Tag: last night from glasgow

Get This!

Sixteen

Craig McAllister

Old enough to get married, but not of the age to celebrate with a swift half down The Crown, Plain Or Pan turns 16 today.

I wouldn’t have believed you this day back in 2007 if you’d told me these pages would lead to me getting to interview Sandie Shaw, half The Smiths and a smattering of my favourite musicians, but that’s the truth. I peaked during lockdown when I was tasked with writing a biography – The Perfect Reminder – about the Trashcan Sinatras‘ second album I’ve Seen Everything. The book subsequently found its way to all corners of the UK, the USA, Europe and Japan and eventually peaked at the respected Aye Write book festival in Glasgow, where myself and photographer Stephanie Gibson, alongside John from the TCS, were interviewed on stage by BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe. To top off what was Aye Write’s headlining slot (and perhaps the reason why a feart and running Bobby Gillespie postponed his appearance), John, Davy and a visiting Frank Reader appeared as the ThreeCS and played a half hour set of acoustic Trashcans’ numbers. But you knew all that already.

With the Trashcans’ third album – A Happy Pocket – being reissued by Last Night From Glasgow, I was once again called to action. This time round, things have been scaled back a bit. There’s no hard back book, there’s no bespoke photographs and I doubt there’ll be an Aye Write appearace, though you never know. What we do have is something – The Full Pocket – that’s akin to more than a fanzine but not quite a book. It’s A4. It’s set in the same font as the tracklisting on the album. It’s packed full of archival photographs and artefacts. And it features all 5 band members and the occasional outside influence talking about the album and its associated b-sides track by track, story by story. I might compare it to one of those Mojo or Uncut special editions – y’know, those ‘Complete Guide to Bob Dylan’ publications that they occasionally produce?

The Full Pocket is a goldmine of TCS factoids. Funny, informative and, may I say, indisepnsable if you’ve even half a passing interest in one of our greatest under-the-radar bands. Pre-orders went online last night and it was thrilling to see the response. If you’re a fence-sitter, or perhaps an eager pre-orderer and want a sneak peek, I’ve included a short extract below. I’ve intentionally kept it shorter than the same bit in the bookzine – the band quotes are longer and more detailed in there, and I’ve not included any of the photos that will appear either. Some things are worth waiting for.

(Screenshot)

The Genius I Was (Excerpt from The Full Pocket)

Trippy, fuggy, druggy, whacked out…The Genius I Was pummels along on a tidal wave of overlapping guitars and a sneaked-in metronomic Run To You riff, coloured by needles-in-the-red zinging interludes and Frank’s buzzing fly-in-a-jar line enderzzz. Davy’s bass, solid, melodic and thumping drives the whole stramash forwards. The guitars – about 8 tracks of them, I’d guess – are phased, flanged, panned left to right and back again. A six string acoustic scrubs out the choppy rhythm as an electric zaps out the hippy, spacey stuff. There’s a lot going on here, and repeated listens reward the keenest of ears.

I must’ve played The Genius I Was about a thousand times since first hearing it and I could happily play it over and over for the next hour and never tire of its proggy, sonic resonance. Until now, have you even noticed John coming in midway through the first verse to duet with Frank from thereon in? And have you ever noticed the heavenly choir near the end as the melodies tumble and the chorus unravels? I’m sure Stephen’s voice is somewhere high within the mix. There’s a lot to unpack in what is a well-constructed track. It may be buried deep within the album, but make no mistake, The Genius I Was is one of the Trashcans’ very best.

Trashcan Sinatras – The Genius I Was

Paul: This was one of Frank’s. We worked for a while on it. For a long time, it was faster and louder and a bit queasy with those chords. It happens a lot with Frank’s songs where you’re learning it but you’re thinking, ‘What is this?’ “It’s this chord…and then you go to this chord…and then you go to that chord…”, and you’re like, ‘what the fuck?!’…

Stephen: The verse chords for The Genius I Was were there long before the rest of the song and when rehearsing we used to play them continuously, really loud. I remember the song being a two chord instrumental for some time before this.

Frank: I was sitting around on my guitar, trying to learn something when I stumbled on this nice, slideable chord. I could move it up two frets and back again, which I did for a bit, and then I went to the fourth fret and back down again. Suddenly I had a riff and it sounded weird, kinda backwards, but interesting. I played it over and over, getting into it, dang-dang der-dang-dang, it was fast and driving. And then my hands got stuck in those fret positions. I’m not a good guitar player, and I’m thinking, what can I play to get out of this?

Davy: Frank had a set of weird chords and we could never get them into shape – augmented chords, maybe diminished, I dunno, but it had a good vibe to it and was worth working on. It was very post-punky, ‘Edinburgh’, as Frank would say. The east coast bands were almost always a bit more angular and jagged than their west coast compatriots.

John: This is one that’s made by the playing on it. Davy’s bass playing on it especially is spectacular. The way he plays steady while we’re all changing and he’s just ploughing through, it’s phenomenal. He creates a really good driving sound. It’s a hard one to play live, but it’s a total belter.

Frank: I did a demo of it in the middle of the night at Shabby Road with a really simple bassline, but enough to get it started. I had the melody and everything and when Paul came in from the Hunting Lodge and heard what I’d done, he loved it and really took it on.

Hugh Jones worked on it and helped take the recording up yet another notch in the mix. Dulcimer, again, was added and everything went stratospheric, Stephen and Davy kept a driving rhythm at the core of it, Davy sliding up and down the frets with ease. It sounded fast and zingy, spooky, a bit swingy even.

Stephen: This was a real ‘studio’ production as we pretty much arranged the song as we recorded it. What linked it all together was Davy’s inspired bass playing; it’s almost a lead bass part he’s playing. There’s also some fantastic playing from Paul, especially in the choruses.

Davy: We had the tune complete before we had the title, I think. ‘The Genius I Was’ was the title of a song without a tune that I’d started years before. Frank liked it and used it here.

Frank: Davy had a sheet of words. The title at the top said ‘THE GENIUS I WAS’, all in capital letters, double underlined. The only line I took from Davy’s lyrics was the title line.

John: We should’ve done two or three mixes of it. There’s some intricate acoustic picking which you can barely hear on the finished version.

Davy: Simon Dine (Go! Discs) really liked the finished song and thought it had hit potential.

Frank: We went as far as making a video for it, sent out promos too, but The Genius I Was never got the full single release treatment.

——

 

The full version of this article can be found in A Full Pocket – The Definitive Story of Trashcan Sinatras’ A Happy Pocket.

Pre-orders are available now via Last Night From Glasgow. Click the link and you’ll have the option to buy The Full Pocket (£8) and also a multibuy deal for The Full Pocket and The Perfect Reminder (£20).

 

Live!

Aye, Right!

Craig McAllister

Indulge me.

You might remember, back in September – (Hey! Poetry!) – the sound of a trumpet being blown from these pages as long and loud and rasping as Miles Davis in the middle of an asthma attack. The reason was the imminent publication of The Perfect Reminder, a book that I wrote about The Trashcan Sinatras, one of our greatest under-the-radar bands and one of their greatest (the greatest?) under-the-radar albums – I’ve Seen Everything. If this is all sudden news to you then fear not. You can read the story behind the book here.

Since a low-key Covid-affected launch night in October (picture above) and its eventual publication, the book has found its way beyond the locality of my family and friends who felt obliged to buy it and has made its wobbly way across the Atlantic to all corners of the States and further afield to Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama where Trashcans fans – hundreds of them as it turns out – have happily bought, read and re-read the book, Tweeting about it, seeking me out as an online pal and generally being very decent about it all. Holy Fukuoka!

And now, next Saturday – the 21st May – the book will make an appearance at Glasgow’s prestigious Aye Write book festival. I’ve been telling anyone who’s still listening to me that Aye Write is the Glastonbury of book events, which, given our prime time Saturday night slot would make us the Nile Rodgers and Chic of literature. Good Times indeed.

I say ‘us’, as quite the bill has been assembled. Ian Smith, prime mover of indie label Last Night From Glasgow, whose idea it was to put together a “posh fanzine” and planted the creative seed in ma heid, will kick things off with a brief couple of minutes to explain how his simple idea ended up becoming a hard back book of 100,000 words.

The thinking man’s John Peel, the guv’nor, BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe will chair a panel featuring myself and photographer Stephanie Gibson. Between the pair of us, we’ll chat about how we turned our ideas into reality, the problems we faced when writing and photographing a book during lockdown, what makes the ideal Zoom background (Pete Paphides’ was particularly impressive, Chas Smash had the most exotic) and wax lyrical about the brilliance of the book’s subject matter. Gideon, as you’ll know if you’re a regular listener to his show, is no stranger to the works of the Trashcans and was super-keen to get on board, from the initial idea to what has become its crowning glory. It’s quite the thrill to have him as our anchor man for the event.

Trashcan Sinatras – Hayfever (acoustic live at Fez, NYC, Summer 2004)

In a lovely twist, the night will finish with a short acoustic set from three of the TCS – the ThreeCS as I’ll be calling them. Due to work some more on what may well become album number seven, Frank has actually timed a trip from his home in California to team up with John and Davy, a kinda two birds with one stone mission, where he’ll sing at Aye Write and use his time here to tweak the rough vocal tracks he put down a couple of months ago on a flying visit to Glasgow. Not, that I’d imagine, there’ll be much tweaking needed. ‘Rough vocals’ and ‘Frank Reader’ aren’t normal bedfellows.

The organisers have been keen to point out that the music bit is a bonus – “We’re a book festival, remember. It’s all about the books!” so in a weird twist of billing, the Trashcans will support us, albeit they’ll go on after us. And, as much as it might be ‘all about the books’, it’s not often we get a Trashcans show in Glasgow these days, let alone one in such unique circumstances. There should be a decent audience packed in, if only for the band’s involvement.

I’m a teacher, and recently I’ve been teaching the teachers, so I’m fairly used to tough audiences who’ll ask deliberately obtuse and difficult questions. And I’m no stranger to high-pressure gigs, albeit it they were many years ago. Any hopeful young guitar strangler will have felt that rush of excitement as show time nears and the nerves begin to jingle, but in keeping with the Glastonbury idea of it all, this is our Pyramid Stage. 400 tickets in Glasgow’s plush and culturally-rich Mitchell Theatre, but not yet a sell out. I had an anxiety-inducing dream the other night that I turned up on an empty stage, one bright light in my face, and, as I blinked into focus, there wasn’t a single person in the audience. Ah, Freak Out!

Tickets for The Perfect Reminder – The Story of Trashcan Sinatras’ I’ve Seen Everything can be bought here.

It’d be great to see you. All hecklers will, of course, be encouraged ejected.

Get This!, New! Now!

Readers And Writers

Craig McAllister

I wrote a book. A proper, hefty music biography that won’t look out of place between Ziggyology and Head-On and Beastie Boys Book and Songs That Saved Your Life and Revolution In The Head and any of those other essential reads that make up your book shelf.

The Perfect Reminder tells the story behind the songs on the Trashcan Sinatras‘ second album I’ve Seen Everything – a quietly-confident-but-knows-its-place cult book about a quietly-confident-but-knows-its-place cult act. Thanks to a small team that includes a fantastic photographer (Stephanie Gibson) and a Brooklyn-based creative director with an analytical approach to typesetting and design (Chris Dooley), the finished article turned out waaaay better than expected. We got to hold it, feel it, sniff it, on Tuesday night and it was quite the thrill. The book, tactile and glossy and heavy, is also almost three times longer than my initial (now-laughable) estimate of 35,000 words, and far-better for it.

To paraphrase David Byrne, how the fuckdiddilyuck did I get here?

With the long out-of-print I’ve Seen Everything being reissued by Last Night From Glasgow, I chanced my arm and asked if I could write the sleevenotes. I had clout, I suggested. Back in 1992, I’d been around the studio during the making of the record. I was pals with the band. I’d written articles on them for local and national press; my sleevenotes would surely be wonderfully entertaining.

Clout I may have had, but that particular gig had already been promised to crack music critic and life-long Trashcans fan Pete Paphides. You can’t argue with that, I told myself, while Ian from LNFG let me down gently by asking me if I’d like to put together a “small book-type thing, a posh fanzine perhaps” that told the stories of the songs through the eyes of the Trashcans’ loyal and steadfast fan base.

There’s a better story than that, I suggested after a minute’s thought, and reeled off plans where the five Trashcans would tell their own stories of how the songs came to be; from the underwhelming initial writing sessions that filled the band with self-doubt, through to the sparkling finished product, expertly steered and produced by the affable and dude-like Ray Shulman. Despite the band separated by the small matter of the Atlantic Ocean, it would read as if the five of them were sat round a table in The Crown, telling tales of how the album came to be, each interjecting the others with contradictory tales that, when taken as a whole, would tell a version of the truth behind the making of an album that is now considered something of a lost classic, a great Scottish album by one of our greatest bands.

Trashcan Sinatras – Hayfever

“People want to know how these fabulous songs came to be,” I wagered. “The lyrics – who wrote them, what the songs were about, who the songs were about, and the music, dripping in melody and finesse – what makes it so unattainably magic, how did they come up with that wobbly sound on Send For Henny, why is there no guitar on Hayfever…the important stuff, y’know? They’re not that bothered that Marko fae Motherwell first locked eyes with the love of his life while the clanging thunderstorm of One At A Time played furiously in the background, although we’ll make space for that too. A proper music biography must be written.”

And it was. A hundred thousand words and dozens of arty photographs and eye-catchingly beautiful font later, the book, The Book – definitely anything but small and most certainly booting into orbit the concept of ‘posh fanzine’ – whatever that is – rolled off a Polish printing press, negotiated Brexit-affected customs and landed, finally, in Glasgow. It is currently winging its way to the hundreds – that’s hundreds, Archie – of TCS fans around the globe who placed pre-orders.

It’ll eventually find its way to Waterstones, Mono and a handful of select retailers. The Perfect Reminder  – titled by John from the band before a word had been typed – is very much available for order right now via LNFG. I’d recommend you read it. But you knew that already.

Get This!, Hard-to-find

Listing

Craig McAllister

I’m not one for end of year lists. I used to be. I used to spend hours refining ‘Best of the Year’ compilation CDs for my pals, sticking them snugly inside Christmas cards, eagerly received by the men, sniggered at by the wives. I enjoyed getting theirs in return – the contents equally considered, the sequencing just as agonised over, the sleeve art spat from equally temperamental printers. They functioned as snapshots of the year just gone, a ragbag of coulda been and shoulda been hits, now forgotten album tracks and one-off singles by artists who, for the main, have dropped off the radar.

Until the great PC crash of 2016, I’d spend a good fortnight in the run up to the festive period refining the running order of my Best of the Year double CD. Since the crash – and my steady return to vinyl – and the fact that my PC no longer has a CD drive (what’s all that about?!?) – my list making has stopped. My spidey senses no longer tingle in Springtime when a belter pops up on rotation on 6 Music. “Must add that to the Best Of,” I no longer think to myself. I’ve stopped appropriating the same volume of new stuff from the darker corners of the web too. That’s half the reason the old PC ground to a crashing, spam-filled halt. After deliberation, I buy from Bandcamp or the label or eBay or even Amazon, whenever the Cheap Records notification on my phone highlights something worth owning. And those wee download cards? Half the records I buy don’t come with them anymore. The ones that do lie unused. So my purchasing and playing habits have gradually regressed to the days of my youth. It’s records and that’s about it.

Crucially too, I listen to old stuff, if not exclusively, then certainly for the majority of time. I’m not blessed with a Rough Trade East or a Monorail or even an HMV anywhere near me, certainly not in a year when crossing county lines might land you in the jail. The one record shop anywhere near where I live is owned by an old rocker who stocks Japanese imports of Iron Maiden albums and overpriced Fleetwood Mac reissues. Tequila Sunrise by The Eagles is always playing whenever I enter and I always check in hope that that Small Faces album on display on the wall has perhaps lost a zero on its price tag, but it never has. It’ll still be there come the next Middle Ages. You won’t ever be tempted in there by racks of Waxahatchee and Moses Sumney fighting for shelf space with Taylor Swift and Fleet Foxes. Occassionally, a dip through the crates under the racks will produce a cracker that he places little value in – Scott 2 for £3, an unplayed copy of Sylvester’s You Make Me Feel Mighty Real on 12″ (“Och, here, if you’re taking the XTC album (also £3), you can have the disco shit on me, you’d be doing me a favour etc etc). I’d much rather find something of value in there than splurge upwards of £25 on the latest Perfume Genius record.

With so much old stuff still to rediscover, there’s no time for the new. I read these lists on social media and, honestly, I don’t know half the acts. And the ones I’ve heard of – yer Fionas ‘n Phoebes ‘n Microphones ‘n whathaveyou, I just don’t have the time or money to invest in them. I’m sure – actually, I know – I’m missing out on a whole load of great music. But…but… it’s just that there’s still loads of stuff from the 1970s to uncover. Just as you find little time or inclination to make new friends the older you get, so too do you find less time to get into new music. It seems like a lot of effort to me. It’s not that music’s a young person’s game by any means, but the music that soundtracked the formative years is the music that makes you feel young when be-slippered middle age creeps up on you and slaps you across the top of that salt ‘n pepper hair-do. I don’t care about Porridge Radio, I’m still working my way through This Is Radio Clash and Sandinista, thank you very much.

Having said that, with apologies to the acts I’ll remember and shins I’ll kick as soon as I’ve pressed ‘publish‘, I’ve very much enjoyed releases this year from;

  • Close Lobsters
  • Blue Rose Code
  • Khruangbin
  • Working Men’s Club
  • Laura Marling
  • Fontaines DC
  • Sault
  • Slow Weather

I suppose I could make that my Top 8 of 2020 – ‘in no particular order’ – and I’d fit right in.

Slow Weather – Clean Living

The Slow Weather track above is great, a gently spiralling and unfolding slow burner, a sulky Lee ‘n Nancy if picked up by one of those vending machine claws and plonked into the Scottish heartlands.

‘You’re an optimist,’ they sing in unison. ‘I’m a realist‘. Music box percussion tinkles and the track wanders its way to a treacle-slow coda somewhere between Super Furry Animals and somnambulism. If tectonic plates made, er, rock music, it might sound like this.

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The truth of the matter though is that I’ve also very much enjoyed rediscovering Loaded by The Velvet Underground, De La Soul’s first half dozen singles on 12″, Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!!, The Specials’ debut, Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman, I’ve Seen Everything by the Trashcan Sinatras, Another Music In A Different Kitchen by Buzzcocks, Wire’s Pink Flag, The House Of Love’s gnarled and shimmering back catalogue and a million other things I’ll always return to – my real Best of the Year.

The polls would suggest 2020 has been something of a good year for music releases. I’ll probably be able to concur sometime around 2045 – ‘a vintage year‘ – I might even proclaim, should I still be shuffling my shoes to the groove. Not for nothing is the tagline above Outdated Music For Outdated People.  

 

 

Cover Versions, Get This!, New! Now!

Chant Number 1

Craig McAllister

I don’t need this pressure on indeed. Isolation remains very much a part of Scottish life. Johnson was wittering on at some point over the past week – I can’t remember exactly when as it’s been a wee while since anyone’s seen him, and when he is there, we tend to tune out until he veers sharply and unexpectedly from that rigid scrolling script to venture dangerously off-piste. Usually then he’s worth listening to, if only for the made up rubbish he upchucks then contradicts before anyone’s had a chance to tell him. Here he was, having a go at oor ain Nicola Sturgeon for daring to defy his relaxed approach to the Great British Lockdown, saying that Scotland was out of step with the rest of the UK. It was quickly pointed out that with Wales and Northern Ireland still to fully embrace this brave new world of the Prime Minister’s, it was in fact his own country that was out of step with everyone else. Telt, as they say.

Leaving political point scoring aside and eschewing BawJaw’s bumbling, stuttering, fuckwittery in continually putting profit over people, our own leader has made it clear; isolation continues for as long as it needs to be in place, and if that means another few weeks without an overpriced coffee or a long queue at the recycle centre, then so be it.

It’s good that we have the music. During these locked down and locked in, working from home times, I’ve been getting to grips with new albums I might never fully have invested the time in. Much of this new music has come courtesy of Last Night From Glasgow, the co-operative, not-for-profit label that aims to give the artists as great a share of the takings as possible whilst still investing in new bands and new projects. The music is a catch-all eclectica of scuffed at the knees indie, leftfield electronica, beat groups, studio projects and just about everything else you can think of. If you’re a member you’ll receive new releases well in advance of the launch date and in the years B.C. (before Corona) you’d get to attend the album launch party too.

Their forthcoming Isolation Sessions project may well go on to be the jewel in a particularly sparkling crown. Pre-sales have already led to thousands of pounds being pumped back into struggling local venues and it’s on course to be quite the release of 2020. Conceived, written and recorded between March and April, it sees all the acts on the label tackle a song by one of their labelmates. Recently, I raved about Close Lobsters’ fantastic version of Cloth’s Curiosity Door, fragile etherea reimagined as a propulsive head nodder straight outta 1970s West Germany. In the time since, more and more tracks have appeared; recorded, wrapped and ready for imminent release.

In conjunction with the record, esteemed photo journalist Friar Brian Sweeney, coincidentally the label’s creative director, has rather beautifully documented these strange times. Closely observing social distancing rules, the photographer has zig-zagged his way up and down the country to take candid shots of the movers and shakers and members that combine to make one of the very best record labels around. Reproduced in silvery black and white, the images perfectly capture the uncertainty and new-found relaxed approach to personal appearance that this period in time has allowed. Right down to the untied shoes (who cares?) and four days-old shorts (who cares?) and a hairdo that’s long overdue a visit from some scissors (I mean, who cares?), he’s bottled my three chins (compresion, I’m assured) and me, ladies, for eternity.

Jowly author/Plain Or Pan by Friar Brian Sweeney

The visuals are terrific, the perfect atmospheric accompaniment to what’ll be going on and in the grooves. Broken Chanter, the nom de plume of Kid Canaveral’s David MacGregor released his self-titled debut album via Olive Grove towards the end of last year. Melodic, ambitious, grand (in every sense of the adjective) and (in a very good way) weird enough to maintain interest to this very day, it includes Don’t Move To Denmark, a cry of loss and longing that implores a recent love to not move abroad but not to stick around on his behalf either.

Broken Chanter – Don’t Move To Denmark

David MacGregor/Broken Chanter by Friar Brian Sweeney

Autobiographical? Quite possibly. MacGregor certainly means every word he sings. Mixing trad with tech, scratchy acoustic guitars and plucked ‘n sawed strings are carried along by ricocheting percussion and a welcome hint of underlying laptop electronica. One of the album’s finest moments, it’s a good introduction to his rich musical world. If it’s piqued your interest you could do worse than get a hold of his album via the link in the third paragraph above.

Lesley McLaren/Lola In Slacks by Friar Brian Sweeney

On the Isolation Sessions, Glasgow’s Lola In Slacks, newcomers to the label but not to the local music scene, transform Broken Chanter’s already wonderful original into a shimmering cinematic beauty, a skyscraping track of restrained majesty that recalls the understated yet uplifting sound of Natalie Merchant and Stevie Nicks having a go at recreating the soundtrack to Twin Peaks at 45rpm. Somewhere in a parallel universe, this version spins eternally.

Lola In Slacks – Don’t Move To Denmark

Brushed drums shuffle the groove, twanging and reverberating hollow-bodied electric guitars lift the whole thing up and out into the clouds where it floats forever… it’s casually fantastic and currently playing for the 95th time since the weekend, another triumph on an album that seems certain to be packed full of them .

Don’t move to Denmark or stay on my behalf, it goes. The brass on my neck made you laugh. Why, that’s almost Johnson-esque in its prescience. Given the Scandinavian country’s tight handle on Covid, and education, society, lifestyle and just about everything else, why wouldn’t you want to move there just now?

Isolation Sessions can be bought at the LNFG shop here. Get down on it.

Cover Versions, New! Now!

Cloth Lobsters

Craig McAllister

Lockdowns. Lock-ins. Low downs.

Strange times abound. You’ve probably been working from home the past week or so, perhaps sat at your makeshift workspace in a pair of two days-old underpants, your face and razor no longer on speaking terms. Yes, perhaps even you, ladies. Maybe too there’s a chalky white toothpaste trail down the front of your t-shirt, the one you also slept in last night as it happens (and what’s it to ya?), a stain that, you notice, looks like a grubby white silhouette of Africa when you look in the bathroom mirror. You’ve been checking and rechecking your phone to clarify if it’s a Tuesday afternoon or a Sunday morning or even a Thursday night, the same phone that loudly heralds your daily step count and quietly informs you of an increase in screen time…..for the third week running. The telly plays in the background, a never-ending loop of graphs in an upward trajectory, safely-distanced shots of hastily-built hospital wards and talking heads of serious scientists and gormless government officials. The Prime Minister has chucked it, isolated due to The Virus (he says), so no more babbling hyperbole of squashing sombreros, but really, we all know he’s keeping out of the road because he’s feart to answer questions he has no decent answer for.

In times like this, I, we, look to music. Recently, it’s been a mix of Buzzcockian post-punk and a reacquaintance with the Zim at the start of the day, dub reggae and a bit of ska for lunch and John Martyn until the second? third? glass is drained and bedtime has long-passed. Last night I lifted and redropped the needle on his Glistening Glyndebourne half a dozen woozy, boozy times. A future article for sure.

A recent article focused on Cloth and their label Last Night From Glasgow. As you read this, the label is in the midst of curating and compiling The Isolation Sessions, a timely, hastily hatched and socially-conscious album with a noble purpose: the small, independent venues that host weekly shows, many of them featuring LNFG artists, venues that struggle at the best of times, will share in all proceeds from its sales. Simple, yet (fingers crossed) effective. The hope is that this endeavour should help in some small way towards these venues staying alive until who knows when. By the end of April, The Isolation Sessions should be complete and ready for release. You can pre-order it here.

What sets the album apart from most other compilations is that this is an album where labelmates cover one another’s tracks. The aforementioned Cloth have a go at reworking acoustic neo-folkie Annie Booth, who returns the favour by turning in a gossamer-thin version of Sleep. The Gracious Losers, Glasgow’s sprawling, scabby-kneed take on an Arcade Fired-up E-Street Band will cover psychedelic shoegazers Domiciles. Sister John offer up a faithfully introspective recording of Stephen Solo‘s Secrets You Keep, enhanced by the combined female/male vocals. For reference, think of those fantastic Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan albums from a few years back. Yes, that great.

The best track so far – and so far is the caveat here, because only a third of the album has been made available to LNFG subscribers, is Close Lobsters‘ amazing version of Cloth’s Curiosity Door. To fully appreciate it, you must first be familiar with the original;

Cloth – Curiosity Door

Curiosity Door is fantastic; synthesised pealing church bells giving way to whispered vocals, sparse percussion and lean, fat-free pulsing guitar, the pinged harmonics ringing long into the empty spaces. Womblike, dreamy in a just-woken-up manner and pin drop-quiet, it’s the perfect sampler of what Cloth is about. Never heard them? Curiosity should get the better of you. Boom boom.

Close Lobsters have only gone and – wow! –  totally reinterpreted Curiosity Door as a motoric, propulsive mid 70s kosmische groover, all compasses going wild for map reference 51°14′N 6°47′E and Düsseldorf, West Germany. Listen to this!

Close Lobsters – Curiosity Door

Close Lobsters’ version is washed in Suicide keyboards, Michael Rother guitars and slow-burning, fractal, vapour trails that Sonic Boom would give his 1962 Vox Phantom for. The first thing you notice though is Andrew Burnett’s close-miked Scottish burr. Slightly menacing, slightly sinister, it brings to mind some of those great Pulp records where Jarvis whispers only for you, right down and deep into your ear. All summer, you’d shave your head, he goes. Given the current trend for DIY stay-at-home buzzcuts, well, how prescient!

I’ve had this on non-stop repeat for the past 24 hours and I can say with absolute confidence that it’s the best thing I’ve heard this year. When all of this is over and we get back to live music again and Last Night From Glasgow give the compilation the proper launch it deserves, I hope very much that, as great as Close Lobsters’ new album is in its own right, they’ll coax the band into playing their version of Curiosity Door very loudly indeed.

Now, have you ordered The Isolation Sessions yet?

 

 

 

New! Now!

Set To Clean Up

Craig McAllister

There’s a terrific label that’s been releasing really great records with no fuss or fanfare for the past four years. Last Night From Glasgow – named, I imagine, from the opening line in Abba’s Super Trouper – is unique in that it exists through crowdfunding. Members pay upfront at the start of the year and the subscription fees are put towards the production of music from over a dozen acts. The music varies, from the wandering electronica of L Space and Broken Chanter‘s soulful folk to the E-Street isms of The Gracious Losers and a reborn, hard jangling Close Lobsters. The latter will launch their LNFG-curated Post Neo Anti LP this coming weekend at a sold-out Glasgow show and will, I suspect, feature strongly in the end of year Best Of lists. It’s a cracking record, one that, as a newly-converted member to the label, I’ve been lucky enough to have been listening to far ahead of its official launch date.

Another release of note is the eponymously-titled debut album by Glasgow 3-piece Cloth.

Released towards the end of last year and taking the label on yet another interesting path, the album almost defies classification and comparison. Squint and you might hear traces of Luscious Jackson’s more ethereal moments. The womb-like groove of Warpaint also springs to mind. The layered atmospherics of Built To Spill, maybe. But really, Cloth are fairly peerless. Sure, there are guitars on there. Chiming, perfectly clean and other-worldly in places, as far from ‘rocking’ as you can imagine. There are vocals too. Dry, high in the mix, gossamer-thin and spectral, yet honeyed and warm. There’s a drummer somewhere too, playing with an understated finesse that’s far more background than backbeat, and being under-stretched, she has the time and gumption to trigger an occasional bass sample to help put flesh upon the skeletal frame from which the songs hang. All in all, it’s a terrific sound.

Cloth – Demo Love

The album is only now gathering pace. Tom Robinson, a long-time supporter of the group has featured Cloth regularly on his BBC6 Music ….Introducing show. Stuart Maconie gave them a play at the weekend. Marc Riley, Gideon Coe, Vic Galloway, Steve Lamacq….all the big hitters really, have fallen for the band’s sound and given them generous airplay since the turn of the year.

Cloth – Felt

Guitars ping throughout. Airy atmospherics abound, swirling like the 5 in the morning mist on the Clyde. The rhythm chugs ever-forwards, propelled on a breeze of multi-layered breathy vocals. It’s all very lean. Fat-free. No superfluous clutter. By the third listen you’ll love this album, I tell you. Cloth, if you pardon the pun, are due to wipe the floor with all opposition.

Insular in sound, cosmopolitan in outlook, it’ll be exciting to see where 2020 takes Cloth. It’s not too late to jump aboard. Click the logo below and sign up to the label for the year ahead. Satisfaction and good music guaranteed.