriting accord that’s more akin to the bearded lilting of Casiotone’s Owen Ashworth than Aiden Moffat’s monotonic yarns. Either way, Cook’s star is on the rise and his intelligent, heel-gazing pop is coming your way – be sure of that.
www.myspace.com/thisisyahweh