Meursault

Scotland’s music scene is in rude health. Bands are blooming like it’s spring-time and the support of bloggers and punters has created a biosphere of creativity. So, in the first of what’s to become a regular column, Billy Hamilton – co-editor of The Scotsman’s Under the Radar new music site – delves deep into its tartan-toned landscape. At the bottom of the post, you can download a free mixtape featuring all of the bands mentioned.

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

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There Will Be Fireworks‘ self titled debut was released last year to a sea of plaudits and accolades. With their visceral and anthemic songs, they make being a successful unsigned Scottish band look effortless.

We asked front man Nicky McManus a few questions about their follow-up, touring and his thoughts on 2009.

Your self released debut was extremely well received, did you expect this sort of reaction?
We’ve been really pleased with the reaction we’ve got – the blogosphere has been kind to us, for the most part. We thought the album was good when we finished it, so we hoped it would get a decent reaction, but weren’t sure if many people would hear it given that we don’t have a label or any press people behind us. So far it’s done OK. It’s been a word-of-mouth thing really, which we’re quietly proud of. We’ve had to order a reprint on the physical copies so hopefully more people will listen to it and – ideally – enjoy it.

You recorded it at Old Mill Studio, will the follow up be recorded there and how is it getting on?
The follow-up(s) will definitely be recorded there. We’ve already started, tentatively. We feel like we’re just getting used to the studio and really improving from a production point of view. I think that the experience of producing the last album and ‘In Excelsis Deo’ ourselves (along with Marshall Craigmyle – Old Mill’s resident guru) was a real learning curve for us. We know a few more tricks now so we’re having fun with the production; trying a few different things out. The Mill is the perfect environment for experimenting and we absolutely love it there.

Recording is going well at the moment – we’ve done a fair bit but we’re kind of being pulled in two directions at once so we’re thinking of doing two separate albums. We’re not quite sure how it’s all going to pan out yet or how long it will take.

You draw comparisons to Explosions in the Sky and, perhaps lazily, The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit quite a bit. Which bands influence you?
Explosions in the Sky were a massive influence on us when we were writing the first album. You can probably hear that in the guitars. It’s the whole being atmospheric whilst being melodic thing. And they’re incredible live. We’re all fans of The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit as well. I think the comparison there is mostly a Scottish thing.

As for influences, we all have quite varied tastes so I can’t really speak for the other guys. From my point of view, I listen to a ridiculous amount of music so what influences me changes quite a lot. Recently, I’ve been listening to Sunset Rubdown, Broken Social Scene, The Low Anthem and The Wedding Present a lot. I got the new Wilco album and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart album over Christmas as well, so I’m going to listen to them a bit more.

There are, however, some artists I’m obsessive about and listen to constantly: Fionn Regan, The National, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes, Iron & Wine and WHY? are some that I’ve been immersed in for the last few years.

You had Kevin McNeill, the author of the amazing ‘The Stornoway Way’, contribute to your debut with the song ‘Colombian Fireworks’. How did that come about and will he be featuring on the follow up?
Basically, I’d read his book and absolutely loved it. He came to one of our gigs and he seemed to like our music so I emailed him a few days later and asked if he fancied doing us a wee turn. Happily, he agreed and wrote the piece for the album, recording it on Shetland with his brother and sending the file to us.

We haven’t spoken to Kevin in a bit – I think he’s busy writing another novel. No idea if we’ll ask him to contribute again, given that we’re trying to do something a bit different from the last. If it feels right for the album, then we’ll definitely ask and hopefully he’ll agree!

Your touring routine seems to be some what sporadic and sparse. Is that fair to say? Is this due to work commitments and is it hard to fit everything in?
That is definitely fair to say. I wouldn’t even say that we have a touring routine. It’s more like massive periods of inactivity followed by a few sporadic gigs. It’s partly to do with work and university commitments, yeah. We don’t do the band as a full time thing, and probably never will, so our opportunities to travel are curtailed quite a bit. And since we can’t really tour for any sustained period, we don’t play all that often in Glasgow and Edinburgh in case people get bored of us. To be honest, it doesn’t really bother us. We like going to play in different places – we’ve had good crowds when we’ve played in London and people always show up in Glasgow – but we’re much happier in the practice room or the studio.

You once told me the last track on your album ‘Joined Up Writing’ was an idea borrowed from Neutral Milk Hotel, with the last song tying the whole album together. Does this mean the last album had a common theme throughout?
To an extent, yeah. It’s more of a common thread, though, in that lyrics refer back to other lyrics and some songs are about the same things and stuff like that. Yeah, you probably could say that there’s a common theme. I thought it was important that the album should feel like a whole, consistent work and not just a hodgepodge collection of unrelated songs.

Favourite things about 2009, music, film, books, hair product?
Music (in no particular order)
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (catchiest thing I’ve heard in 2009)
Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle (Eid Ma Clack Shaw is the funniest song I’ve ever heard – I’m note sure if it’s supposed to be)
The Antlers – Hospice
Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (technically released in 2008 but re-released in 2009 and everyone heard it in 2009)
That Grizzly Bear song (Two Weeks) that rips off the riff from Dr Dre’s Still D.R.E.: amazing.
That Jay-Z song with Alicia Keys in it about New York: tune.

Films
I think the only movies I’ve seen that were released in 2009 were The Hangover and Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee. I liked them both. I got In The Loop on DVD but still haven’t watched it. I bet it’s good though. I mostly just watched The Sopranos and The Wire boxsets.

Books
The best books I read in 2009 (none of them were released in 2009) were The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, Indignation by Philip Roth, I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe and a couple of books I read about the Spanish Civil War, the names of which I can’t remember.

Hair Product
Asda’s own brand hairspray (apparently it’s better than all the other hairsprays).

What are There Will Be Fireworks’ plans and aims for 2010?
Get the new album/albums/whatever recorded. Play some gigs. I think we’re playing at the Haldern Pop Festival in Germany and The National are supposed to be playing, so that’s cool. But mostly the recording.

mp3:> There Will Be Fireworks: “Foreign Thoughts”
mp3:> There Will Be Fireworks: “We Sleep Through The Bombs”
mp3:> There Will Be Fireworks: “In Excelsis Deo”

There Will Be Fireworks on MySpace

Lists upon lists, upon lists… It really IS that time of the year. We’ve been keeping ours closely under-wraps, but now the time is here to unveil TLOBF’s Albums of 2009!

This year, we got each of our writers to nominate their favourite albums of the year, we counted up the votes, and spewed forth the results below. Easy. Always discussion points, I think our Top 10 is certainly one of the most consistently great lists for a number of years. It’s FELT like a good year for music and, despite or, indeed, because of, the rampant consumerism and X-Factor dominating charts, 2009 has felt pretty fresh. Anyway, enough of my ramblings, here we go…

Key: read TLOBF review // listen on Spotify

50. Why? – Eskimo Snow
49. There Will Be Fireworks – There Will Be Fireworks
48. Teeth of the Sea – Orphaned by the Ocean
47. Sufjan Stevens – The B.Q.E.
46. Steven R Smith – Cities

45. Slow Club – Yeah So
44. Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love
43. Noah and the Whale – First Days Of Spring
42. My Latest Novel – Deaths And Entrances
41. Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem

40. Micachu – Jewellery
39. Mew – No More Stories
38. Grammatics – Grammatics
37. Florence + The Machine – Lungs
36. David Sylvian – Manafon

35. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle
34. Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light
33. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
32. St. Vincent – Actor
31. Manic Street Preachers – Journal for Plague Lovers

30. Loney Dear – Dear John
29. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
28. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
27. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
26. Russian Circles – Geneva

25. Future of the Left – Travels with Myself and Another
“The brevity and controlled fury of the songs and of the album as a whole keeps you constantly coming back. A very, very accomplished rock album.”
- Andy Johnson | June 2009

24. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
“Imagine if the Twilight Sad weren’t writing songs about their childhood and school years, but actually living them, and making that same epic sound, but with all the exuberance of youth.”
- Adam Nelson | June 2009

23. Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Pains of Being Pure At Heart
“It won’t change the world and it’s not trying to, but sometimes it’s necessary to stand up and assert the importance of the things in one’s own little corner of the world.”
- Angelica Tatam | February 2009

22. Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More
“Mumford & Sons ideals and personal philosophy seep through the lyrics of the record to make it a far deeper and overall more rewarding listen than those made by their more chart-friendly peers.”
- Andrew Grillo | October 2009

21. The Leisure Society – The Sleeper
“The Leisure Society take you on an awe-inspiring musical adventure.”
- Lauren Down | March 2009

20. The Horrors – Primary Colours
“Simply put, Primary Colours is the most satisfying surprise that 2009 is likely to deliver.”
- Alex Wisgard | May 2009

19. Girls – Album
“Album proves that Girls might just be the greatest sixties revivalists there has been since the Brian Jonestown Massacre.”
- Alex Wisgard | October 2009

18. Fanfarlo – Reservoir
“Aside from the lush production and ornamentation, these are simply great songs. Ease your feet up and let Fanfarlo take some of the burden for you.”
- Matt Poacher | June 2009

17. Do Make Say Think – Other Truths
“Managing to place itself as a pleasing progression for established fans and an interesting introduction for new listeners. Another fantastic forty-three minutes to shut yourself away with.”
- Peter Bloxham | October 2009

16. Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
“Arguably one of Britains leading talents at a time when most (that’s most not all) of the interesting and alternative music is being made across the Atlantic, we really should cherish her.”
- Andrew Grillo | March 2009

15. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
“Wilco have never put out a bad record, and Wilco (The Album) furthers this thesis. What’s more significant is the fact that the band knows as much. Wilco’s command of its own songwriting is as adept as any band in music, then or now.”
- Steve Lampiris | July 2009

14. Volcano Choir – Unmap
“Refreshingly inventive…stirs the emotions.”
- Leah Pritchard | September 2009

13. The Antlers – Hospice
“A spectral, messily humane work that is as sophisticated as it is affecting.”
- Tyler Boehm | November 2009

12. Fontän – Winterhwila
“Inventive and beguiling… Surely grounds for Fontän to warrant a chapter in the inevitable hot blooded tribute to the ever surprising and delighting Swedish music scene of the early 21st century.”
- Laura Snapes | September 2009

11. Atlas Sound – Logos
“An album that needs to be taken as a whole, it’s mood simply doesn’t lend to being chopped and changed. Suffice to say, it might be my favourite Cox release yet. Now that’s something special.”
Adam Nelson | November 2009

10. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
Wild Beasts’ sophomore effort Two Dancers tones down some of the old world camp and eccentricty of their debut without sacrificing any of their singular character. Frontman Hayden Thorpe’ gymnastic falsetto is still there but somehow less of a ‘deal-breaker’, tempered as much by tighter song structures as a reigning-in of their oddball personality. If singing about revelrous modern Britain with a romantic melancholy and humourous eye recalls The Smiths, musically Wild Beasts are also informed by the 1980s ‘Brit jangle’ of Morissey & Co and the propulsive basslines of New Order. There’s lush, epic pop (‘We Still Got The Taste Dancing On Our Tongues’), dreamy sensuality (‘When I’m Sleepy’), twilight ghostliness (‘Underbelly’), the album is a heady emotional experience, ranging from the achingly nostalgic to the jauntily redemptive – particularly the raffish roll call to “Girls from Shipley, girls from Hounslow” on ‘All the King’s Men’. If you had lost belief in British indie, this is the best place to rekindle your faith.
- James Dalrymple

09. Japandroids – Post-Nothing
The first thing that hits you is the energy of it all. It’s difficult to believe that two people can create this much noise, so the comparisons to Death From Above 1979 are obvious. However, ‘You’re a woman, I’m a machine’ was heavy on bass riffs, Post nothing is a mixture of lo-fi and noise pop. There’s even a hint of humour in there, with opening track ‘The boys are leaving town’ being the perfect thudding antidote to its polished, dad-rock counterpart. In short, it’s an album about being young, and you can hear the passion and intensity running throughout. Live, they’re just as good and it’s hard to feel anything but compassion for two men who’ve made such a tight, compact record filled with lines like “You’re as cold as ice, girl/I should know, I’ve been to the north pole”. Chaotic, messy and utterly, utterly brilliant.
- Matthew Britton

08. Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson, the witchier side of brother-sister duo The Knife, slip-skidded back onto our radar with this mechanically-minded dystopian disk, three years after the release of brooding synth-classic Silent Shout. No solo project could have come from a better place. Fever Ray takes a running jump from that cosier womb, peels back the duo’s dancier skins, and plumbs icier depths of the same alien waters. Producing what is undoubtedly one of the most melancholically personal releases of the year, female Swedish artists don’t get more extreme than Karin. Monstrous distortions see her stretched into a Mongolian throat-singer or a gravel-voiced phantom, a fitting herald for the menacing choruses and shivering industrial synths. From the girlish fantasies on ‘When I Grow Up’ to the uncensored cabin fever cries on ‘Concrete Walls’, this record is both inward-looking dream vision and outward-facing excavation. Rarely do we want to listen again and again to death, decay and dirty swimming pools.
- Rosie Jackson

07. The Twilight Sad – Forget The Night Ahead
Forget The Night Ahead found Scotland’s most serious young men using the critical success of debut Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters as a springboard to make a record even deeper, darker and more brutal. While their debut found an almost gleeful abandon in it’s intensity, this follow up was perhaps even more terrifyingly claustrophobic. James Graham’s Glaswegian brogue here recounted tales of “the people downstairs” and sounded at his most content as he promised “you and I will bury them all”. It was clear that the teenage discontent that had previously dominated his lyrics had matured somewhat. From the serrated shards of guitar that envelope lead single ‘I Became A Prostitute’ to the doom laden piano of ‘The Room’ this was a second album that was dense and initially impenetrable but numerous listens revealed glimmers of hope and eventually proved itself engagingly vital.
- Andrew Grillo

06. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix have been darlings of the indie and beautiful set since Alphabetical in 2004, but until this year the albums never seemed to live up to the singles or the band’s sexy aura. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is the sort of definitive statement that comes when a band embraces its sound in a big way. From ‘Lisztomania’ to ‘Girlfriend’, Phoenix stay locked in on their own brand of disco rock: instantly memorable melodies sung with a slight melancholy and the faintest French accent dart through bright synths and sharp guitars, while the laser-focus rhythm section keeps each song as danceable as it is cathartic. It isn’t that Phoenix is doing anything different than before, it’s just that on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart they do it better.
- Tyler Boehm

05. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
Following the bizarre intensity of Street Horrsing, sophomore effort Tarot Sport was very much the altered beast. Cruising along crushing waves of euphoric static, it’s an album characterised by luscious, spectral interludes and starlight melodies dancing around gargantuan planets and black holes. Both bleak and panoramic, rangy masterpieces ‘Space Mountain’ and ‘Surf Solar’ demanded their own gravitational pull – their insistent electronic pummel succeeding to orbital sound waves that energise the air around you, infinitely marching onwards into the next Solaris film score. Fuck Buttons instilled a surging beauty and harnessed a permeating, lucid power in Tarot Sport that few albums rarely possess – it was the transcendent siren call of oblivion, bewitching and beguiling you, enticing you to lose yourself in its dreamy vista. “Create your own narrative,” they said. And from the glorious slow motion dramatics of ‘Olympians’ to the fizzing synth-fuelled junkyard clatter of ‘Rough Steez’, Tarot Sport’s sonic monsters indulgently deliver on an album of truly biblical proportions.
- Reef Younis

04. The xx – xx
The xx were indisputably the buzz band of the year in 2009. They arrived so perfectly formed that people muttered about them being some put-together producer project, but scraping beneath the surface just revealed a huge songwriting talent, a minimalist’s knack for leaving out the right sounds as well as putting them in, and an intriguing empathic childhood friends story at the band’s core. The album, xx, smoulders away beautifully and wears it’s influences on it’s sleeve, coming on like a stripped-down Cure playing passages from the reverb-ridden hits of Chris Isaak. xx is a perfect late night record – sensual, subtle and spacious. Practically perfect, in fact.
- John Brainlove

03. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
Surging from Brooklyn in a tangle of primary colours and wacked-out harmonies, Dirty Projectors continued to stake their claim as The Most Exciting Band In Indie Rock Right Now with the triumphant Bitte Orca, who’s skewed, oddly mathematical guitar lines, fluttering croon and yelping, sprawling female harmonies proved itself the most compelling listen of 09. At first listen, Bitte Orca may seem like an artsy, undisciplined mess, but repeat listens reveals a taut logic behind Longstreth’s chaos, each guitar chime perfectly refracted by an impenetrable wall of caterwauls, courtesy of Amber and Angel. It’s no surprise then that such an off-kilter gem of an album has been lauded by almost every artist with a creative bone inside them – it’s sprawling influence ranging from from Icelandic chanteuse Bjork, who performed with Dirty Projectors in New York, to a collaboration with David Byrne and a highly-bloggable R&B re-work of ‘Stillness is The Move’ courtesy of Beyoncés quirky kid sister Solangé.
- Katherine Rodgers

02. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
It’s warm, it’s inviting, it’s joyful. Merriweather Post Pavilion is Animal Collective’s “pop” album. From the arena-size synth line of opener ‘In The Flowers’ to the swirling samples of ‘Bluish,’ it’s obvious that Merriweather is meant to be AC’s definitive record, a towering statement of candid existentialism: one level of enjoyment is the collection’s propinquity to humanity via childhood glee. That is to say, the songs haven’t become any less complex than previous outings (so some might take a listen or two to stick); instead AC paints its dense compositions with kid’s eyes, something not seen from the band in a long while. When Avey Tare sings, “I want to walk around with you” during the wonderfully elated ‘Summertime Clothes,’ you know he’s being nothing less than swear-on-the-Bible honest. Few albums of the year are able to satisfy listeners immediately while simultaneously rewarding them with repeat spins. Merriweather is one of those. Hell, it’s the best one.
- Steve Lampiris

01. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
It’s hard to be subtle when the entire music world is waiting to hear your record. But Grizzly Bear managed to not let the hype or anticipation affect them in any way, exceeding all of our grand expectations with the lush elegance of Veckatimest, which is so warm and inviting an album that the only thing inscrutable about it is the title. The songs are gorgeous and restrained; never reaching for anything more ambitious than their structure allows while crafting a sense of tranquility that still requires the listeners full attention. While ‘Two Weeks,’ ‘While You Wait For The Others’ and ‘Cheerleader’ garner most of the accolades, its the luxurious deeper cuts like ‘All We Ask,’ ‘Ready, Able’ and ‘Foreground’ that really makes Veckatimest a complete triumph. The production of Chris Taylor is understated and unobtrusive throughout, with the sonic flourishes added only to vitalize a mood or a movement while never getting in the way of the true spirit of the songs. Grizzly Bear have created a work of graceful refinement and tender charm that comes as close to being flawless as any record this year, without ever once trying to be perfect.
- Erik Thompson

As we’ve previously reported, Euros Childs has a new album, called Son of Euros Childs, out on the 7th of September. It’s free to download from his website but if you want to buy the physical copy you can only buy it off him at a show. Well, if you’re based in London, you now have that chance! He’s playing at the impressive Tamesis Dock in Vauxhall on the 24th of September. Support comes from Sweet Baboo.

Tickets are £6 in advance from here, doors at 7:30 and the venue only has a capacity of 130 so tickets are going to be limited.

More London gig news includes one of our favourite up and coming, and still remarkably unsigned, bands in There Will Be Fireworks. Their debut album has been on constant rotation in TLOBF towers for the best part of this year. Well, now you can see what all the fuss is about.

It’s part of the To Arms Etc single launch, which is taking place at the Queen of Hoxton bar TOMORROW NIGHT! So, get there early, enjoy the support acts and don’t say we didn’t tell you when they get HUGE.

Here ends this public service announcement…

When the narrative comes to be written for standout albums of 2009, there’s going to be a whole heap of Scottish bands involved. And they just keep coming: The Phantom Band, My Latest Novel, Meursault, We Were Promised Jetpacks, the live Frightened Rabbit Album, Broken Records… There Will Be Fireworks are the latest to well up from the fertile Scottish plains, and I suspect, come the end of 2009, they’re going to be somewhere near the top of that ragged heap, if not at the very top.

The facts are these: There Will Be Fireworks are four Glaswegians – old school friends – Adam Ketterer (drums, glockenspiel), David Madden (bass), Gilbran Farrah (guitar, violin, piano) and Nicholas McManus (guitars, vocals, organ) and this is their first record, though it has been a fair while in the making. It was recorded pretty much live in a huge 17th century mill in Stratharven and it’s hard to miss the fact that the circumstances of the recording have invaded the record’s very weave – it sounds huge. What the band have done is taken the dynamics of a certain strand of post-rock (think Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky) and squashed them into throbbing, explosively passionate songs, and in doing so have channelled something of a new sound – a propulsive, widescreen sound that seems at once born of the organic live recording situation and something else, something deeper. There are lives packed into these songs, and at times it feels as if the skin is close to ripping.

The album begins with a poem written specially for the album by the Stornoway writer and poet Kevin MacNeil. His writing is full of heat and fire, often frayed at the edges – quite a coup for the band and just the perfect fit. His lilting yet powerful monologue (“for there will be fireworks/and they will light up your eyes/and you will feel more alive than ever before/just as your sister would wish for you…”) is consumed by an immense firewall of howling guitars. It’s a powerful statement of intent. Somewhat surprisingly it fades into the calm of ‘So The Story Goes’ – a vast sounding track, but one built around a bare skeleton of distant guitars and understated brass. It’s here and on ‘Midfield Maestro’ that you get a real sense of that recording base the band used – the gaps between the instruments seem almost unnaturally huge at times, and whilst the production isn’t always perfect it’s great to hear such an honest and live sound.

‘Midfield Maestro’ is also where you get a real sense of the band’s emotional punch – and it’s the first of a trio of songs that give the album its narrative heart. As ‘Midfield Maestro’ builds to a huge close (and Ketterer’s drums sound immense here) McManus is bleeding into the mic ‘we’ll set these tapes on fire as your heart breaks in my car/you’re unravelling in my arms’ and you can hear his intakes of breath as they vibrate against his taut vocal chords. The track melts into ‘Guising’ a gorgeous vignette detailing a trick or treat incident, which in turn becomes ‘Off With Their Heads’ – a genuinely epic track which is the band at their very best: raw, ambitious and adept in weaving emotion into dynamic sonic patterns. The closing moments make me want to bust through the top of my head.

You could say, though it would be unfair (what of the broad sweep of ‘A Kind Of Furnace’, the strung-out drama of ‘We Sleep Through The Bombs’ and ‘We Were A Roman Candle’, with it’s blizzard of guitars and aching refrain of ‘I could have been more cautious!’?), that the record never recovers from this highpoint But in truth, and this rambling review is testament to this, the record is ambitious and detailed enough to hold the attention – you can get lost in shadowy corners, listen for buried references to earlier tracks, and all of the while feel a part of the thing. It’s a truly inclusive record. Christ only knows what they’re like live.

For information purposes, the Fireworks record is available from the band themselves as, mystifyingly, they’ve not yet been signed. You can buy from their website here.  Do it.
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We have FIVE copies of There Will Be Fireworks’ album to give away.
Email your name and address with the subject line ‘Fireworks’ to contact@thelineofbestfit.com and we’ll pick 5 names at random.

Closing date 7th July.

There Will Be Fireworks on MySpace