Plenty Side

Plentycast #32

2012-01-10T21:31:00.002Z

Thae Christmas holidays, they dinnae fair take it oot o' ye... Or something...

And we're back, back, back after a small break, mainly caused by slackness in the blackness but there you go. It's another bumper edition (19 songs, 150 minutes!) so strap yourselves in for the latest and best, hip and happening new music. Or not...

I don't mind saying but recording a two and a half hour podcast in one sitting is a bit of a struggle, by the end of it I was flagging and ready for my bed! However, I managed to soldier on to the end, such is the dedication to the cause...

Aye, it's me and John playing songs and talking about them in between them. Plus ca change...

Hit it...

Plentycast#32 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Wounded Knee - Lowland Lullaby
2. Bitch Magnet - Dragoon
3. Archers Of Loaf - Audiowhore
4. Galaxie 500 - Isn't It A Pity
5. George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
6. Loose Fur - You Were Wrong
7. Midlake - Roscoe
8. Albert Ayler - Summertime
9. The Leather Nun - No Rule
10. Autolux - Sugarless
11. Dolly Parton - Coat Of Many Colors
12. Simon And Garfunkel - So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
13. Dead Meadow - Sleepy Silver Door
14. Pensioner - Big Trouble In Little Richard
15. Roy Harper - Commune
16. Robert Wyatt - Free Will And Testament
17. Throwing Muses - Furious
18. The Juliana Hatfield Three - I Got No Idols
19. Football, etc - Catch The Spirit

Plentycast #31

2011-12-04T15:58:00.000Z

a.k.a The "Hinch" Cast...

Well, what goes on on tour normally stays on tour but this is a wee bit different. We found ourselves down in London to see Superchunk at the Scala in Kings Cross and were able to catch up with our pal Iain H, who if you don't know already, used to play in Sawyer with John and now plays in Part Chimp.

Iain very graciously put us up for the second night we were down and so we took the opportunity to record a 'cast with him. Iain picked the songs and we had a chat about them, such is the raison d'etre of this thing we do. I hope you've got a spare 138 (!) minutes to listen as there's some fine, fine choices (and fine, fine chat) on display.

Thanks again to Iain for doing this, it was a lot of fun and I hope that comes across.

Plentycast #31 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. The Saints - This Perfect Day
2. The Afghan Whigs - Retarded
3. Rainbow - A Light In The Dark
4. Tar - Teetering
5. Helms Alee - Rogue's Yarn
6. Pink Fairies - Do It
7. Cat Power - Wild Is The Wind
8. Art Ensemble Of Chicago - Theme de Yoyo
9. True Widow - Night Witches
10. Jogger - Gorilla Meat
11. Laura Viers - July Flame
12. Kogumaza - Bells
13. American Football - I'll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional
14. Slayer - Dissident Aggressor
15. Judee Sill - The Kiss (demo)
16. Kyuss - Spaceship Landing
17. Versus - Double Suicide

Plentycast #30

2011-11-17T20:56:00.001Z

a.k.a Here's One For The Teenagers...

We're nothing if not on the ball and hip to all the latest musical trends at PC Towers and so we present to you a special podcast of our favourite Creation / Sub Pop /Pacific North West tunes. There is nothing here beyond 1996 so if you're looking for something up-to-date then I'm afraid you're in the wrong place! However, if these songs are new to you then you're in the right place!

This 'cast was inspired by recent TV watching and book reading and cooked up over a Mosque Kitchen curry one Friday night so you have BBC4 to thank for showing the Creation Records doc, the Pearl Jam doc and No Nirvana repeat and me for reading Mark Yarm's Seattle music scene tome Everybody Loves Our Town. It's a whopping 1hr 53mins long so pull up a comfy chair and put the kettle on!

We'll return to our usual fare at a later date. Oh wait, this is quite like our usual fare...

Hmm...

Plentycast #30 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Temple Of The Dog - Hunger Strike
2. Sugar - Tilted
3. The House Of Love - Destroy The Heart
4. Mudhoney - You Make Me Die
5. Ride - Perfect Time
6. My Bloody Valentine - You Made Me Realise
7. Pond - Young Splendor
8. Screaming Trees - Dollar Bill
9. Slowdive - Slowdive
10. Swervedriver - Son Of Mustang Ford
11. The Afghan Whigs - Sister Brother
12. Tad - Behemoth
13. Soundgarden - Burden In My Hand
14. The Boo Radleys - Paradise

Plentyside #29

2011-11-06T14:37:00.008Z

Photo: Jenny Stevens

...a.k.a. The Fence (and others) cast...

And so we decamp to Cellardyke in the East Neuk of Fife for a special edition of the podcast. We're joined by a myriad of characters along the way at the kitchen table (and thanks to Jen, Thom, Sarah, Kelly and Lynsey for chipping in along the way) but the main guest is Andy Cleary of Club Smart Patrol in London.

The main reason for this special show is the Fence Records Hott Loggz all-day gig that we were all attending so I thought it would be good to do a Fence themed podcast. Andy chose all of the songs we played and did a fine, fine job, there's 7 Fence, or Fence-affiliated acts and 3 songs off recent LPs that are tickling his fancy at this particular time.

Stay tuned too for 25 Things You Didn't Know About Zooey Deschanel and a list of our order from the Anstruther Fish Bar...

Hey ho, let's go...

Plentycast #29 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. HMS Ginafore – Gregory's Girl
2. UNPOC – Avignon
3. Real Estate – Out Of Tune
4. Lone Pigeon – Seawalk
5. The Pictish Trail – All I Own
6. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – No One Is (As I Are Be)
7. James Yorkston – Someplace Simple
8. King Creosote – The Someone Else
9. Grouper – Alien Observer
10. Lone Pigeon – Boats

Plentycast #28

2011-10-29T10:06:00.001+01:00

It's lucky we don't broadcast this live as you would have heard a couple of snafu's in this latest programme. Yes, let's speak into the microphone when the switch on the microphone is in the "off" position. That makes sense doesn't it...?

So, history is edited out, it's as if it never happened and we move on with nobody getting hurt. I think this edition is the perfect mix of loud, quiet and everything in between and it flows quite nicely. Us being us, we got distracted a couple of times and ended up digressing off the subject but hey where's the fun in sticking to the topic?

Well, we got to grips with the technology in the end and I hope the songs speak for themselves. Not quite the amount of new stuff as in the previous show but as John's fond of saying from time to time "a song could be new to somebody somewhere".

Let's do this thing...

Plentycast #28 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Ligament - Theme From Ligament
2. David Dondero - South Of The South
3. Elizabeth Cotten - Freight Train
4. American Music Club - Nightwatchman
5. Dinosaur Jr - Severed Lips
6. Torche - Across The Shields
7. Entombed - Eyemaster
8. High On Fire - Speedwolf
9. Ian Humberstone - House On The Hill
10. Lee Hazlewood - Cold Hard Times
11. Rob St John - Sargasso Sea
12. eagleowl - Sorry I Spoke

Plentycast #27

2011-10-14T23:10:00.000+01:00

Ah, the perils of technology listeners...

We first tried to record this on Monday night (the 10th) but we had a total 'mare with the mic so all the vocal bits sounded like the production of Carcass's Reek Of Putrefaction LP (i.e. not good). That meant a re-record as I didn't want to put something out that sounded pretty bad so we come to tonight instead. The mic issue was resolved, we used a new bit of software that meant we could record it totally live (instead of in a cut & paste stylee as before) so that cut down a lot on editing and post-production so here we are publishing the podcast on the same night it was recorded! Riches indeed...

Including FIVE songs from 2011! A feat that may never be repeated in all likelihood! Unprecedented scenes at PS Towers this evening. Jocky got so excited that he nearly left his council flat in Smeaton to have a game of arrows. Nearly...

On you go...

Plentycast #27 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Done Lying Down - Just A Misdemeanor
2. Nirvana - Aneurysm
3. Bert Jansch - It Don't Bother Me
4. Yo La Tengo - Needle Of Death
5. R.E.M. - Country Feedback
6. Wild Flag - Racehorse
7. Fotheringay - The Sea
8. Emily Scott - I Saw You
9. Oxes - Crunchy Zest
10. The Jesus Lizard - Nub
11. Helms Alee - Pretty As Pie
12. Wolves In The Throne Room - Subterranean Initiation

Plentycast #26

2011-09-25T13:03:00.001+01:00

And so we're back after an unplanned break (mainly due to me not being well and not really having the energy to put everything into a podcast). I'm still not feeling 100% so the majority of the songs are John's choices but you have to say that he's come up trumps with what we have for you this time around. Mind you, any chance we have of including a Withered Hand song or a Superchunk song is going to be taken! They are good 'uns as well so that doesn't hurt!

Apologies once more for coughing a lot (an annoying consequence of this was me missing a couple of weekend festivals I was looking forward to and which probably would have been featured on this particular edition of PC). Such is the life of an old man...

Aye, the nights are fair drawing in...

Plentycast #26 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Bedhead - More Than Ever
2. Silverfish - Fat Painted Carcass
3. Lemonheads - Mallo Cup
4. Withered Hand - No Cigarettes
5. Joy Division - Failures
6. Cranes - Inescapable
7. Eggs - Roll Away The Stone
8. Syd Barrett - No Good Trying
9. The Jesus And Mary Chain - Taste The Floor
10. Ian Dury - Plaistow Patricia
11. Smog - Cold Blooded Old Times
12. Stereolab - Super-Electric
13. Superchunk - The First Part

Plentycast #25

2011-08-20T10:38:00.001+01:00

And so we reach a quarter century! Riches indeed.

We celebrate it by swearing a lot. You can take the boys out of Fife etc... So yes, podcast #25 features some words that you may find objectionable but it also contains some songs that you may find quite palatable. I hope it's obvious that it's the music which is the star of these podcasts, we try and put together playlists that flow quite nicely and feature songs that are complementary - you just have to put up with us two talking pish in between them!

So, listen on for hipsters and Eska, choruses that end too soon, Ian Svenonius and Kevin Rowland and the curious tale of John Stanier's trousers...

Away you go!

Plentycast #25 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. The Flaming Lips - Watching The Planets
2. Eska - Aristotle
3. The Grifters - She Blows Blasts Of Static
4. Loop - Afterglow
5. Madness - One Better Day
6. Shudder To Think - X-French Tee Shirt
7. Sea Birds - Clipper Ships
8. Shelagh McDonald - Stargazer
9. Nation of Ulysses - Diptheria
10. The New Year - Gasoline
11. Lady North - It's All About Gettin' That Claude Monet

Plentycast #24

2011-08-15T21:04:00.000+01:00

Well, we return to our previously advertised schedule with a range of songs from 1956 right up to the present day. As I say at the start of the show, pretty much everything we do is with a nod in the direction of the much missed John Peel so I hope he'd approve of playing one of his favourite acts along with a track from one of his sessions. Because of him, I always refer to records as "LPs" and if there's a slight inflection in my voice then that's the effect he's had on me. Here's to you sir. And here's to our podcast #24 -

Hit it!

Plentycast #24 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Lonnie Donegan - Frankie And Johnny
2. The Japanese War Effort - Summer Sun Skateboard
3. Rocket From The Crypt - My Arrow's Aim
4. Judee Sill - There's A Rugged Road
5. Sebadoh - Not Too Amused
6. Owls - Anyone Can Have A Good Time
7. New Fast Automatic Daffodils - Working For Him
8. Part Chimp - Dark Entries
9. Rodan - Gauge
10. Neko Case - Deep Red Bells

Plentycast #23 (Part 2)

2011-07-30T10:24:00.000+01:00

a.k.a. Good Songs by Crap Bands part 2...

I told you there was more! This is part 2 of our little homage to John's Good Songs by Crap Bands feature in Clipper fanzine. I know you're gazing at the tracklisting and thinking R.E.M??? However, if you listen to the podcast then the context is there and we like nothing more than providing a little context to the proceedings!

I have to say that these two podcasts have been up there in terms of the most enjoyable to do. As I said in part 1, there's no such thing as guilty pleasures just songs you like, songs you don't and songs you haven't heard and I can't help having a wee smile to myself listening back to the music we chose. There's just some really good songs in these two podcasts and I hope the spirit in which the venture was intended is reflected.

Hit it!

Plentycast #23 (Part 2) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. The Osmonds - Crazy Horses
2. Coldplay - Clocks
3. Supergrass - Sun Hits The Sky
4. Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
5. Idlewild - You Held The World In Your Arms
6. Mother Love Bone - Stardog Champion
7. R.E.M. - Hairshirt
8. Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman
9. Kimya Dawson - I Like Giants
10. Urge Overkill - Sister Havana
11. Radiohead - Idioteque
12. Belle And Sebastian - Lazy Line Painter Jane

Plentycast #23 (Part 1)

2011-07-27T21:45:00.001+01:00

a.k.a. Good Songs by Crap Bands (Part 1)...

So yes, the impetus behind these two special podcasts was John's articles in Clipper fanzine on some aforementioned good songs by crap bands. Those were articles that always stuck with me and it became pretty apparent that such a feature had legs...

Here we are then a few years down the line. It's amazing how many good songs by crap bands there are out there. We found 24, there are many, many more that you can choose from and we found that they came pretty easily, some might say too easily... Part 1 of 2 then, the rationale is pretty simple - we're not being ironic, we're not being arch, we're not being controversial (although a couple of choices might raise an eyebrow) - it's just songs we like by bands we don't!

Part 2 to follow shortly so on we go...

Plentycast #23 (Part 1) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Calexico - All The Pretty Horses
2. Danzig - Mother
3. Alice In Chains - Would?
4. Kitchens Of Distinction - Now It's Time To Say Goodbye
5. The Wonder Stuff - Mission Drive
6. Inspiral Carpets - I Want You
7. Megadeth - Peace Sells
8. Teenage Fanclub - Everything Flows
9. U2 - October
10. Red House Painters - 24
11. The Wedding Present - Go Out And Get 'Em Boy!
12. Wings - Live And Let Die

Plentycast #22

2011-07-19T13:44:00.000+01:00

Another podcast, another senior moment. For some reason, I had it in my head that it was the full Lambchop band I saw in Edinburgh a few years back when of course it was just five of them (cheekily billed as The Lambchop Quartet!) but it was an honest mistake to make and my Kerouacian ideals mean that it stays in!

However, you have about an hour and a half to navigate before you get to my brain freeze and what a navigation it is. There's some absolutely splendid songs on the show this time around and in unprecedented scenes we have four (FOUR!) songs from 2011 on the podcast. It doesn't get any better than that... Much... Or something...

Click on!

Plentycast #22 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Motörhead - Killed By Death
2. Archers Of Loaf - Backwash
3. Copy Haho - Accent Changed
4. Braid - What A Wonderful Puddle
5. Kristin Hersh - Me And My Charms
6. Idaho - Reminder
7. Juno - Leave A Clean Camp And A Dead Fire
8. Bellini - Save The Greyhounds
9. David Crosby - Laughing
10. Things In Herds - Nothing Is Lost
11. Enablers - Rue Girardon
12. United Fruit - Go Away, Don't Leave Me Alone
13. Lambchop - The New Cobweb Summer

Plentycast #21

2011-06-30T18:58:00.000+01:00

And so it came to pass that the sudden, unexpected re-apprearance of that bright, heat-giving thing in the sky, coupled with the just cooked tea warmth in my flat led to us getting a bit more of those little beads of sweat on our brows as we began recording. Because of that, I had to open a window so you'll hear some hustle and bustle from the street outside but I imagine that won't temper your enjoyment all that much...

Is it summer at last? Will it last? Who knows. What I do know is that you've happened across another hour and half of quality tuneage with our usual banter in between them. This time around we introduce the "Good Songs by Shite Bands" feature and give a wee nod to the birthday of a good friend of ours. Phew, need to get the air in again in here! Two days in a row, unparalleled riches indeed...

Anyway, click on!

Plentycast #21 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Fucked Up - I Was There
2. Eska - From Springboard To Highdive
3. The Night Marchers - Jump In The Fire
4. Obits - New August
5. Blur - You're So Great
6. China Drum - Biscuit Barrel (acoustic)
7. Gastr Del Sol - Eight Corners
8. Nova Mob - Admiral Of The Sea
9. Neil Young - Revolution Blues
10. The 255s - Caffeine
11. The Weakerthans - Plea From A Cat Named Virtute
12. The Sky At Night - Recreation
13. June Of 44 - Sharks & Sailors

Plentycast #20

2011-06-12T16:29:00.000+01:00

We've reached the dizzy heights of podcast #20 then. Riches indeed...

In this edition we introduce a new element to the proceedings, namely us playing both sides of a 7" record over the course of the programme. This stemmed from the request we received to play the Palace Brothers song "Ohio River Boat Song" and thinking that the B-side is pretty damn good as well so why don't we play that too? So we did!

If you'd like to suggest a 7" to play in future shows then by all means do so and it would be nice to hear from you (and not just about this, get in touch via the Facebook page or on Twitter @plentycast). I've got an idea for the next in the series but we'd be delighted to receive suggestions from the listening hordes out there.

There's some cricket chat as well, but don't let that put you off.

Onwards!

Plentycast #20 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Queen - Seven Seas Of Rhye
2. Palace Brothers - Ohio River Boat Song
3. Rob St. John - Your Phantom Limb
4. The Sea And Cake - The World Is Against You
5. Thirty Pounds Of Bone - Crack Shandy In The Harbour
6. Throwing Muses - Fish
7. Bettie Serveert - Tom Boy
8. Fred Neil - The Dolphins
9. Minutemen - Corona
10. Siouxsie And The Banshees - Love In A Void
11. Pedro The Lion - Bad Things To Such Good People
12. Palace Brothers - Drinking Woman
13. Sunny Day Real Estate - Seven
14. Yo La Tengo - Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)

Plentycast #19

2011-05-19T19:40:00.000+01:00

And we're back...

Aye, we had a wee bit of a "spring break" so that explains the short gap in transmissions, there were a few reasons in play but sometimes it's good to step back a bit and come back refreshed. As we did. With caramel logs...

So, it's the usual script. Myself and John play some songs that we like and then we talk about them. There was a few "events" that had taken place in between the last show and this so those proved good talking points - we cover the likes of ATP, the Fence Records Homegame and John's trip to see Rush in Glasgow. It's 1 hour 41 minutes this time around so best put the kettle on. And repeat...

Jocky knows what you should do...

Plentycast #19 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Julie Doiron - The Wrong Guy
2. Animal Collective - My Girls
3. Rush - Beneath, Between & Behind
4. The United States Of America - Cloud Song
5. Jack Rose - Hart Crane's Old Boyfriends
6. A.C. Temple - Come Sunrise
7. Low - Majesty/Magic
8. James Yorkston - I Awoke
9. The Replacements - Color Me Impressed
10. Stapleton - International Departures
11. The Scottish Enlightenment - The First Will Be Last
12. Polvo - Taste Of Your Mind
13. Tsunami - Water's Edge
14. Fugazi - Smallpox Champion

Plentycast #18

2011-04-18T09:32:00.004+01:00

aka The Impromptu Birthday Cast...

Aye, it was my (Chris's) birthday on Thursday past, I had a relatively quiet day off work and had a few drinks and went to see Lone Pigeon and The Pictish Trail in Leith at night. John was otherwise engaged on Thursday but we agreed to meet up for a couple of libations, finances meant that said libations were in the flat. John suggested we do a podcast, he then suggested we do a podcast for my birthday along the lines of one we did for his and since that seemed like a good idea to me that's exactly what we did...

However, it didn't give me much time to think of songs to play but I think I came up with an OK selection. It is a 90s indie rock heavy playlist, but that's my thing so that's what we're going for. There are probably a few glaring omissions (and I can think of a few off the top of my head) but such is the way of these things. John did the announcing and I did the rest and I hope you like what we came up with. In a recurring theme, it turned into another two-parter...

Hit it says Jocky...

Plentycast #18 (Pt.1) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Plentycast #18 (Pt.2) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Part 1 Tracklisting -

1. AC/DC - It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll)

2. Pavement - Summer Babe (Winter Version)

3. The Delgados - Thirteen Gliding Principles

4. Mudhoney - Good Enough

5. The Afghan Whigs - Debonair

6. Tunng - Woodcat

7. dEUS - Suds & Soda

8. Metallica - For Whom The Bell Tolls

9. Sebadoh - Skull

Part 2 Tracklisting -

1. Helmet - Unsung

2. Buffalo Tom - I'm Allowed

3. Joanna Newsom - Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie

4. Dirty Three - Everything's Fucked

5. Girls Against Boys - Bulletproof Cupid

6. Versus - Angels Rush In

7. Urusei Yatsura - Kernel

8. Yo La Tengo - Deeper Into Movies

9. Superchunk - Throwing Things

Plentycast #17

2011-04-12T18:45:00.000+01:00

What is it somebody once said? April is the cruellest month? Well, it's my birthday this month so I don't want that being particularly cruel and we have some cracking gigs to look forward to the rest of the way (examples of which may well end up being on a future playlist). Speaking of playlists, Velocity Girl was a late addition to the proceedings taking it up to 15 tracks, which may well be the optimum size for this particular podcast given that we ramble on a bit and always near the 90 minute mark. However, I'll always make an exception for Velocity Girl and it's great to hear this song again (and it fits in just perfectly in my opinion).

So yes, the usual mix of the old and the new. We even manage to play three new songs in a row! Wonders will never cease. Just you wait for the 1970s classic rock special! Actually come to think of it, that might happen at one point. What fun...

Jocky sez click...

Plentycast #17 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. 18th Dye - Play w/You
2. Bitch Magnet - Americruiser
3. Seam - Shame
4. Velocity Girl - Audrey's Eyes
5. The Douglas Firs - I Will Kill Again
6. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Running On Fumes
7. Bill Callahan - Drover
8. Kyuss - Odyssey
9. The Spinanes - Jad Fair Drives Women Wild
10. Half Japanese - U.S. Teens Are Spoiled Bums
11. Marnie Stern - For Ash
12. Seaweed - Bill
13. American Music Club - Myopic Books
14. Tim Buckley - Buzzin' Fly
15. Alasdair Roberts - The Cruel War

Plentycast on Facebook

2011-04-11T13:29:00.002+01:00

For no particular reason at all, I've went and created a Facebook page for the podcast. If you are so inclined and would like to "like" this then please make your way to the following link -

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Plentycast/192022077507581

Also, you can click on the link at the side of the page under "Plenty Social". There are links there to my own Twitter account along with the podcast Twitter account.

Next podcast recording is tonight (Monday 11 April), check back in a couple of days when it should be posted.

Plentycast #16

2011-03-30T17:07:00.000+01:00

When we were putting together the playlist for this particular show one thing did stand out - there were a good few long songs on there. So, we added some more and decided to split the show into two (just to get round the 100mb upload limit). As it turns out, there was some epic chat moments and we've ended up with two 70+ minute shows! Hey ho...

There's also a bit towards the end of part one where John talks about his time in Sawyer, which I had hoped to do at some point in proceedings so I hope you find that interesting. Further to that, this is probably the only place where you're likely to hear Wishbone Ash, The Feminine Complex and Fucked Up within the same hour of music. Whether that leads to the listenership reaching double figures is another matter though...

On you go...

Plentycast #16 (Pt.1) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Plentycast #16 (Pt.2) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Part 1 Tracklisting -

1. Labradford - S

2. Josh T Pearson - Country Dumb

3. RM Hubbert - TipsyTapsy

4. Engine 88 - Fragment

5. Karp - Forget The Minions

6. Throwing Muses - Lazy Eye

7. Thin Lizzy - The Rocker

8. Sawyer - 20etc (Original)

9. Sawyer - The Counties

Part 2 Tracklisting -

1. Pisces - Sam

2. Fucked Up - The Other Shoe

3. Jandek - Nancy Sings

4. The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden - Shambles

5. The Feminine Complex - Six O'Clock In The Morning

6. Low - Especially Me

7. Wishbone Ash - The King Will Come

8. In Decades Decline - Duneideann

9. Slint - Good Morning, Captain

Plentycast #15

2011-03-16T20:27:00.000Z

It's going to be summer soon isn't it? Isn't it? Certainly doesn't feel like it at the moment. We recorded the latest show as the skies over Edinburgh emptied for most of the day and the temperature plummeted in addition. It was a night where I should have been through at the fitba in Fife but took the night off from it for various reasons so there's a wee bit of chat about that in there. Plus the odd inflammatory comment about Dunfermline Athletic FC...

Listening back I realised I didn't introduce proceedings properly, such is the way when you go straight into the first song so I'll remedy that now. Don't press play quite yet, just imagine me saying this...

Hello everybody and welcome to podcast number 15. It's Tuesday 15 March (or at least it was when we recorded it) and it's officially fucking wet and baltic. Here's the first song...

PRESS PLAY NOW!

DO IT!

Plentycast #15 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Guided By Voices - Game Of Pricks
2. Come - Off To One Side
3. Mary Hampton - Island
4. Lida Husik - To Virginia
5. Richard Youngs - Life On The Stream
6. Six Organs Of Admittance - Hold But Let Go
7. Big Business - Start Your Digging
8. Grant Hart - 2541
9. Hüsker Dü - The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
10. Kath Bloom & Loren MazzaCane Connors - Come Here My Sweetest One
11. Fairport Convention - Meet On The Ledge
12. Trembling Bells - Darling
13. The USA Is A Monster - Poison Plant
14. AC/DC - Ride On

Plentycast #14

2011-03-03T09:11:00.002Z

As I say at the start of the latest show, I can't believe that it's March already. I mean, it feels like only yesterday I was at the Sonic Youth gig in London, and that was the end of December! Time has flown, and our podcasts are flowing nicely too.

This one has a little bit of something for everybody. Well, maybe not everybody as not all of my choices met with John's approval but that's OK as a little bit of diversion from time to time is quite healthy. I think we did a bit better on the forgetful front, having a playlist in front of me certainly focused the mind a bit more - there was an issue with the microphone at one point so a bit of our chat is cobbled together, apologies for that, I hope it didn't disrupt the feel of it too much.

Onwards!

Plentycast #14 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You
2. Yuck - Get Away
3. Times New Viking - No Time, No Hope
4. Huggy Bear - Her Jazz
5. Lungfish - Nation Saving Song
6. Melody Dog - Futuristic Lover
7. Heavenly - C Is The Heavenly Option
8. Conquering Animal Sound - Bear
9. Thirty Pounds Of Bone - Uyeasound
10. Gary Higgins - Windy Child
11. The Twilight Singers - On The Corner
12. Led Zeppelin - Gallows Pole
13. Fursaxa - Trobairitz
14. Lift To Experience - Waiting To Hit

Interview - Rob St John

2011-02-28T20:12:00.002Z

Words: Chris Hynd

Photo: P. St John

I hope he doesn't mind me saying this but we in Edinburgh miss Rob St John and so his visits up here are always something to look forward to and cherish. His two EPs and evocative live performances left a lot of good memories and as he headed down to Oxford for academic (and now professional) life it was with a bittersweet realisation that appearances back in the city would become quite rare. So it was with great delight (to me anyway!) that Rob would be playing not one, but two times in the space of a few days earlier this month - supporting Ryan Francesconi and headlining the second Ides of Toad gig put on by Matthew Young of the Song, By Toad label and blog. Rob very kindly took time out from his busy schedule while he was in the city to answer some questions I sent to him.

You’re back up in Scotland to play a couple of shows – how do you find coming back up to play now that you’ve been away? i.e. is there anything you miss from your time in Edinburgh or anything you don’t!

Edinburgh will always be very important to me, there’s a very special community of interesting people approaching music in an inspiring way, and I plan to come back in the next year or two. As a place it seeps into most things I write, butting up against the dark Lancashire moors in some imagined mental terrain.

Everyone involved in the LP recording and live set in Edinburgh - Neil Pennycook (Meursault, Withered Hand), Ian Humberstone (Tissø Lake) Tom Western, Malcolm Benzie and Bart Owl (eagleowl), Rob Waters (The Great Bear), Tom Bauchop (UNPOC), Louise Martin, Owen Williams (Pineapple Chunks, Randan Discotheque et al) - has their own main going concerns. We brace and buckle each other’s projects, cross-pollinating ideas and support networks as we go. This project wouldn’t be the same without them.

Following on from that, how is Oxford for a musician such as yourself? I have no knowledge about it as a place for bands so I’m interested to hear what it’s like. Do you play many shows down there or is there a similar thriving musical community such as the one in Scotland? Obviously, it’s like comparing apples and oranges but it would be good to get your perspective now that you’ve been there a while.

This is related to the previous question (and you might have already answered it !) but you were involved in a recording with The Braindead Collective that was released in December. How did that collaboration come about and what was it like recording with them? Would you like to work more with them in the future?

It’s certainly different. Despite being there for the best part of 18 months, I’ve yet to find anything comparable to the Scottish DIY community. But perhaps that’s just through a lack of effort, or luck. For all that any scene or community may intend to be open and approachable, the fact that it’s small in scale and niche in taste, aesthetic or ethos means that it may simply be difficult to find for anybody aspiring to get involved. Relating back to Edinburgh, I suppose this is where (unfounded, in my opinion) accusations of nepotism within the DIY scene stem from.

That said, Braindead Collective are a likeminded, shifting bunch of talented improvisers based loosely in London and Oxford around Seb Reynolds. Recording "The Whites of their Eyes" was a great process - set up in a medieval city centre Oxford church with banks of amps, organs and percussion in a frozen winter weekend and improv over a freshly formed song. We’re playing a collaborative set opening for A Hawk and a Hacksaw in April, and will keep working together, for sure.

I’m currently taking this experience of moving cities and using it as the basis of a fanzine which documents how best to start DIY promotion. A screenprinted and letterpressed document, it’ll collate advice and anecdotes from a bunch of promoters who’re willing to share their hard-won wisdom. Something cheap to sell on merch tables to inspire a new raft of people forging creative communities with a DIY approach.

I believe we can expect a full length LP from you soon! Can you tell us how that’s going, i.e. what the recording process is/was like, the people involved and who plays on the record and what they bring to the process. It’s coming out on Song, By Toad Records – did Matthew approach you with a view to releasing it or did you always see SBT as a good home for you.

We recorded for two days with Neil in a shutter-drawn Victorian living room in north Edinburgh under the weak kaleidoscopic light of an ailing mirror ball like some slow film, and powered on by bananas and strong coffee. It’s a record of events, strung together by creaks and drones. Songs for daybreak and for evening gloam.

Matthew is very enthusiastic, organised, supportive and tolerant of my whims of creative control and artistic vagaries, and is keen to put the record out on vinyl, which is fantastic. We work well together.

Your music has evolved over the time I’ve seen you play from quieter, acoustic songs with harmoniums and the like to you using an electric guitar and having a more heavier and, dare I say it, doomier feel! What led to the change in sound and was it something that came naturally to you? Has your writing process changed in that you’re writing specifically for songs that are designed to be played on the electric rather than the acoustic guitar?

The LP is swathed in skittering drums and bells, harmonium, saw, organ, fiddle and group singing. I was thinking about how group singing has almost exclusively become professionalised and institutionalised in Britain, resulting in the widespread loss of the tradition of communities singing together simply for fun, storytelling or togetherness. Regardless of communal harmony or skill, there’s something liberating about the shared purpose of group singing – something like a football chant without the daft puns (largely) or wavering moral compass.

Similarly, I’m fascinated by the idea of rough music (or ran-tanning) - where a chorus of villagers would ostracise a criminal or wrongdoer with a loud, primal chant and the clatter of saucepans, drums and cymbals. Bill Drummond’s 17 project , where a rotating cast of 17 amateur singers were assembled to sing compositions based on ideas such as the tones and harmonies made by the machinery of a rusting, whirring old Land Rover driven from Hull to Liverpool , is also inspiring. That rediscovery of remaining a happy amateur and emphasising something crafted and communal, rather than necessarily forged from high art, is an idea that resonates (hmm…) with me.

That said, all the players on the record are excellent musicians, well versed in tolerating my oscillating and improvised recording ideas. Held together on some tightrope of other’s talent tapering into waveringly tuneful slips of songs. The recording is the document of the time, the room, the line-up and the available instruments. The live show is constantly changing; hopefully remaining fresh and interesting for all involved, audience and performers alike. The live performance is where I think the true nature of a song is formed and continually redefined.

Played live, songs mutate: becoming louder, quieter, faster, slower, heavier, sparser. I think when you begin to hone and over-practice a set of songs you run the risk of reducing meaningful lyrics or melodies into slick anonymous products, asking to be watered-down and endlessly recited.

The songs are largely in some invented altered guitar tuning or other. You become that happy amateur again when forced to play your hand in an unfamiliar tuning, inadvertently rediscovering the love of the Cs, Gs and Fs you shun as an aspirational learner set on forging something original. Happy accidents as simple phrases played on new or unfamiliar instrument sound exciting and fully formed. Once when touring with Woodpigeon I left a guitar tuned in this way in a musician’s B&B in Manchester, only to return a week later to find the owners had fallen for the tuning and were eager to find out what it was. Guiltily I quickly retuned to standard, for fear of discovery. Tunings can do strange things to a man.

I’ve been listening to a lot of dense, dark, droney music lately, which has most likely influenced the record. A course of Grouper, Lichens, Richard Skelton, Swans, Earth and Ben Frost, punctuated by the crystalline, improvised clarity of Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou’s piano playing, and the songs of Phil Elverum, Ben Wetherill, Karen Dalton and Elizabeth Cotten. That said, when recording, Owen and I took to communicating with each other in code: this song should sound like a frozen waterfall slowly melting; this one should sound as if Low were from a Northumberland pit village. How this cryptic daftness carries through I have no idea.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the process of field recording, and working on a soundtrack documenting a short walk along the River Thames between Oxford and the tiny, mediaeval Binsey Church. When played back, the wheezing, faltering phantom hymnal of the harmonium recorded in the thick churchyard gloom sounds almost identical sonically to some of the distortions made by the wind whirring into my cheap dictaphone whilst field recording. Inadvertent coincidences like this really inspired the shifting, somnambulant aural fog that clouds this record.

Finally, what are your hopes and plans for the year? Obviously the release of the LP will be uppermost in your mind so is it a case of promoting that and playing shows around the country?

I’m very proud of the record, and all who’ve contributed and been involved. I’ll hopefully be able to get to play out a bit more this year. Perhaps a wee bit further afield than before. The second LP is almost written, and will be recorded in the summer. Pablo Clark (My Kappa Roots, Milk) and I will make a (long overdue) homage to "Bert and John" in the near future, a project formulated six years ago in tiny Edinburgh flats as we traded our fledgling, whispered tunes, and argued over who should be "Bert" and who should be "John". I’m also working on a bunch of soundtrack, film and writing projects, exploring ideas of place, memory, landscape and sound. And the fanzine. Sleep is taking a wee bit of a back seat at the moment.

It sounds as if there's a lot going on creatively with Rob at the moment and I know a lot of people will be looking forward to what he comes up with. Personally speaking, the prospect of a record with Pablo Clark is something I can't wait to hear, but that's only one part of the future. Exciting times ahead, always moving, never complacent. It's something that we could all do well to heed as we go forward ourselves.

Interview - Edinburgh Man

2011-02-22T14:32:00.007Z

Words: Chris Hynd

Well, where were we on the interview front? It's only been since 2008 after all...

The first one back is with Jonny Dobson, the genial host of the Edinburgh Man podcast. I first came across Jonny's podcast last summer when my friend Gordon joined him for a couple of shows over the Edinburgh Fringe period. Although the more indiepop songs on his playlists are not quite to my taste, I do like the mix of indie rock, lo-fi and shoegaze that he also plays so I've found myself keeping a half hour free every week to tune in. Jonny was kind enough to agree to do the interview and took the time to give full answers to my questions.

The Edinburgh Man podcast has been going for around a year now (correct me if I'm wrong!). Can I start by asking what was the inspiration to you to do a podcast in the first place? Did it take a while to get into the swing of things (e.g. I look back on my first couple and cringe, do you feel the same?) or was it something that came naturally to you?

Yep, it's a year this week! I'd been meaning to do a podcast for years, actually years and years, ever since I started listening to podcasts in about 2004/2005, but it's something I never really got around to doing. The actual rather lame impetus was that I got a new MacBook that had a pretty decent inbuilt microphone, plus it came with GarageBand. I also spent a while trawling websites like Music Alley to try and find music to play. After a few days of looking around I had enough tracks for something like five shows, so I just sat down and recorded the first one.

I'm not sure if I've ever really got into the swing of things, and I certainly don't listen to old episodes. Once it's gone, I'm onto the next. The first few aren't available on the podcast feed anymore, but that's more to do with laziness after I changed the server, rather than anything else. Since about episode ten I've tried to do them "live" after GarageBand crapped out on me once and I had to re-record the show. It's much more fun to record them live, so from then on I think I got a lot more comfortable with it. Despite the fact it has probably increased the number of mistakes I make!

The music you play is either “podsafe”, i.e. released under Creative Commons licensing or free downloads that bands have made available to everyone. Was it a conscious decision to do this or wasn’t the PRS-affiliated Mixcloud up and running then and so you had to go down that route and not risk getting into bother playing copyrighted songs?

I think Mixcloud kicked off a few months after I started, or at least that was when I became aware of it. In general I don't listen to much music on major labels, and a lot of my favourite larger independent labels, such as Kill Rock Stars, Polyvinyl, and obviously Sub Pop, openly encourage podcasters to play the tracks they make available on their site. What I also found from that first few days of researching music for those initial shows was that there is so much exciting Creative Commons music out there. I have to admit, a few years ago I'd been put off by so called "podsafe" podcasts because I thought the music they played was, by and large, bland major label wannabe music, rather than anything interesting or innovating. But when I really started digging around for myself, I found so much music that really excited me. Music that I wanted to share.

I also knew that I wanted to join the Association of Music Podcasting. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe I just thought it would be good to be able to tap into the experience and knowledge of guys who have been doing this for years (some from the dawn of podcasting!). The membership criteria is that your podcast must only play podsafe music, so that pretty much clinched it.

Following on from that, is it difficult to source podsafe songs or is it quite rewarding to do a bit more research and digging about and unearth some gems that might not have been so widely known about? What has been your favourite find – someone like Entertainment for the Braindead for instance, for which I have to say thanks for introducing me to!

That EFTB album was the one that really got me too. It's a wonderful album, certainly one of my favourites of 2010. I love the Dressed Like Wolves album, and there are a couple of great EPs by Wisdom Tooth, both of which I first heard through cllct.com - a great website for free lo-fi and DIY music.

To be honest, yes, it's a lot of work! I easily spend much more time researching the music than recording the show. But it's so rewarding. I have an insatiable appetite for new music, and finding something new and interesting is just so exciting. I also don't want the show to be the same music that you hear featured in lots of other podcasts, but by the same token I'm conscious of slipping in a couple of tracks into each show that might be familiar to listeners. I think that's something John Peel used to say about playing music - play something that people want to listen to, and then play something that you think they should listen to.

After a few months I started reaching out to bands and artists, and asking them if I could play their music on the show. It took me a while to pluck up the courage to do this. I think the first band was the Go Away Birds (Catherine Ireton from God Help The Girl and Michael John McCarthy from Zoey van Goey) after I saw them at a wonderful acoustic flat gig. It was very exciting, if only because Michael John instantly got the reference to The Fall in the name the podcast! Since then, if I want to play a track on the show, but it's not necessarily released under Creative Commons I just get it touch and ask. Some of these are unsigned bands whose EPs I stumble across on Bandcamp, while others, such as A Sunny Day In Glasgow are quite a bit more well known, but no-one has knocked me back yet!

I'm totally indebted to the people who have let me play their music on the show, bands like The Last Battle, Kid Canaveral, Schwervon!, and many, many more besides. Without them it'd just be me talking rubbish for thirty minutes, and I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone.

One thing I think about a lot with my podcasts is the mix between older and newer music. Do you think a podcast should exclusively feature newer material or do you share a friend of mine’s view that any song could be new to somebody, no matter when it was released?

I try and play new music for the most part, but it's a balance. I do like playing old stuff and as your friend says, it's always new to someone! In fact, I've often received email feedback from listeners who have specifically been introduced to older bands through the show, which is pretty cool. I do like slipping in some old stuff. A few weeks ago I had an itch to scratch, and played some Bratmobile from the early 90s because they're a band I don't think enough people know about. And I do play the odd Beat Happening track, because you can never have enough Beat Happening!

Is half an hour / approx. 6 songs the perfect length for the type of show you do in that it’s a weekly show and people may be pressed for time throughout the week to listen to a longer show? I’ve seen that you now upload an extended version of the show to Mixcloud with a couple of extra tracks of non-podsafe material – is that something you’re going to continue with?

I reckon so. My favourite podcasts have always been about half an hour to forty five minutes in length. Perhaps that's because my commute has always been about that long, or perhaps it's just my attention span.

I think podcasting is a very different from medium from radio, and the format of the shows needs to reflect that. Radio shows are generally on in the background while you're doing something else, but I think a podcast is a more engaging experience. You've chosen to listen to it, so you're concentrating a bit more, and when you're concentrating more, especially when it's mostly music that is new to you, you don't want a longer show. Two hours is fine for a radio show, but way too long for a podcast. I've yet to be convinced that sixty minutes isn't too long either, although admittedly some of my favourite podcasts, such as Jon Hillcock's New Noise podcast or obviously the wonderful This American Life are about that length.

I'm not sure about the mixcloud versions. They are an experiment that may or may not continue. Certainly the download versions get many hundreds times more listens than the mixcloud ones. We shall see. I know that you use mixcloud for your podcast, but until they sort out a mobile version of their site, or a mobile app, it doesn't really fit in with how I listen to podcasts.

Your site hosts your podcast but do you have any plans to branch out into more of a music blog, e.g. interviewing and reviewing bands or are you happy with the site as it is right now. Also, I really enjoyed the shows you did over the summer at the Edinburgh Fringe, are there any plans to do more of these, not just about the Fringe but around other events?

I'm not really a blogger. I feel like a bit of an imposter when there are so many great Scottish music blogs around, and all I really use mine for is posting a link to a new podcast! I reckon I'll just stick to doing the show. So many people can write blogs better than I ever could do.

The Fringe recordings with Gordon were good fun. It was great to record the show outside, in the sun (sometimes) and with a beer (most times). I also met some really nice people as a result of those shows, like comedian Dave Hill, and the wonderfully talented Charlyne Yi. Depending on work commitments, maybe we'll do some more Fringe shows this year.

Finally, what other podcasts do you listen to and recommend to others? And, do you think more and more podcasts will spring up in the future as people will listen to the ones out there and think “I could do that too!”?

There has always been a healthy churn of podcasts, which I think keeps the medium fresh. There are always people saying "I could do that too", because that's exactly what I thought one day when listening to Song, By Toad (no disrespect to Matthew!). I really enjoy Song, By Toad and Glasgow Podcart; and further afield, Dave Hill's Podcasting Incident and This American Life. Those are my main ones. I also subscribe to The Sounds in My Head, and while he doesn't always play music I'd normally listen to, I enjoy Peter Clitheroe's wonderfully titled Suffolk 'n' Cool, for enthusiastic chat and an interesting variety of music.

My favourite podcast is sadly one that was a victim of that podcast churn. If any podcast really put the seed into my mind of doing this it was the long defunct Dailysonic. Unfortunately you can no longer download this great magazine show from NYC, but I've got most of the episodes still in my iTunes library and dip in now and again. They did some innovating things like customised feeds that dynamically changed the show content based on your preferences, something that even now no-one else is really doing. But at the core it was an interesting and entertaining show written and presented by creative people. A great example of how podcasting is quite unlike any other broadcasting medium out there.

Indeed. Thanks again to Jonny for doing the interview. His podcast is uploaded every Thursday night and can be found at -

http://edinburghman.com/

You also can follow him on Twitter - @edinburgh_man.

Plentycast #13b

2011-02-20T11:13:00.000Z

As indicated in the previous post, we had far too many songs for a regular podcast and we felt that because they were of sufficient quality then trimming down 2 shows worth into 1 would prove quite difficult. We recorded this one right after the finishing the last one so I suppose this is more of a "part 2" (or "#13b" as I'm calling it) than a brand new show. I appear to be even more forgetful than I am in #13a, why it took me a long few seconds to remember Isobel Campbell's at one point name is anybody's guess. I'm leaning towards old age...

Also, the first of the interviews I have lined up is ready to go. It's with Jonny Dobson, the host of the Edinburgh Man podcast and will appear on the site this coming week.

Clickety click...

Plentycast #13b by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Wilco - She's A Jar
2. The Pastels - The Viaduct
3. Nina Nastasia - Outlaster
4. David Dondero - Motion Picture Song
5. Rod Stewart - Gasoline Alley
6. Miracle Legion - You're The One Lee
7. Billy Bragg - The Passion
8. Shirley And Dolly Collins - Are You Going To Leave Me?
9. Mark Lanegan - Woe
10. Peter Broderick - Guilt's Tune
11. Rachel's - First Self-Portrait Series
12. Vashti Bunyan - Here Before
13. Meursault - Weather
14. Iron And Wine - Passing Afternoon
15. My Kappa Roots - The Dour Festival

Plentycast #13

2011-02-17T20:15:00.001Z

And so, as previously advertised, we come to the Quietcast, the Gentlecast, whatever you want to call it, the anti-Noisecast if you will. The brief was to come up with some quieter songs to play, the only snag was that we came up with 29 quieter songs to play! The quality was so high that we decided to go ahead and do two Quietcasts and just split the songs up instead of having to decide what to leave out.

So, this is #13a. I was feeling hyper still from the news that Superchunk are playing the Jeff Mangum-curated ATP in December so that may have been on my mind throughout the recording and I had a few brain lapses. Either that or I'm really, really old... I think it's the latter... Anyway, apologies for said brain lapses and mistakes. They're honest mistakes if nothing else and it makes it all the more real. Yes.

On you go...

Plentycast #13a by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Edith Frost - Temporary Loan
2. Damon & Naomi - Translucent Carriages
3. Josh T. Pearson - Woman, When I've Raised Hell
4. Debutant - Thirst
5. Low - Sea
6. Hamish Imlach - Cod Liver Oil And Orange Juice
7. King Creosote - So Forlorn
8. Neil Diamond - Lonely Looking Sky
9. Entertainment For The Braindead - A Smile
10. James Orr Complex - Looking Into Nature
11. Karen Dalton - Ribbon Bow
12. Nico - My Only Child
13. Bowerbirds - Teeth
14. Cat Power - Colors And The Kids

More News...

2011-02-14T13:29:00.004Z

So yes, doing the podcasts every so often are fine and dandy but I realised that there was something missing from the site and that was to do more on the music blogging side. I really enjoyed interviewing bands and I think I miss doing that so I'm going to include more interviews on the site from now on. I already have a couple of irons in the fire and depending on how quickly people get back to me then these will hopefully appear on the site soon.

I'm less inclined to get back into reviewing music, I always found it a chore and quite difficult at times especially when I was up against a deadline to keep the review relevant to the time the LP was released or gig took place. To me, it was far less interesting than thinking up questions to ask people so I think it's fair to say that you won't be finding any reviews on here any time soon. I guess I'm more keen to promote bands by speaking to them and hearing what they have to say about their music and encouraging people to check them out for themselves in a more organic way (man!).

The majority of these will be conducted via email, to give me more time to formulate the questions and also to give the bands a bit of time to formulate their replies. I've been really lucky in the past to talk to people who thought about what I asked them and got back to me with equally thoughtful responses, but I'm not ruling out any face-to-face ones if the opportunity arises (with bands on tour and the like).

The podcasts will still appear, I know I said that they would be monthly but having spoken to John we both agree that we'll do them on an "as and when" type basis as opposed to a strict timetable. The next one will be up on the site hopefully by next weekend and I hope these augment the interviews (and vice versa) quite nicely.

Cheers,

Chris

Plentycast #12

2011-02-06T11:10:00.000Z

aka the Noisecast...

So we welcome John to his first show as co-host and we decided to do a full-on noisefest. There's a lot of good things going on here and it's not all ear bleeding, face melting armageddon or anything like that. There's a bit of thought and craft that's gone into some of the songs we've chosen but sometimes you do want a bit of an assault and so there's a bit of that too. It's the usual mix of older and newer things and since it's the first in our new monthly series it's a bit longer than you're probably used to on here, 94 minutes to be precise.

There's a bit of rambling, some diversions, a bit of silliness but in general it's all good. I don't know why I didn't do something like this from the start, it just sounds so much better with more than one person in the room talking about the songs and we had a whole lot of fun recording it which I hope comes across when you listen to it. I think we're going to do something a bit more gentle in the next 'cast so tune in for that at the start of next month.

On you go...

Plentycast #12 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Envy - A Breath Clad In Happiness
2. Floor - Downed Star
3. Japandroids - Sovereignty
4. Battle Of The War Machines - Delete All Life Forms
5. Probot - Centuries Of Sin
6. Kylesa - To Forget
7. Hoover - Return
8. The Crownhate Ruin - Stretched Too Thin
9. Pissed Jeans - Dream Smotherer
10. Fudge Tunnel - S.R.T.
11. Pailhead - I Will Refuse
12. Rangda - Serrated Edges
13. Th' Faith Healers - Reptile Smile
14. Refused - New Noise
15. Chavez - You Must Be Stopped

Podcast News...

2011-01-31T23:11:00.000Z

Just a quick one (as it were...) to update you on a couple of items of news.

I've decided to move the podcast to monthly from fortnightly. As much as I try to get newer songs into the playlist, I always struggle a little bit to do so and find myself rushing about at the last minute to get them in, plus it's amazing how quickly the fortnight in between recordings can go and I suddenly find myself having to wing it more than is necessary. This will give me a little bit more breathing room to do a bit of research on what's new out there and hopefully plan the playlists better.

Secondly, I'm delighted to say that John Mackie will be appearing on the podcast full time from now on. I really enjoyed the ones we did in December and it's always nice to get someone else's perspective on things and not just have my chat in between the songs (which will always be the most important part of the show) and I'm glad John agreed to do it. We'll hopefully put them out around the first Sunday of the month, but John sometimes works weekends so we'll have to work around his schedule from time to time.

See you next week I think!

Plentycast #11

2011-01-17T22:09:00.000Z

Back on my tod for the meantime and I think I had one too many senior moments when recording this particular podcast. I managed to create a new band called Entertainment For The Roadkill at one point, that was a particular highlight. However, I stay true to the Kerouacian ideal of first thought is best so it stayed in. Not that I couldn't be bothered recording another link or anything. Oh no, heaven forfend...

Anyway, we find ourselves recording a day later than usual - as I say at the start I was immersing myself last night in Season 2 of In Treatment and if it turns out to be as good as season 1 then I'm in for a very big treat as that was television, writing and performances of the highest calibre. I digress though, I think I was feeling a little low key following the sad news at the end of last week about Trish Keenan of Broadcast so that's reflected a wee bit in the playlist though there is your usual couple of louder ones, and that's fine by me. There's a nice flow to the songs so I hope you like them too.

Jocky wants you to click...

Plentycast #11 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Galaxie 500 - Blue Thunder
2. Entertainment For The Braindead - Roadkill
3. Laeto - Ecuador
4. Ryan Francesconi - Parables
5. Shipping News - 7s
6. The God Machine - She Said
7. The Leaf Library - New Year
8. Mark Eitzel - Take Courage
9. Rex - Ride Home
10. The Braindead Collective & Rob St John - The Whites Of Our Eyes
11. Broadcast - Come On Let's Go

Plentycast #10 - The Jockcast

2011-01-02T21:30:00.001Z

Happy new year folks, I hope it's going well for you all. I have to say it's going splendidly for me - I was down in London over New Year at the Sonic Youth gig at Hammersmith and it's fair to say that they are comfortably ahead in the gig of 2011 stakes! (they came onstage just before midnight, Thurston did a countdown to midnight and then started playing after all the streamers came down to signify the new year). Today saw the mighty Rovers prevail against the dark side from the west of Fife, it can only be described as pandemonium in the South Stand as Tade's winner went in! And as I type, Gary Anderson is just into the World Darts final. 'Mon Gary, one more game to go!

Anyway, I digress. PC #10 is a very special edition. If you listened to #9, you will have heard the contributions from John Mackie. Yesterday (January 1) was John's 40th birthday so I invited him to pick a few of his favourite songs and have a chat about them. So, a few became 16 and 16 became 20 and 20 became 24 so this has been split into two parts to accomodate all the good music and good chat. And I hope you think it's good music and good chat as well. Most of John's choices are not of recent vintage, but that's OK as it's good to have a nice warm nostalgia feel to your favourite songs.

Jocky is waiting for you to click...

Part 1

Plentycast #10 - The Jockcast (Part 1) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Part 2

Plentycast #10 - The Jockcast (Part 2) by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Part 1 Tracklisting -

1. Codeine - Pea
2. Lois - Wet Eyes
3. Red Emma - Candle
4. Minor Threat - Out Of Step (With The World)
5. Idaho - Alive Again
6. Joni Mitchell - Little Green
7. Azalia Snail - St. Nowhere
8. Nico - Frozen Warnings
9. Bitch Magnet - Sadie
10. Minutemen - Joe McCarthy's Ghost
11. Jawbox - Capillary Life
12. Joeyfat - Little Big Man

Part 2 Tracklisting -

1. Nick Drake - From The Morning
2. The Humblebums - Everybody Knows That
3. Headphones - Major Cities
4. New Bomb Turks - Summer Romance
5. Superchunk - European Medicine
6. Cap'n Jazz - Little League
7. East River Pipe - My Life Is Wrong
8. The Clientele - Spirit
9. Beat Happening - You Turn Me On
10. Versus - Be-9
11. Born Heller - No More Lamps In The Morning
12. Scrawl - 11.59 It's January

Plentycast #10 - Trailer

2010-12-23T11:12:00.001Z

Hello. Just to say that Plentycast #10 will probably be ready to go in the first couple of days in January. It'll be a very special edition featuring the star of #9 John Mackie - as it's John's 40th birthday on January 1, I've asked him to put together a playlist of tracks and we'll sit down and listen to them (while demolishing the ever increasing amount of rum accumulating in my kitchen cupboard) and have a chat about them. John's initial playlist came to 16 tracks as, understandably, asking a music fan to whittle down their favourite songs is quite difficult.

So, today I took an executive decision. PC#10 will be a two-part special. I've asked John to pick 4 more songs to take it up to a round 20 and I'll split the recording into two as it'll no doubt end up as a bit of an epic. It's fair to say that I'm looking forward to doing this more than any other podcast I've done, I've had a look at the playlist and it's blinding. You might think this is a bit of a nostalgia-fest, but someone's favourite songs are their favourite songs no matter if they're from 1974 or from last week.

Hope folk can tune into this!

Plentycast #9

2010-12-11T17:44:00.000Z

aka The ATP-cast.

A day earlier than usual due to another weekend of weather-related football inactivity and featuring special guest (and occasional contributor to the blog of old) John Mackie. Both myself and John were down at the Godspeed You! Black Emperor curated ATP in Minehead last weekend and I thought it would be good to sit down and have a chat about the weekend as a whole and play a few songs by some of the main protagonists. The ATP chat is bookended by a new track from Laeto (and a warm welcome back to them) and last year's Withered Hand Christmas song. This is the last podcast of the year so even though Christmas doesn't mean a whole lot to me Dan has produced a quite lovely song.

Click on Jocky to take you there. Bear in mind it is nearly 2 hours long as well!

See you in 2011!

Plentycast #9 - The Atp Cast by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Laeto - Mssr Mountain
2. Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
3. White Magic - Sun Song
4. Flower/Corsano Duo - I, Brute Force
5. Bardo Pond - Don't Know About You
6. Hangedup - Klang Klang
7. The Ex - Tree Float
8. Marissa Nadler - Ghosts And Lovers
9. Neurosis - Water Is Not Enough
10. Wolves In The Throne Room - Vastness And Sorrow
11. Withered Hand - It's A Wonderful Lie

Plentycast #8

2010-11-28T20:36:00.000Z

Brr... bit nippy out isn't it? Luckily, this podcast is brought to you by two of the finest words in this situation - "central" and "heating". I did take up my own advice at the start of the show and turned the heating up and got a nice cup of tea (no cat to curl up with on the sofa alas, not now that Simba's moved away (he was a neighbour's cat who used to frequent the stair and subsequently my flat!)) I really should get a cat of my own one of these days...

So yes, I've survived a three gig week, something that would have been impossible while I was racking up 100+ hours of flexi-time in my last job (I was so tired that I would have been lucky to make three gigs in a month!) so I have to say that it's been something of a success. There's another podcast folly of a repeat artist 2 shows in a row, but The National are worth it and I've got a wee bit to say about their spellbinding show in Glasgow a couple of days ago.

The next show should have a Godspeed You Black Emperor ATP theme, for that's where you'll find me next weekend. I'll hopefully draft in some special guests to have a chat about the weekend and maybe do a wee round up at the end of each day. We'll work out who's Charles Colvile and who's Bob Willis and "Harmy" later on...

Jocky sez "click me"...

Plentycast #8 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Lightning Bolt - Sound Guardians
2. Soundgarden - Hands All Over
3. Nirvana - About A Girl
4. The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio
5. Eska - Running On Sum Six Dew
6. The Evens - Cut From The Cloth
7. Built To Spill - Carry The Zero
8. Chris Brokaw And Geoff Farina - The Angel's Message To Me
9. Daniel, Fred And Julie - Runner
10. eagleowl - No Conjunction
11. Part Chimp - B1

So...

2010-11-15T14:20:00.003Z

...that's 7 podcasts out the way and I enjoy doing them but I never know who's out there listening to them. If you are out there and are tuning in then do say hello and let me know what you think.

I realise that I am not the most tech-savvy person in the world so the jumps between songs and in-between song chat doesn't sound great so until I get a bit more confident with the technology then that might not change overnight. However, the music is the most important aspect of these podcasts, my chat is pretty inconsequential in comparison so any feedback (outwith the usual commenters) would be appreciated.

I'd like to think that there's more than 2 people a fortnight listening so it would be good to hear from folk. I don't want to stop doing this because of lack of interest but it could come into consideration in the future.

Thanks,

Chris

Plentycast #7

2010-11-14T20:28:00.000Z

I think there's an epic theme running through this week's show. My own little nod to the Rovers' epic comeback against the Scum yesterday afternoon, so there's some bombast in there to go with the thousands of us who left East End Park after the game with our chests puffed out, feeling that the 2-2 draw we just witnessed was more like a win. As they're fond of saying somewhere else, there's no quit in this Rovers team.

So yes, some epics, the usual nugget or two to get us going and some new (well, new-ish) tunes mixed in between. As I say in the show, I think I've set myself the impossible task of going to 4 gigs in 5 days the week after next so if the next podcast doesn't appear on time then it's because I've spent the following weekend in my bed. I can hear my younger self pshawing away as I type this but I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled... As somebody once said...

Click on Jocky to take you there.

Plentycast #7 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Kyuss - Thumb
2. Pedro The Lion - Magazine
3. The Scottish Enlightenment - Little Sleep
4. Adrian Crowley - Liberty Stream
5. Marnie Stern - Gimme
6. Torche - Face The Wall
7. Yusuf Azak - Eastern Sun
8. James Orr Complex - Antibodies
9. The Kays Lavelle - Ten Times
10. Eleventh Dream Day - Stalled Parade
11. The National - Apartment Story

Plentycast #6

2010-11-03T22:26:00.000Z

Okay, okay so I'm a wee bit late with this podcast. Apologies to all the listeners out there in podcast land. Both of you...

Anyway, it's still ended up a good 'un despite being three days overdue. As I say in the show, I was "away from my desk" all of Sunday at the Fence Halloween gig and then "otherwise engaged" in front of the telly watching the World Series on Monday and Tuesday night (well done to the Giants btw. Anyone that makes Bush jr unhappy is OK by me!) So, there's a wee bit of a nod to Fence, including a King Creosote song that you wouldn't have heard unless you were at one of his "My Nth Bit Of Strange" shows, which is good (and thanks to KC for letting me play it). There appears to be a bit more chat, maybe recording and uploading on a Wednesday is more conducive to chat. Bit of an odd one though as I had a full day at work and am not usually in the mood for chat after that!

As usual, let Jocky be your guide...

Plentycast #6 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Hey Mercedes - Our Weekend Starts On Wednesday
2. Nada Surf - Hyperspace
3. King Creosote - There's No Escape
4. James Yorkston & The Athletes - Shipwreckers
5. Emily Scott - All That Glitters
6. Low - Venus
7. I Build Collapsible Mountains - And The City Sleeps
8. The Pictish Trail - I Don't Know Where To Begin
9. Codeine - Loss Leader
10. Rites Of Spring - Spring
11. Yo La Tengo - More Stars Than There Are In Heaven

Plentycast #5

2010-10-17T16:06:00.001+01:00

I usually end up recording and posting these things on a Sunday morning so they're up on the site by early afternoon but this morning was taken up by watching the overnight recording of game 1 of the NLCS between the Phillies and the Giants. As a Red Sox fan, and without my team in this year's MLB postseason, I find myself in the usual position of "anyone but the Yankees" so thankfully Texas have squared their series against the Empire at 1-1. I don't mind which of the other 3 teams left win, just not them...

So, that's my life at the moment. Day after day of baseball. October baseball, the best. What's this got to do with the latest podcast? Fuck all really, but I thought I'd set some background as to what I've been up to recently. Again, it's the usual schtick. Couple of new tunes, few old tunes and a couple of demo versions of (as yet) unreleased tunes thanks to the wonders of t'interweb. It does have some uses after all. On you go then -

Plentycast #5 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Slayer - World Painted Blood
2. Male Bonding - Year's Not Long
3. Meursault - New Ruin
4. Rockets Revenge - Purest Thing
5. Versus - Invincible Hero
6. Scarce - Southern Highway
7. Joeyfat - Gin Rummy For Beginners
8. Throwing Muses - Freesia
9. The Scottish Enlightenment - Pascal
10. Drive Like Jehu - Bullet Train To Vegas
11. Men Diamler - Footprints In The Snow
12. Small Town Boredom - World's Most Unwanted

Links -

Scarce - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Scarce/6654261707?v=app_2405167945

Men Diamler - http://songbytoad.com/2010/10/men-diamler/

Plentycast #4

2010-10-03T13:00:00.001+01:00

You join us with your humble correspondent not in the best of health. It's been a week of man flu and as such a couple of coughs have made it into the show this time around. I blame the government...

Anyway, some louder moments on the podcast this time around. I think I was still a bit pissed off by the Rovers' performance the day before so threw in some truculence at the last minute. I think too that I'm allowed to play a Joanna Newsom track in 2 podcasts in a row - it may be a faux pas of the highest order but the reasoning behind it is pretty clear. So, in the words of the late Ron Pickering, away you go -

Plentycast #4 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. The Lapse - Buffet
2. Hot Snakes - Plenty For All
3. Smog - Vessel In Vain
4. Chris Brokaw - I Remember
5. Karate - It's 98 Stop
6. Engine Down - Second Of February
7. RM Hubbert - Hey There Mr Bone
8. Mount Eerie - Wind's Dark Poem
9. Fucked Up - Black Hats
10. Converge - Wishing Well
11. Joanna Newsom - '81
12. Black Sabbath - Fairies Wear Boots

Plentycast #3

2010-09-19T12:54:00.001+01:00

The first draft of the playlist had a distinct lack of newer tunes this time around and I guess the second draft does as well but hell, it's all good... However, two tracks from the just released, and frankly magnificent, Superchunk LP will go a little way to ensuring that it's not just a whole load of old skool beats. Not that there's anything wrong with that... I also hummed and hawed about putting that particular Newsom track in, what with it being 8 and a half minutes long. But what an 8 and a half minutes it is so in it goes.

Anyway, you can get on with listening to it here -

Plentycast #3 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting -

1. Buffalo Tom - Summer
2. Superchunk - Crossed Wires
3. Braid - A Dozen Roses
4. Cold Seeds - Bubble
5. The Thermals - Only For You
6. Penthouse - A Deviant Soiree
7. My Kappa Roots - Fleeting Like Etain
8. Lords - Good Dog Bad Dog
9. Silver Jews - Trains Across The Sea
10. Sonic Youth - Death Valley '69
11. Joanna Newsom - In California
12. Superchunk - Everything At Once

Plentycast #2

2010-09-04T12:00:00.000+01:00

The second podcast then, featuring a couple of newer songs and a fair smattering of older ones too. It's funny listening back to yourself after the fact - at the moment, I'm recording the links on my MP3 player and cutting and pasting it all into Audacity, a little nod to my fanzine past I guess. I'm not that fussed about how professional it sounds (when clearly it doesn't!) but maybe one of these days I'll make it sound at least half-decent!

I'll try and do one of these every fortnight from now on, once a week from me is probably overkill and once a month a wee bit too little so somewhere in between in is that happy medium. They'll usually appear every second Sunday, the only reason this is appearing on a Saturday is because I'm not at the football today as there's no league fixtures because of the international weekend so I've got more time today than usual. So yeah, every second Sunday from now on.

One thing that was remiss of me was not thanking Iain H in the podcast for sending me the Sawyer MP3 so thanks to Iain for doing so as it was a great help. Here it is then -

Plentycast #2 by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting:

1. Bob Tilton - September
2. Sawyer - Frankie & Madelaine
3. Babes In Toyland - He's My Thing
4. American Football - Never Meant
5. Love.Stop.Repeat - Storm Song
6. The Corin Tucker Band - Doubt
7. Sleater-Kinney - I'm Not Waiting
8. Withered Hand - Love In The Time Of Ecstasy
9. The Wee Rogue - I Cross My Heart
10. Julie Doiron - Consolation Prize*
11. Alasdair Roberts - The Burning Of Auchindoun
12. Nalle - Wilder Shores Of Love

*as you'll hear, I forgot the title of the LP this is from. Oops. It's from "I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day." Obviously...

Plentycast #1

2010-08-26T16:13:00.006+01:00

So, I decided to put together a podcast. Unfortunately, it contains my speaking voice in between the songs but you can wisely try and ignore that and we'll all get along fine. I know, there are gaps and jumps and that, I'll try and iron that out for the ones to come. It is the first one after all and I'm just getting my head around Audacity!

Hopefully, this will be the first in a series of podcasts. I'll try and include different things in future ones, interviews and the like and maybe it'll force me to play some newer songs as this has a bit of a 90s bias! Anyway, you can listen to it below using the magic of technology -

Plentycast #1 Redux by Plentyside on Mixcloud

Tracklisting:

1. Leatherface - Not Superstitious
2. Calvin Johnson - What Was Me
3. The Halo Benders - Don't Touch My Bikini
4. eagleowl - Sleep The Winter
5. Conquering Animal Sound - Wild Things
6. Rob St John - Domino (live)
7. Ligament - Hawg Jawz
8. Nina Nastasia - Cry, Cry Baby
9. Godflesh - Spite
10. Versus - The Ones And Threes

Hello. Is It Me You're Looking For?

2010-08-13T00:40:00.001+01:00

It's been a while.

New content coming soon.

Probably...

Interview - Love.Stop.Repeat

2008-12-15T11:02:00.007Z

Words: Chris Hynd
Photos: Morna West

Love.Stop.Repeat are a duo worth knowing. They create a beautiful, willowy, alt-folk sound, a beguiling mix of guitars, harmonium, accordion and the odd ukelele. Lindsay West provides the sweet vocals, Dave Millar the intricate instrumentation. They both took time out to answer the following questions.

To start off, can you give a brief history of Love.Stop.Repeat and what made you want to start the band together.

Lindsay: Dave and I have been playing music together for about a year and Dave started writing LSR songs this summer. He got me to sing these never ending lyrics and I expanded some of the melodies.

Dave: After Lindsay had helped me out with some Con Brio vocals I thought it'd be fun to try some proper songs with actual instruments away from the computer. The lyrics were adapted from scribbled poems and the vocal lines I had rough ideas for, but Lindsay took these and added strong harmonies, which ended up very much directing the structure of the songs. When Lindsay heard the first couple of demos she suggested we call ourselves a band and so Love.Stop.Repeat was born.

You both have your own projects (Dave as Con Brio and Lindsay's solo work), is it difficult to balance the two and find time for both or do you see L.S.R as your main focus for now?

Lindsay: I am finishing off an EP I’ve been working on for ages and I won’t rest until it is finished. It sounds dramatic but it’s been going on forever. LSR is getting most of the gig time at the moment, partly because Dave is super organized at booking gigs (and I’m not) but also because people dig the music! I’m happy to have both things going on right now.

Dave: I'm keen to carry on my own projects - whether it's Con Brio, the other band I'm in (Attention! All Shipping) or others, and although LSR mightn't always be the main focus for us, I'm sure we'll be able to strike a balance to make it work. It's been really rewarding so far.

Your EP was self-recorded, made and released - can you talk us through the process of putting a record out yourselves from start to finish and how difficult or easy that process was. Is it something you'd like to do again, or will we see future releases on other labels (e.g. Fence Records, who you have an association with)?

Dave: Truth be told, we hadn't actually anticipated playing these recordings to anyone. We were recording the songs as notes to remember them by really, so we could listen back later and see what we thought, but those very same recordings ended up on the EP we've been selling. We've used the Make Your Own Adventure label for the EP with a view to possibly releasing either ourselves or other artists with it in the future. I'm not sure if we'll get a chance to do that though. Running a label proper would take up too much time realistically. We're only selling CD's via Fence and our shows at the moment, so most of the work with it has been in the manufacturing. I think we might have got carried away with the design a little, but they've come out looking great so it's worth the hours we have to put in making them. It's nice to see people picking them up at shows and actually parting with their hard earned pennies for them.

Speaking of Fence, how helpful have they been with what you do? Recently, you played the Halloween weekender in Anstruther, how did you find the weekend and were you pleased with the reaction your set got?

Dave: Fence have been very supportive. Johnny Lynch was really positive about the tracks we put up on our MySpace page, offered to sell the EP in their shop and invited us up to play in Anstruther. We really weren't sure how it might work live and didn't know what sort of reaction we might get. Before the Halloween show we'd just played the one gig in Edinburgh a couple of days beforehand. We were really nervous for that show, but the reception we got was fantastic and really encouraging. It made the prospect of playing after the likes of the Pictish Trail, HMS Ginafore, James Yorkston and King Creosote that bit less scary. We went on and up stood Johnny (Pictish), Kenny (KC) and Gav (OnTheFly) in front of what seemed to be a wall of Fence fans, which I found completely daunting, but again we played and to my surprise there seemed a couple of people singing along. The reaction we got really couldn't have been better.

One thing I got from your EP was a sense of nostalgia for people and places in your songs, - is that a fair comment? Does the landscape around you shape your music or is it a simple case of you writing about what you know, e.g. your lives, travels around the country etc.

Dave: I suppose for my part, it's all of those things. For instance, "Secrets and Slumber" describes a meadow near where I work I've been known to slip away to for a quiet hour or two. Maybe it sounds a bit cheesey, but I want to be able to take people on a journey with the songs - let them in on a daydream perhaps. For "In the Shadow of the Moon" on the CD, I was in the loft space we rehearse and record in and hung a microphone out of the window to record the sounds we hear up there - just to let people in on the lazy summer's day that led to the song. Then there's songs like "Sunday Strolls..." which harks back to a couple of trips we'd made to Scotland, "The New York" song in which Lindsay describes her journey to the city alongside my own account of the Big Apple in "Pictures". I suppose the songs are a bit of an escape, both for us and the listener.

Related to that, you've been putting up video blogs on Youtube documenting what you're up to. What led you to start doing that and is it something you'll continue to do as the band goes on? It's interesting for us to see what things you've been doing, whether it's how you put your CDs together or which part of the country you've been visiting, do you want your listeners to get a better idea and sense of what goes on in L.S.R. and break down the barrier between audience and performer?

Dave: This was actually Lindsay's idea, but I've kinda of taken it by the horns and got a little carried away. It's nice to be able to document what we've been doing both for us to look back over, but mainly to share the whole experience with anyone who takes an interest. Thanks to sites like MySpace, Youtube and Facebook, not only can we say "Hey, we're playing in Fife", but we can take people along with us in the video blogs and show them what we did. It's nice to put it all out there.

How do you approach playing live with all the different instruments that are featured on your songs, specifically for Dave playing guitar/ukelele and kick drum at the same time?! Your cover of NMH's "In An Aeroplane Over The Sea" is a particular highlight of your set and your version of it fits in beautifully with your own songs, what led you to start playing that song and will there ever be a recorded version of it?

Lindsay: LSR basically began as a recording project until we were asked by the Fence guys to go up and play live. Then we sat down and tried to figure out how to play all those layers of vocals and instruments with only two people, instead of with the army Dave created on the CD.

Dave: I think we'd both envisioned the need to bring in other musicians to help play all the parts on the songs but, as the two of us sat down and worked through the songs in became apparent that it might just work as a duo which I'm really pleased about. Lindsay's a great guitar and piano player and very used to singing while she plays, but it took a little while before I decided I was happy playing percussion, guitar/uke and in particular singing all at once. Linds works out some good harmonies for me to tackle though.

Lindsay: Playing live is an experience. Both of us have had to get used to playing new instruments but it is a lot of fun.

Dave: Regarding the "Aeroplane..." song; this was my idea - I just thought we might need an extra song to play in the set and this one sounded lovely on the uke. Lindsay came up with the idea to transpose it up a couple of keys so we're able to slip into it from "The New York Song" almost like it's one long piece. When I don't mess up the transition that is. It's easily one of my favourite songs - a couple of people have said that to me since too, so it looks like it was a good choice. I can't see that we'll end up recording it, but it's grand to play and hear Linds singing.

Finally, what are your hopes and plans for the future in L.S.R.? Are you looking for L.S.R. to play a bigger role in your musical outputs as people become more aware of you or will you continue to pursue your own solo ventures at the same time?

Lindsay: I hope we can keep playing for a long while and experimenting around with the music.

Dave: Yeah, it's been lot of fun and people seem interested so I'm keen to keep it going alongside our own projects. We've got more shows coming up over the next few months and new songs are always being written. A few members of the Fence Collective have done remixes of our songs and two by OnTheFly and Art Pedro came out on De-Fence at the end of November, which is really exciting. The lovely thing about Love.Stop.Repeat is it's all come from Lindsay and I just messing around with a little idea. Fingers crossed we'll get to do it a while longer.

And I think we'll be crossing our fingers for that to happen too. Love.Stop.Repeat were probably my favourite musical discovery of the year and I hope they become yours too. You can find out more at -

http://www.myspace.com/lovestoprepeat.

Live Review - Death Cab For Cutie

2008-11-23T15:43:00.002Z

Death Cab For Cutie
Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
14/11/2008

Words: Chris Hynd

You know, what with people being people (and me being me I guess), there's certain bands that you just begrudge having any kind of success. And me being me, Death Cab just isn't one of those bands - from playing the likes of the (now sadly gone) Venue on the other side of town to selling out the Barrowlands on their last tour and now the Corn Exchange on this one after the release of their latest LP "Narrow Stairs" - this is a group who've worked at it and have earned the right to be where they are. Obviously, I wonder how many of the 400 or so souls from that Venue gig in 2004 (I think. Being an old man now means that the memory isn't as good as it used to be!) are in attendance tonight - I can say 2 for sure (myself and erstwhile colleague JC) but it looks like the somewhat youthful make up of the audience means that the figure probably isn't that great.

And that doesn't matter a great deal when you think about it - Death Cab have continued to be Death Cab, good guys playing the songs they want to play and a band who seem totally comfortable with where they find themselves right now. A roar greets them as they start with "Bixby Canyon Bridge" off "Narrow Stairs", Ben Gibbard, in his customary position stage left , seems to be in thrall of the occasion and adulation and feeds off it, while Chris Walla on the opposite side to Gibbard remains in the shadows and goes about his business with the minimum of fuss. And it works - from the killer segue of "The New Year" and "We Laugh Indoors", the light poppy groove of "No Sunlight" and "Soul Meets Body", Death Cab continue to knock out the great tunes. You can be a band at a certain level, but if you don't have the songs to back it up then it's going to be a struggle to remain there. It's always been about the songs, about the music and that really shows.

That's summed up perfectly by Gibbard playing "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" in the middle of the set, his acoustic paean to love and death has been taken to a new level in the live arena, somewhat like when you see Stipe introduce "Losing My Religion" from some Enormodome stage as "your song... we're only covering it". The obvious thing would be to save it for the encore but it works well half way through the evening. "We Looked Like Giants" is the biggest song of the night, the drums pound and the guitars roar and Gibbard's self-confessed "only dance song" "The Sound Of Settling" rattled along at a fair old lick, those insidious "ba-ba's" getting right into your head and never leaving.

The crowd, loud in their appreciation of the songs but respectful as a whole, seemed to enjoy what they saw and I have to say that I did too. This is a band I've been with a long time, part of me wished they'd just come out and do "The Photo Album" from start to finish but I always knew that wasn't going to happen - new records, new fans, new beginnings but, as I said above, a Death Cab that are totally comfortable with where they find themselves in 2008. A glorious "Tiny Vessels" / "Transatlanticism" mix closes proceedings and as Gibbard and company up the volume for the latter's crescendo-like finish, the noise and light seems to come together as one. It's a great way to finish.

Aye, they ken whit they're dae'in' thae boys...

Live - The New Year / Chris Brokaw

2008-11-17T18:05:00.003Z

The New Year / Chris Brokaw

Nice & Sleazy, Glasgow

11/11/2008

Words and Photos: Chris Hynd

I had intended to review this gig a bit more fully, but sometimes it's good to go and watch a band and enjoy the show without having to worry about reviewing it. Both sets were great though, it was good to see Chris Brokaw in solo mode again (playing, as wryly noted later on by Matt Kadane, "acoustic death metal"!), his set was mostly instrumental, quite big and angular sounding and quite brilliant. The New Year were just tremendous, they're a band I've loved for a while now, obviously Matt and Bubba Kadane have the Bedhead credentials of yore but their sound (triple axe attack!) was perfectly formed, the 3 guitar set-up worked a treat, layering all the different parts to the song and making it come together beautifully. And they played "Gasoline", and that was OK by me.

Here's a few pics from the night to illustrate -

Record Review - Love.Stop.Repeat

2008-11-10T23:02:00.001Z

Love.Stop.Repeat
Love.Stop.Repeat
Make Your Own Adventure Records

Words: Chris Hynd

The first thing that strikes you about Love.Stop.Repeat is the care put in to the packaging of this, their first self-titled EP. Individually hand-made and bound, this is a record that is open, welcoming and warm right from the get-go. It's a package L.S.R. hope you will cherish and come to love over time. And they've made it easy for us, for the beauty of the music certainly matches the beauty of the CD.

It's a record that evokes nostalgia for things and events past, for the landscape that we travel through and become part of and "Secrets And Slumber" immediately showcases this, Lindsay West's sweet, sweet voice and Dave Millar's instrumentation, a wistful accordion battling over a jarring beat, "I still remember the feeling of solitude" sings West and you are immediately transported to back to the place she sings about, it's wonderfully done. "Pictures" and "Sunday Strolls And Miracles" continue the theme, the latter subsequently discovered at a recent show in Edinburgh to be a song about a trip to Cramond Island and as West sings "feel the weight of a heavy heart, as we pass along the coast, suddenly I realise, it's you I miss the most" and as the accordion and harmonium wheeze and a guitar is plaintively played you can't help but be caught up in West and Millar's trip.

"A Busy Heart Beating Strong" adds some piano to the mix, West's sultry vocal and Millar's glorious, textured drum sound sweep you away and "Melt Away" is built around a lovely little ukelele riff. The EP closes with "The New York Song", the simplest song on the record, West tells the story of a trip to New York with her sister as Millar plucks out a line on the ukelele, voice and simple instrumentation, nothing more is needed. It's at this point that I wish the last song went into the killer segue with Neutral Milk Hotel's "In An Aeroplane Over The Sea" as it does in their live shows as it's the perfect way to finish. But alas not, you'll have to go to one of their shows to experience that.

It's been said before but it really is the only word for it, this truly is a lovely, lovely record. 2 people, no fuss, no clutter, a beautiful voice and a beautiful sound. More of the same please Love.Stop.Repeat folks.

Record Review - Rozi Plain

2008-10-08T22:26:00.001+01:00

Rozi Plain
Inside Over Here
Fence Records

Words: Chris Hynd

Less is more...
Less is more...
Less is more...

It's always a little mantra I tell myself from time to time. There's no need for any extraneous things to be added to the mix, if you can do what you have to do and say what you have to say without any extra clutter then you're on the right track, for me at least. Bristol's Rozi Plain seems to be following that path. Her debut LP on Fence Records screams "less is more" and is all the more effective for it, especially when you consider the different instrumentation on show. "Let's Go" opens with a wheeze and a hiss, a single guitar and accordion play out a plaintive few notes and Rozi's voice says all it needs said. A statement of intent if you will, "let's go, let's go, let's go", this is how it's going to be and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

The record continues in a similar vein. "Stolen Shark" sees some lovely harmony vocals over a nice fuzz guitar groove, "Foot Out's" smoky clarinet and sax, while downbeat and mournful, complements Rozi's clipped vocal delivery while "Knives And Forks" mixes some neat little Sufjan-esque banjo into a poppy and melodic arrangement. Rozi and her companions on the record have certainly created a warm and welcoming sound and there's little touches here and there that add to the mix and lift it all out of the ordinary, the unexpected beats that kick in during "Barbs And Velcros", the brass and woodwind in the lolling "Roof Rook Crook Crow". And the little things matter, showing us that this is someone who cares about the details, who cares about what we are listening to. Not that others don't of course, but Rozi just seems to ensure it all matters.

And nothing matters more than "360º", the extraordinary centrepiece of "Inside Over Here". A solitary guitar plucks away, Rozi's voice emotive and full of longing, an economic and sparse delivery but all the more powerful for it. Voice and guitar, that's all you need.

Less is more...
Less is more...
Less is more...

A remarkable song at the heart of a remarkable album, three minutes that would bring a tear to the proverbial gless 'e, I could listen to it on repeat for a long, long time (and believe me I have!). The record closes with "Fruit", and another simple yet effective arrangement, the layered vocals and beautiful guitar line and clarinet. Every note on the record is there because it should be there, everything is allowed to breathe and be natural and it all sounds wonderful. Elsewhere in this blog you can read yer man from Fence Records wax lyrical about it and I listened to him as he passionately extoled its virtues. I didn't know it then but he was absolutely right. This is a stunning listen, a stunning 40 minutes or so of music and hopefully Rozi Plain can continue to beguile and charm us in future.

Interview - My Kappa Roots

2008-09-27T23:30:00.002+01:00

Words: Chris Hynd

Right now Pablo Clark, who records and plays under the name My Kappa Roots, may well be one of Scotland's best kept secrets. Clark's hushed, acoustic songs are full of beauty and wonder and joy and elan. As John Mackie says in his review below this interview, we just want to shout to the world about what an extraordinary record "The House Of St. Colme Burnt Down" is and what an extraordinary performer Clark is. It was a pleasure for me and John to come up with these questions for him and read Pablo's replies to them. Here they are for you to read.

To start off, can you give us a brief history of My Kappa Roots and what led you to start writing, playing and recording under that name?

"I was nineteen and I was studying at Edinburgh art school. Although having been accepted into the institution on the “strength” of my drawn portfolio, as someone close to me said: “You’re not a particularly talented artist but you always seem to be obsessing over things and that must count for something. They probably let you in because although you can’t paint like a painter you at least come across as one.” So it was at this time, feeling very unsure of what precisely I was achieving by being at art school, walking around the corridors sound tracked by the bottom of a barrel being scraped and (no doubt) obsessing incessantly, that I heard from an old friend that the old bar by the beach had burned down in the village where I grew up. I borrowed a camera from the film department and went to visit the remains. When I arrived rumour was rife that it had been an inside job, fingers were pointed, voices in the bars were raised in protest or else they conspired quietly with the rims of their pints. All was as it should be. As I walked through the town I realised how much of my identity was tied to its surrounding. There was the tree that bore witness to my first fumbled kiss and behind that public toilet was my first cigarette. It struck me how funny and sad it was that all my memories were tangled up in the leaves. When I saw the burned out ruin it seemed to me that even things of stone have their time and that just as I no longer belonged to this town neither did all the things that I had done. I decided to document all the places in the village that I had in someway made my own. I wrote some music for it and considered what words I would use to say that these ordinary memories that are uniquely mine have been lived through in different guises, by different people, time and time again. Everyone (or at least everyone that comes from where I come from) remembers where they used to drink with friends (the shelter at black sands) or the private places you went with girlfriends (the woods behind Craig‘s house). I made a documentary about the first tracksuit I was ever given, how I tore it at the knee and was too embarrassed to wear it outside, so I hid it away and when I finally came to try it on again it had lost its new clothes smell. This taught me to always value and take pride in my tracksuits. I called it “My Kappa Roots” and I started obsessing about that instead."

Your LP came out last year to very little fuss or fanfare, was that frustrating for you in that you'd like your music to be heard by as many people as possible? What was the reasoning for releasing the record on Drifting Falling and will you continue to work with them?

"I felt more an acute sense of failure. I felt that perhaps I had over stretched myself. In trying to communicate something inherently personal to a large collection of people, assembling an audience, it had become dispersed in the ether in between. Embarrassed by the keen sound of silence. I felt frustrated, not in particular with Drifting Falling, but more with what seem to be the mechanics of any record contract. I felt a distance grow between myself and the material, at least in its recorded state. I care about those songs deeply, I care about the people that the songs concern and the events they discuss. Until, after a time, I came round to the idea that the record would exist somewhere between worlds, heard by the people who stumbled upon it. I felt a real sense of relief. I think I would enter into a new contract with a lot more caution, really consider why I was agreeing to allow the purchase of my songs. I think that I am an unsteady and unsure person and that particular proposition from Drifting Falling went some way to validating the conviction that I rally around my songs. Jon and Justin, who work for and with Drifting Falling are two lovely people who have put their time and effort into releasing that record and I’m flattered that they did so. But the company is now based in Houston and compared to the majority of music they release I feel like the black sheep. The idea of releasing something under my own steam is appealing. The knowledge that the direction the songs take, from their initial conception to their final form, would always be close to me, would certainly be comforting. Then all I need to do is barricade all the doors and windows to make sure nobody gets in, nobody breathes on the furniture and my kingdom and psychosis will be complete."

The flip side to that of course is that it's all the more satisfying as a listener to discover your music for the first time and hopefully word of mouth, more gigs and the like help to get your name out there? Is that along the lines of what you hope to achieve with My Kappa Roots or is it simply the case of continuing to write and play for yourself and let others find out about you as they have been doing?

"The process of writing songs, speaking for myself, I set apart from all other considerations. It takes me months and months of trying to pick apart what I‘m trying to say. As I’m writing this I’m staring at a stack of notes. I keep them on file on my bedroom floor. I take great pleasure and comfort in writing music. I feel a duty to the subject matter but not necessarily the audience. In turn if people take a shine to it then I’m pleased but I would rather people came to it willing rather than to have it forced down their throats."

The LP was mostly recorded in a masonic hall. Did it have one of the big "all seeing eye" symbols on the wall?! These factors must have contributed towards an interesting ambience in which to record. Was it a conscious decision not to use a studio?

"There was an eye, unblinking and all seeing. I was sure it knew what I was thinking, it took to winking and made me blush. The walls were all lined with the portraits of old lodge masters, all seeing and all knowing. It certainly seemed that they knew what I was thinking, they took to coughing into their beards until I couldn’t look them in the eyes more. One of the windows was broken and a tree was trying to climb inside. There was a huge ceremonial bell that we rang with our shoes. Always with a great sense of ceremony. We wrapped ourselves up against the cold in banners we found in the basement and drank until it was almost light, recording the backing vocals to a song called "The Dour Festival." It is a terrifying fact that this Masonic hall is also where I went to nursery. It seems we are all eyed and sized up from a young age in Fife. I had no money for recording studios, and for as long as I could remember my friends and I would play music there. We had a key. It seemed that there was a no more fitting place to play those songs. (Ma)sonic Youth 4EVA IDST."

One of the things I like about your shows and the record is that you do not strive for "perfection" or polish. It seems to me that it's about the feel of the performance (man) I love hearing that approach because it is still so rare! I can't imagine you doing multiple takes of songs. Is this a fair comment?

"Ideally when recording I want to capture a sense of place and of a particular time. I do however, on occasion, allow myself more than one take. I don’t subscribe to a purists lo-fi aesthetic in that respect. Enshrining every mistake I make will not make my music any more real. I have a (degree of) command over what I play and in playing my best I am trying to do justice to subject. Rather, what appeals to me are the more incidental sounds. The sound of traffic or animals flirting outside. These things I try to retain; they define the song in that particular moment, as something both inconsequential to its surroundings. It is a transient, passing moment. I make a lot of mistakes and I’d rather not be reminded of every single last one. When I play live I am never further than a note or two from disaster."

What is the phrase you use near the end of "The Dour Festival", i.e. "We hunched young..."? I'd just like to add that I find this song and the words simply extraordinary. Could you tell us a bit about what inspired it?

"I mumble don’t I? I think the lyric is "we young hunched pack rats." It refers to certain people I spent time with growing up. It’s about the physicality of adolescence. The song itself is about my home town, Aberdour. The second part of which, dour, is a Scots word meaning unfriendly, unresponsive. Each year a festival is held. The (Aber)Dour Festival. The song is a condemnation and celebration of the whole place. In the opening passage I tried to relate the beauty of a sleeping place waking: "From the faltered steps of dreaming the speechless sons arise." The second half, I tried to address all the different characters who populate the village, celebrating together in the marquee they erect on the top of a hill that runs down to the sea. I have strange and snatched memories of moving between the lights late in the evening, watching the dancing inside and walking off into the drunken night to where my friends stood in a knuckle. The barge bodied ladies, the drowned sailors, the moon’s young daughters, the clay cracked poets and us the young hunched pack rats. In places like this, remoter and more private, it seems that every human drama becomes magnified. The whole human race simmers down to a few familiar faces. Many of which spend their days lamenting the fact that the world revolves ever forward. Similarly these places posses a great sense of community, of history, ritual and tradition."

In general, how do you approach playing live, especially as someone with a quiet way of playing and singing? I recall a gig supporting A Hawk And A Hacksaw where you reduced the crowd to silence so they could hear you as you were playing so quietly. Is it difficult to concentrate and play your songs if there's crowd chatter and not many people paying attention?

"It can feel like your dragging the whole sorry business out into a public forum. If people are talking it can all get a bit much. But it can also give you something to rally against. I don’t want to impose the songs on people, I simply play quietly because it comes naturally. Sometimes I play with an electric guitar. But I’m drawn to playing live. After all no one is making me do it. I’m not contractually obliged. I certainly enjoy the ceremony. I enjoy the confessional aspect. Setting yourself up for a hanging. I find there is a redeeming quality in playing live. The chance at the gallows to make amends.

"Hawk and a Hacksaw and I stayed drinking after that show. I secretly wanted to marry her and run away together through the high thighs of the city. Pawn my possessions and live in the engine room of a slow train."

At the risk of sounding muso what guitar players do you like? I would certainly associate you with the likes of James Blackshaw and Jack Rose, some of the more free-form guitar players, very fluid and organic musicians. Would you describe your playing in similar terms?

"That’s a very nice thing to say. Thank you. However in truth I don’t have the discipline or the command over rhythm they do. My guitar playing is much more confused. Most of the songs I play are in alternative tuning, but I can’t read music, know nothing of time signatures or the names of the notes I’m playing. I would really like to learn more. When I was growing up my dad would listen to Bert Jansch, Can and Captain Beefheart, and I wouldn’t. I’d listen to Oasis (no danger I’d be caught listening to Blur). Then it got to the stage that I saw Christopher Mack in the Glasgow underground and forgot how to speak. I spent a summer staying up all night with a friend (and really exceptional guitarist) who plays under the name Rob St. John. We would spend our time drinking suspect fruit wine and playing guitar in his tiny apartment. Then we’d wander bleary-eyed downstairs, sit in the garden and put the world to rights like only young men think they can do. I like Captain Beefheart, Can and even Blur now. I hope Oasis can find it in their hearts to forgive me.!

You're originally from Fife and I'd say that there is a good side to living in Fife, for example some of the scenery! There is a bleakness and an eeriness to parts of the kingdom, particularly the coast. In that sense to me your music breathes Fife. How important do you think landscape and surroundings are to your songs?

"When writing songs for "The House of St Colme Burnt Down" the landscape was certainly a huge factor in how I wrote the songs. I wanted to treat it like a wide canvas that I had to people. I wanted the human element to be relegated to the role of a minor player, wanting the landscape instead to take on human characteristics. Trying to extract and give form to the memories that played out there. Musically, I wanted to continue this thinking and have long instrumental passages that evoked the landscape. All across the coast of Fife there is that ragged beauty. The trees bent by the prevailing winds and the estuary waters hidden by the haar. To relate a sense of memory by obscuring the lyrics, by making the music more obtuse and vague. In contrast to the countryside many of the towns are ex-coal mining, old dock and textile communities. Places that have been politically and financially abandoned. I still remember when the red road ran by Burntisland, the refining dust from the aluminium factory there. It feels like the hearts of a lot of theses places were shut down and they bled out through the streets. I will always treasure Aberdour for its obscure lanes and old graveyards, a place where I spent a childhood by the water and by the trees."

Related to the last question, you've now moved to Glasgow. How do you think being based there will affect your writing and performing, especially when your songs appear to be so rooted in Fife?

"After graduating from Edinburgh art school I left Britain and lived in Paris. I left behind the familiar landscapes of Fife and across the water that sleepy "city" Edinburgh and found myself in a huge place. The result was distressing, I found it really hard to write. The landscapes of Scotland had nurtured not only my song writing but my art work. It is much harder to romanticise a tower block than a forest and it is much harder to lyrically lay claim over a populated place, almost impossible to imbue it with a singular purpose. So, slowly I found myself drawn to people and my relationships with people and the songs appeared lyrically, with the landscape out of focus, but increasingly with the music relating a sense of progress and directness, a sound more like the city. I am in the middle of recording a new record at the moment. Lyrically I feel it is stronger and, much like the musical direction, more focused. After writing “The House…” I felt that subsequent songs I wrote were diluting the message and intent of what I was trying to say. It felt wrong to sing about the country when I hadn’t lived there for a long time. It has taken over two years but I feel I am finally finding my feet again."

Do you ever have any thoughts about using a band or at least some other instrumentation for live gigs? This is a slightly loaded question because I want you to say no!

"I sometimes have friends who play on stage and when we play we go under the extended name of My Kappa Roots and the Sound of Music (groan). This is usually very spontaneous and is rehearsed on the day. I am very lucky to know some really wonderful musicians, especially people who are related to the Fife Kills: Collective and I have every confidence they could play my songs better than I could. Saying that, lyrically I feel very stunted writing with other people because I feel some sense that I have to make the song more encompassing, relate more to other people. I find that very difficult to do in a song. Selfish really. I like playing on my own because I feel very close to the songs when I play them live. If I was to add more instrumentation I would like very much to play as much of it as possible. Once more block the windows and doors. Stocks of tinned food. No visitors. Rumours of riches in the basement."

Finally, what are your plans for the future? Any gigs at Clem's Lounge in Kirkcaldy?! That part isn't serious but do you have any horror stories of playing gigs in Fife? Fence-related ones don't count!

"When I was younger I played at the Path Tavern in Kirkcaldy. I once got asked to play at an energy conference in Glenrothes, got told the wrong date and spent a day in the Glenrothes shopping centre looking for people who looked like the might run energy companies. I played "The Dour Festival" at The Dour Festival, hosted by a band called A Yard of Ale, at an event called Poems and Pints. I supported Ainslie Henderson from Fame Academy in a pool hall in Dunfermline, got so drunk I spent the whole set knocking over the pints that seemed to litter the stage and with the money I made went up to Harlem, drank aftershock all night and spent my time trying to chat up an old girlfriend, with miserable results. I didn’t get glassed mind. We used to get lock-ins at a pub called the Cedar Inn (under old management) and would spend the night playing songs, whilst the owner told us stories about being in the navy. They often ended with some startlingly racist remark."

"The House Of St. Colme Burnt Down" is out now on Drifting Falling Records. If you've any sense, you'd better go and buy a copy. Now. Go on, you know you want to... You can find a link to so from here -

http://www.myspace.com/mykapparootsmusic

Record Review - My Kappa Roots

2008-09-21T14:43:00.009+01:00

My Kappa Roots
The House Of St. Colme Burnt Down
Drifting Falling Records

Words: John Mackie

My Kappa Roots- “The House Of StAye. My Kappa Roots. I first came across him an age ago. He looked about 12 years old and was all straggly hair and messed up shoes. He was playing 4th on a low key bill. There was hardly anybody there except those in the bands. He sat down with a guitar. The guitar was battered to hell. So was he. He tried to get the thing in tune and got pissed off when he couldn"t. The folk in the room were murmuring and getting into the beery chat of the gig goer. I thought to myself "he"s a wee nervous guy with a guitar. They"re going to ignore him completely". When he finally played a song EVERYTHING changed. He played quiet. Dead quiet. He strummed in the way of the natural. He was wholly raw and unpolished. It just came straight to him. Even the sound of his guitar alone was enough to begin to quell the chatter. Once he started singing the place was silent. People stayed hushed simply because they wanted to hear him. His performance was astounding. For its simplicity, for its honesty and for the levels of yearning and pain and intimacy in his voice which for the most part was nothing more than a whisper. He made no attempt to paper over the cracks and flaws in guitar or voice. Part of what made you listen to him was the sheer act of bravery in playing so quiet. He just had "something" which grabbed you. This was not music which seemed to utilise "rock language". There were no "black eyed dogs" or "cold hearted women" on here. No mumbo jumbo. The style of his words was as spare as the instrumentation. The meaning was there for you to investigate, not given to you in a passive arrangement. He gave you all you needed. It was undiluted. It came from the world of inner thoughts, brave failures and half remembered feeling. So skeletal, yet so full of life and depth.

I walked away thinking that I had seen a real talent. For one reason or another I got detached from Pablo (Clark, MKR himself) for a year or two and recently saw him playing live again. He looks about 18 now. His hair is shorter. The guitar's still battered. The show was another incredible experience. He still had the same qualities. His performance was in the moment. It was what it was. It was his. He played his songs. He sang. The songs were more confident now. Different and better ones than before. He played a new song about his granny which defied belief in terms of the scope of its poignancy and depth of longing and pain and joy for a life. I thought that if this is the direction and the quality he will continue to produce then we're all lucky bastards. It was the easy power in his voice I noticed most this time. As well as the fluid guitar runs of course. He can build and develop a tune seemingly without raising the volume or changing what he"s playing. Again the crowd listened. They had to. Something about him commands your attention.

Following the show, for the first time I discovered a couple of key things about him. Firstly, he's from Fife. The Fifeness is key for me. This is a place which stamps its mark on you. It's a dark land full of (cultural) deprivation. It's easy to become isolated in about every sense imaginable. You spend time wandering around coastal areas dreaming of something better and wondering how you can achieve it. How could I ever do that? You're feared that you'll end up a freemason or a Rovers + "Kirry's" van in the afternoon / Flyers, stovies + "Tony Hand wank wank wank" at night person. You'll become satisfied with nothing but a Tanfastic and a David Sands. Maybe you'll end up a suicide left behind amongst "the books and all the records of your lifetime" (I think I can be excused from using this phrase in every thing I write. Listen to the song if you don"t think it's justified). Fife scars you. The only thing Fifers who "don't fit in" do is get the fuck out of there. For those who manage it there is a weird sense of fellowship. We've survived with the scars and the marks of the struggle intact and writ large.

Secondly he made an album. This record screams all your Fife things. I'm positive that it must have come from a background of having to grow up in a place where there's not just a culture of defeatism, you are defeated already. The LP was recorded two years ago. I cannot believe I missed it until now. I was literally too busy playing with myself in a bedsit in Dalry to discover it. Right now I want to shout about it. I honestly do want to tell EVERYBODY about this record. I'm not sure this has happened since I first heard "Blue" when I went bonkers in 1999. In my world it's that good. (I'm not comparing it to that particular record tho'. Don"t worry about that. Just linking it to a sensation I felt at a time and a place!)

I guess I’d better tell you about it. Well the first thing I noticed when I picked up the sleeve was that it was mostly recorded in a Masonic hall in Aberdour and references Rosyth. My father is obsessed with freemasonry and worked in that odd wee addenda to Dunfermline for most of his working days. I used to traipse round Aberdour in my post office days trying to cram "Free Fuji Film" exposures through unforgiving letter boxes. I already sensed somehow that this LP was going to plough into territories which would have substantial personal resonance. I like to think of how this record was recorded in places of great shiteness. To muse on what he has produced out of all this makes me feel good.

It even starts with a tune called "The Lord Of Rosyth" (this one is recorded in Dalgety Bay of all places. It's an entirely lifeless collection of "new" 1st time buyer housing estates overlooking the Forth which everybody mistakes for being a new town), a leisurely preamble to start proceedings. He has a wonderfully light way of playing the guitar. The melodies seem to jump out of him. He can idly strum a passage and then suddenly pick up a melody from nowhere and play it with such crispness. He has entirely unassuming ways with both guitar and voice. They get me running to the thesaurus for synonyms of "natural". It's hard to put one's finger on it but he carries so much pain and weight in even a solemn gentle warble. "All that I bring to the table is my youth. All you bring are your years". It sets the record up most succinctly. Parched reflection. An understanding of the way of life. It's mostly futile. It's usually heartbreaking. It's occasionally exhilarating. When I think of Rosyth usually all that comes to mind are those black jackets with MOD on the back that most folk from the town used to wear. This song does not make me think of Rosyth in any way. It's a low key start to the record but an enticing one. You're in already. A few echoey lines of backing vox appear. They are used in a judicious fashion. He seems to be coming from a lo-fi standpoint and I love the incomplete and non-note perfect side of that thinking but I feel in an ideal world I would have looked to have had the sound stripped away even further and shorn of as much as could be removed.

There is embellishment on here and if you've seen him live it does take you by surprise to hear somebody else on there tho' the backing vox, strings, melodica etc which emerge at various moments through the record are unobtrusive, minimal, appropriate and highly highly pleasing wee interventions which underline and emphasise instead of dominating or clouding what he's doing. I suppose I can't get away from my knowledge of what he can produce in a guitar and vox only setting. I want him to take this to a zenith. I guess I have fear of him one day appearing with a full band and losing the immediacy and intimacy of his performances. He has a bona fide "bearing" and taps into such a scope with simple voice and guitar. I would have wanted that built on, isolated, heightened even more so the sound is wide open and all around you 'til there is nothing more and nowhere else to go. This effect even if it exists just inside my head would be wholly devastating on these old heartstrings. You wouldn't lose warmth or spontaneity this way because it's all there in his playing however you record it or arrange it. You don't change the way he plays, you would just hone in on a different aspect. I have read the odd mention of Nick Drake as a point of reference. I don't get this. It's a lazy comparison ie one man playing "dour" (ha!) intricate music on a guitar. There is classicism to ND which is not always there with Pablo. I feel that he's more jumpy and dare one say it "progressive" in his thinking than a chestnut sic as Nick (albeit my favourite chestnut in the whole world). In my heid I keep coming back to Christopher Mack (a much loved (by me) great once lost "post-singer songwriter" singer songwriter who recorded as The James Orr Complex and then disappeared to Brazil) as a point of reference. They share an elegiac and swoony playing style. They embody differing shades and textures often in the same tune.

He continues with "Narcissus Waits By The Water", a wee Jimmy Orr-esque instrumental which shows off more guitar. It's not precise, it's not perfect. It's piquant and rich of tone. These opening two tracks are good but you know there must be more to come. "Man Of The Islands" is the first "major" piece on the record. I can't get away from the prodigious beauty of this song. I can remember seeing him play it on our first encounter. It's the sparseness and economy. All the components of this song are set on "the right level". They say all that is required and nothing more. You know what he is talking about. He sings it with dignified, aching yearning. That voice. Even with a whisper it carries a rare rare power. He just knows how to "sing", how to phrase words, how to tell a story. Why do people sing songs? To express themselves. To have a connection with people. To entertain themselves and others. To stir feeling. To feel. To feel alive. This record, this song, this artiste remind me of these facts. One tends not to hear all components of a song working together like it does here and throughout this collection. He works so splendidly with what he has. It sounds like he can wring any permutation of feeling and nuance out of a tune. This one's a story of loss and an elegy to his uncle and when he says "Find you by the sea, you"ll be by a lake, find you in the earth, find you with the trees, we can start again", it kills me. You see, people nearly always sing in a manufactured way. I kid you not folks. I do not care if this sounds like sheer hyperbole. I cannot put it any other way. He sings like he has a line straight from his heart and his thoughts. They are expressed whole and neat without adulteration from style or pretense. No genre statements or fashion items can be made out of them. This song produces incredible "moments". I feel as if I might never hear hurt and loss expressed in this way again. Musically this song features sympathetic strings with lush "Five Leaves Left" arrangements. He finishes it with an apt jaunty coda as if to prove that life goes on and has many moments which are so worth living. I do give apologies for saying all this but I"m trying to be honest. On listening to this song it feels like there is hope when music and times such as this can be produced.

Following a song like that successfully is almost impossible. He makes a good fist of it and does so with a pleasing folky doodle called "Home-Coming". It's the most "traditional" song on the record with it"s refrain of "and all the ships which made it back home wore black sails and black masts so tall…". Again the tonality of his guitar alone makes it worth hearing. Because I've listened to this record so often I have a sense of it being sequenced around a handful of key songs with the rest acting as high quality warm ups and preparation for the emotional toll to come. It does feel now like I'm waiting for the next masterpiece to come along. It doesn't come quite yet with "The Burn Will Make It"s Own Way", a comely delay fest recorded outside "in the park by the lane". It has a diverse feel from the rest of the LP tho' the record is not uniform in texture over it"s duration by any means. The delayed guitar on this one recalls Sparhawk at his most billow-y. The eloquence of the picking at the end section picks a clear route through the FX and he comes in with a world weary tale of a kind of loving. "By the dawn we are timid and ashamed of our very flesh…" A few lines of this ilk, an electro gurgle and then it's gone. Point made. Impression left. His songs are unhurried despite the lack of procrastination. He doesn"t mind taking time to establish mood and build character. It's a heady combination. There is a great deal of confidence and elan in his song structures. The words are given space to breathe and inhabit the tune.

This brings us to "Fleeting Like Etain". It IS the next biggie. Giving a description might well have me slipping into plots likely to cause embarrassment to self. I don't know where to start with this song. He picks a line on the guitar and sings like he's completely alone and trying to pour his heart out to no one. In Fife people do this or is it just me? There is a mad form of solace to be had in the emptiness. I'm hurting, I'm defeated but none of these bastards are able to hear my pain. I find it comforting. I can sing to the void and nobody can take it from me. You taste the sheer presence of his voice. He is close miked and has joined you for the duration. He sings in his own accent but there is none of the forced "Scottishness" which has crept into a few "quiet" records one has heard of late. There is no aroma of Jock Scot on here. Anyway… The words keep coming. Internal monologue. Innermost thought. "By the night the entire set connected in the darkness", "coal pit side, Cranes in the wind like young girls dancing.bIt's when we"re dashed against the gates of desire", "we are lone satellites in the fog… bramble babies born of a buried wind" He keeps going he knows the side effects of blissful love. It all ends. "She says we're not born of the stars above, we are but fleeting moments in the sun and there is no higher glory just a quiet human end". It expands and grows. A wheezy melodica wafts in and out. A harmony voice provides confirmation of his thoughts. His words are homespun and lyrical passages. Christ, he has an understanding of life and all its crushing pointlessness as well as its greatness. The imagery and melodies of these songs display an assurance in composition and performance which you just don"t hear. Period.

Next up is "Summer you Dancer!". Cracking title but on the surface it"s not a cheery song. At any level, jesty outing it ain't and how splendid it sounds as a result. The first line is "Thunder across the spine of the world". The first wee chorus coils the words "you tow some heavy cargo" round a spidery melody with a blithe violin providing emphasis. Again, this tune uses a scanty set up for a yearning crescendo which goes and goes to the end... "with thirsting lungs we do pursue". The level of emotion he provokes, there seems no limit to what he can do with just voice and guitar. It continues on a journey towards a perfect starkness with "A Night Full Of Reverse Birds". The more I write about this record, I just want to quote you the lyrics and let them speak for themselves re how good they and the songs are. "And we fled to the wind's whispered dirge. Behind us the woods roared and spat". "We set out our wicked path" "We shrieked and carouseled". Again, he"s nearby and sounds so desperate and desolate. It is the sparsest song on the record . 99% shorn of addenda. Slow and resonant. "All I could think of is what we had done. All this hate is unnecessary. All this shame is unnecessary. All this guilt is unnecessary. All these regrets are unnecessary", he repeats over and over until he's purged. He is right. It's all of no consequence in the end. Except for what stays in your head from day to day during the routine grind. What keeps you going and what you think about at small moments of wax and wane. These songs matter to me. They have not left me since I heard them. It's the intangibles which appeal. I guess I'm trying to "make recompense for what"s done" in terms of my lack of articulation skills but how can we accurately say why something elicits a response in us? I just know that I feel a kind of familiarity in what he describes and invokes. It resonates with my own pain. I feel succour. I feel tinges of that pain coming out in the wash. I feel rewarded and welcomed by his sounds and words. It all comes back to my feeling of how I "like" this record. At the risk of being a fan-atic, on this occasion it isn't nearly enough just to say "like". I should move on…

"The Green Shelter" is the longest song on the record. Oddly enough it"s probably the "happiest" in purely crass terms. "Even tho' I was not raised here. It's where I belong" He's found a place. Security. He talks about "homespun bones". It features evocative, intricate picking in the middle with fractured snatches of conversation bubbling underneath. It changes tone and gets closer to a form of reflection. The melodica groans away again. He counters it with emphatic flourishes and tumbles. He travels in a stately instrumental fashion through the mid section. His guitar lifts it all near to the heights touched earlier when he used far darker hues. Mr. C can seriously "play". When I say that, I'm not talking about a virtuoso display / Listen to how he can solo and be a bluesy wailer. It's the feel and the tone and what he can conjure from it. There are a number of fluffed lines on this record. Their inclusion helps to convince me of the admiration I feel for him and his music. It ends with another slight ray of sunshine. "To this place part of me will always belong. Let's take a walk amongst the giant's footsteps... let the green shelter weather our storms". It's barely a rasp by the end but he's sure in his convictions. He can make a tiny sound and you will still hear him loud and clear. "Goodly sin and sunshine" are further let in by "Here's To The Sun-House" which is a jaunty Davey Graham-y instrumental and the simplest track on offer. It is gleefully played (it also makes me yearn for this LP to be re-titled "All That Moody") but tends to act as an usher into the closer, a number which is an unforgettable experience.

That is "The Dour Festival". When I first heard it I couldn"t think of other songs which are so complete, so fully formed. It's bursting with vitality and all that I want to hear in a record or in "a piece of art". It"s another scouring and elegant take on loss. It begins with a stroll amongst the Dylans. "The whole village is sleeping in some hushed lullaby from the faltered steps of dreaming speechless sounds arise...". It has momentum and pace and the words weave their spell. Poetic and seamless. "The sighed song of the living is unveiled from every doorway and perched upon the breeze to be carried across the sea and settled in every bough of every tree and amidst their bludgeoning rocks… or wherever we shall lay". It's the way he knits these impressions together and layers the world weary perdition. Then, just as you're starting to think how much you love this already, he turns it round and unleashes a stunning melody upon which he adds maybe the most heartbreaking vocal I've ever heard. I just want it to go on forever. I thought earlier that he had just produced a definitive evocation of defeat and sadness but then this came along. I have to quote what I think he's singing during this last bit in full

And the old dancers, the large bodied ladies who careen by
And whisper "We'll never be young again"
And the drowned sailors who sneer into their mugs
And pine and call for another round of vitriol

And the moon's young daughters faces painted neon white with flesh revealed

Pant and crawl into the night
And the clay cracked poets who"s liver spotted anecdotes are bandied round
And who are crushed by old desires

And we young, hunched pack rats (?)…we loved in the face of the stars

Oh were they jealous of our youth?
And now we lay in the road side sun drenched and forgotten about at this dour festival.

Maybe I'm flawed but it reads to me like a kind of perfection. The vocal performance here is breathtaking. He sings in Fife-ese ("His liver spoated anecdoats". I adore the way he gives this line) because that"s how he speaks and it's so relaxed but at the same time dripping with regret and turmoil. Underneath this a chorus intones the phrase "At this dour festival" over and over. A sax plays somewhere miles away. I never quite believed the phrase "life-affirming" before now. It's taken a song about death to convince me of the existence of this quality in song. Every time I listen to this tune I really can't quantify how much it means to me. This is a great piece of music.

Aye, well I guess the album is over. How do I sum it up? Do I need to? I think you will know my feelings on it by now. The type of words which I could come up with feel insufficient. Awesome. Great. Outstanding. Aye. This is an album I will treasure. Maybe it's the Fife connection, maybe it's the naked understatement, the seeming ease with which he does it all, the fact that I perceive him to be unconcerned with getting it "right". It could be any of these factors and tons more. In the end, it doesn't matter. Yeah. This is a special record.

Interview - James Yorkston

2008-09-18T22:36:00.005+01:00

Words: Chris Hynd

For the past half dozen years or so now, Fife's James Yorkston has been creating and releasing warm, lyrical, folk-tinged songs and records. An integral part of the East Neuk's Fence Collective, Yorkston's latest release, “When The Haar Rolls In”, has seen him garner his best reviews to date. Before undertaking a UK tour to promote the new record, Yorkston headlined the latest Fence Club, a regular series of shows put on by the collective, at the Caves just off Edinburgh's Cowgate and I caught up with him before he went onstage.

“When The Haar Rolls In” has just recently come out and this has come out at a time when you've moved back to Fife. Is it a record that was born out of that particular environment?

“I don't think so. A lot of people have made that connection so maybe there was in a way that I didn't think about. Most of it was written before... actually, I don't know if I can say that truthfully... no, I guess most of it was written when I was back in Fife but I don't think so. Moving back to Fife brought a great sense of relief and maybe that did come through on the record.”

In general, how happy are you with the record and the reaction to it?

“I'm over the moon with both. The reviews haven't all been great but the ones I've seen, 95% of them have been very, very good. They've mostly been four stars, a couple of five's but they've all read very well, they've all been positive about the record and how it's a good record you know? Myself, I'm over the moon with it, which is more important obviously. I don't think there's a duffer on it, I think it's a very strong record, I'm really happy with it. You're always judged by your last record and I think my fourth album is easily as strong as any of the one's that have gone beforehand. I'm delighted with it.”

Talking of Fife there, a friend of mine thought that there was a sense of your records being tied to Fife with a kind of nostalgia for the place. Have you ever thought that, is that a fair thing to say?

“Yeah I would but it's not to Fife though. There's definitely nostalgic qualities to them but most of the nostalgia are for places I go to on the road, people I meet. The lyrics are definitely looking backwards but at people or places away from home so it's not tied to Fife but it is tied to memories. On that most recent one, the first song and the last song are about west Cork, I guess the song “When The Haar Rolls In” has lots of references to Fife.”

Linked to that and looking at your records as a whole, do you feel they've followed a path or a trajectory over the years? For instance, do you feel you've become more experimental or more confident in what you do?

“I think the first record, “Moving Up Country”, was a pop record. With the second record, people talk about the second album syndrome and I definitely had it. I love that album, I think it has some of my strongest songs on it but it was a fucker to write. So when “Year Of The Leopard” came along I just had to break out from doing acoustic music so that's why it's got me singing in falsetto, it's got electronica on it, all sorts of different things. That kind of left me free to do what I wanted. I don't think the new record is inhabiting any genre but I didn't feel I had to break out of any genre with this one, that there was any strain with what I had to do and finally because I love what I do and I love my music and I'm very proud of it, taking all of those things aside, I'm very aware that it's uncommercial. It's not experimental, it's just that I don't have to worry about having a hit!”

You've done a couple of things that are a bit more stream of conciousness lyric wise, “Woozy With Cider” on the last record, the title track of this one. Would you be looking to do more things like those?

“I think that you can't look backwards. With my second album I think I was looking backwards a bit as we'd made the first record so good. I became aware about half way through writing the second album that it was just the wrong thing to do, I had to look forwards. I don't really look back. “Woozy With Cider” is a record that a lot of people relate to but can you imagine if this record had an electronica song with me speaking over the top of it?! It would have been really corny - “he's trying to do another “Woozy With Cider!”” It's more important to not pay attention to what you've done before.”

The new record comes in a very beautifully put together box set, with the double 10”, the remix and covers CDs, the works. How did all that come about and is it something you'd consider doing again or is it a one-off?

“We'll see what state the record industry's in in two years time or whenever the next record comes out. There were lots of reasons for doing this box set. One was that we had collected all this stuff. The covers thing started out because originally there was going to be a covers EP, “Tortoise Regrets Hare” was going to be the main track and the b-sides were going to be three covers but I asked five people because I figured two people would drop out and all five came through. I mentioned it to a few other people and before we knew it we had fifteen/sixteen people so it happened really naturally.

“The remixes was kind of similar. We had all these old remixes and a few people got in touch and asked “can I do a remix?”. Again, it just happened naturally and I got in touch with Domino and we were talking about a promo for the album and they just said “what have you got? What can we use?”. I said “I've got this and these seven cover versions” so they came back and said “why don't you finish those off and we can put it out as a box set.” My album sales are going... I have to be careful what I say because it might not be true... but it's looking like that this one is going to sell more than the last one and the last one sold more than the one before. It's only tiny increments, I'm not at Bonnie Tyler status! But, the record business as a whole is selling a lot less and the figures you hear, not from Domino necessarily, albums are generally selling half as many as the one before because of downloading.

“So this box set has been really good because we've sold a thousand things that couldn't get downloaded so we've actually brought some money in which nowadays for someone of my size is a reasonably rare thing to happen. Normally I'm subsidised by the bigger bands but who knows what will happen in two years. It's just getting less and less and less and less, people are buying less each week so I've no idea what'll happen.”

Following on from that, part of the lure of buying the box set is the chance to win the golden ticket to have a song written about you and then performed for you. Has that been claimed yet?

“No, it hasn't. I've got a feeling though that Domino know which box the golden ticket is in and they're not going to send it out until... I don't know how many boxes are left, I know we sold about 500 in the first week so there can't be that many left now. If they've got any sense they'll wait until there's about a hundred left and then put it in randomly but I don't know that. I'm selling three here tonight and it could be in one of those, all honestly it could be in one of those.”

Did you like the idea when it was first put to you? Did you think it would work?

“I thought it was a bit cheesy but the record company put a lot of money into recording the album and I thought that if this is going to help in any way, help them recoup some of the money then I'm happy to do it. There's a certain part of me that thinks it's going to be an interesting project, say someone like you won it...”

But I didn't. No golden ticket for me! I had grand plans of you coming round to my house and everything...!

“Exactly, you just never know. You're speaking to someone and trying to write a song, it's a difficult thing to do one way or another. There's that side of it and the other side of it is that I know it's been good for publicity, it's a reasonably good idea, I'm quite happy to do. Right now at least, ask me in a year when I've done it and it's about some nutty guy and it'll be quite different now I've done it!”

As I said to you before we started this, I've interviewed Johnny Lynch and Kenny Anderson for the blog and Johnny described you as a kind of “ambassador” for Fence Records, do you see yourself in those terms or is it just a matter of having the freedom to play songs for and with friends to complement your releases on Domino?

“When I started... you love music you know? I imagine you do, you're doing music journalism and I got asked in loads of loads of interviews which bands do I like and it was very easy and very truthful for me to say the Fence people, you could say Lone Pigeon or King Creosote or UNPOC because it was true. It was honest as well because I wasn't listening to or had a love for a London band, I was getting into the Fence thing, I was really excited about that. When I first started it was really easy to work with Fence because it was natural.

“Imagine you're an artist, you were painting and all your pals were artists doing something staggeringly new and original and somebody would ask you which artists do you like then you could say “oh, my pals!” Because I was playing with them and was so immersed in it, it was the easiest thing to do, talking about genuine talent. I knew that when I sent a King Creosote or a Lone Pigeon CD to whoever I knew I was sending them something really good, it wouldn't sound like an acoustic Oasis or whatever it was really fucking good. Nowadays it's completely different because Kenny is way better known than I am. Now, I play shows that's just me and my acoustic guitar I play whatever I like. Kenny's got so many good songs, Jenny (Gordon, aka HMS Ginafore) is great, Johnny's great but I just do whatever, traditional songs, my own songs.”

I was going to ask about playing with Kenny and Johnny as The Three Craws. I've seen you a few times now and it just looks like an absolute joy to play with those two guys, is that the case?

“Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, when we first started that we did mostly Kenny and Johnny's songs, we didn't do any of mine because I was touring and touring and the last thing I wanted to do was any of my songs. Now Kenny's touring and has become better known we hardly do any of his songs, now we're just doing Johnny's songs but his record's just come out now and it's doing really well, it's almost sold out of the first edition which is really good in today's climate so we're doing less of his one's as well! We're doing more of Gordon's (Anderson, aka Lone Pigeon), more of Jenny's, more traditional songs and more things that aren't our own. It's a great thing to do, to go onstage and have fun with the harmonies and try to trip each other up. I love it.”

A few months ago I saw a piece on The Culture Show on the BBC about the Fence Collective and on it you're interviewed where you say that you don't see yourselves as folk singers/musicians but as songwriters. Is that still an important distinction to make?

“Folk is a word that means something different to practically everyone you ask, from the music in the fields passed down from mouth to ear to all the different music that's out there. For me the word “folk” has always meant traditional folk so for me the word “folk” doesn't describe what I do because I write pop songs, even though they're not very popular. One may say it's folk and that's one's opinion and that's fine but it's not my opinion, folk has always meant traditional folk. It's not a big thing, it's not a war cry or anything.”

Obviously, you've covered Lal Waterson's “Midnight Feast” on the new record so I take it folk music will always have an influence in what you do?

“Oh yeah, absolutely. It's more of an influence on me than any other type of music. All these horrific titles of genres you hear, alt-country and new-folk and all that, the only one that I ever thought was good or funny was kraut-folk because I was really into krautrock, Can and Faust, as much as I was into traditional music so for me it worked. At the moment it is a little tricky because I'm working on an album that is completely traditional songs. I don't know what I'll say when that comes out and I'm asked that question but at the moment I really do think I'm a singer-songwriter, as horrible as that expression is.”

I saw you at the Green Man Festival last month and I think it's fair to say you've become a bit of a fixture there, playing every year. This was your first time on the main stage at the venue where it's held now, how do you think it went and were you nervous at all?

“Yeah, I was really nervous. Obviously, we'd played on the main stage at the first one but I actually prefer playing on the smaller stages and I asked them to put us on the smaller stage but they wanted me on the main stage because I've played there every year and they have to mix it up. It's a great festival, I absolutely love it and I'm terrified that one year I won't be asked but I'll be fine about it, I'll take it like a man. It's great fun, but it can't go on forever.”

Did you hear what Kenny said during the King Creosote set after you, mentioning that you played a greatest hits set, of mainly new songs...

“I think his tongue was in his cheek when he said that! You just have to play the new stuff especially if you play a festival every year. That was kind of influenced by Kenny the year before because he played totally new stuff with three or four old songs. I really enjoyed it, I was happy with the performance and thought we did ourselves reasonably proud.”

And again this year, the now legendary Jason came onstage for “Cheating The Game”, how did that all start off and come about?

“The first ever Green Man was in a country house and the main stage was a drawing room! We played a drawing room and it was about five times the size of this room. He kept on standing up and going “PLAY TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH!” and we're like “no man, we're not playing that, there's only two of us”, it was just me and Faisal on the harmonium before he got ill so this guy got up and walked out the room so as soon as he got out the room I started playing it and he got really annoyed, it just went backwards and forwards. Eventually I said “look I'll play it if you come up and do the drums” so he got up and did the silly drums, the “TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH”. We've done it ever since and had him up playing every year. It's good fun, I hope it doesn't become wearing for the audience because we only do it once a year but I look forward to it because you never know what he's going to do as he's a bit of a jokey character. But, it's not like we're doing a comedy song or something, it's one of our own songs.”

Do you ever see him outside of the festival?

“No, I don't know anything about him! I know his name, I know he's approaching 40 and I know he's got a son called Alfie but that's only because I've met him onstage and he's told me that!”

Finally then, how do you see the next wee while panning out for you? Obviously, you've got a tour coming up with The Pictish Trail and Rozi Plain...

“I'm curious to see whether the great reviews this album got is going to translate into numbers at the shows. I'm curious to finish this next record which is the traditional songs and then I'm going to get on with the next James Yorkston record. That's really the plan, just keep on keeping on. It's great that everyone else on Fence is doing really well now. There's always talk of a Three Craws album or a Fence Collective album, there's talk of the moment and there's been talk since 2001 when we started up. It's the same with this traditional record, I started in 2001 with Domino, it's been on the back burner ever since and now it's almost finished. I've got one of those old projects out of the way so now I want to get some of the others out the way as well.”

With all the work you do, do you ever get time for a break, have time to yourself and just relax and not think about music?

“Yeah, but it's not really like that. Playing is fun, we go on the road and it's good most of the time, it's tiring sometimes. Obviously you take holidays, have a couple of weeks off and recently I've been at home just doing DIY and reaping the rewards in the garden. It's good, Fife seems a very long way away from where the record company are and it doesn't feel as if my nose is to the grind stone. I live a very easy life!”

And some might say that Mr Yorkston has earned the right to those rewards and hopefully the success of “Where The Haar Rolls In” will lead to those rewards continuing. Thanks to James for the chat and for taking a couple of interruptions we had to the interview in his stride. He's a real pro, and a gent to boot. Maybe that golden ticket winner is reading this, I can't think of a better man to write a song for you if it is you!

Interview - Oxbow

2008-09-16T20:20:00.003+01:00

Words: John Mackie

California's Oxbow were last in the country on tour this past summer with fellow noise-makers Harvey Milk. Now home, vocalist Eugene Robinson took time out to answer some of our questions via email.

I've come to Oxbow very late...

This might be considered, in many quarters, to be a positive development.

My first serious introduction was the gig in Glasgow with Harvey Milk. I've subsequently investigated "The Narcotic Story" which I love. Could you tell us a bit about the recording of it?

Our records are always difficult and bloodied affairs. Our refusal to work with anyone other than producer Joe Chiccarelli on this (versus say having him record the basics and then have someone else mix it) caused innumerable delays as he would frequently skip out to produce stuff for Jack White and the Raconteurs and other much much larger groups and personalities. Within this framework as well just getting what we need to have happen creatively is difficult. First Lou Reed had thought he might be on it. Because you really can't have a record called The Narcotic Story without Lou Reed. And then he bailed. And then we couldn't afford prime time hours to record in so we took off hours. The first studio we did the basics in was shit even though we knew that all of the records that had been recorded there, many by Metallica, sounded like shit we thought it'd be different for us. But no... So we had to construct a skiff, or a room within a room, at the studio to make the sound make sense. And then because the vibe was so bad with the studio we escaped and went to another studio to do my vocals. This studio was a great one for vocals. So great that immediately on our completion of them the studio went out of business.

ADD to this the generalized agita born of sleeplessness and just trying to corral the craziness and you have: The Narcotic Story.

It's a dense and multi-layered record with so much going on. How does an Oxbow record usually take shape?

It takes years. And years. We went through one 6 month period where we rehearsed nothing but a 3 minute section of a song. Just this. Again and again. I say WE here but I really mean Dan, Niko and Greg. Since the first note that I ever sing on a song is the note that you hear on the record, I mean we never rehearse vocals BEFORE recording them, I mostly just listen and let the song come alive. In my head. And having written the lyrics I have months and months to have them make sense for me from an emotional standpoint as well. and this is even outside of the actual logistics of how we get things to happen my an audio production standpoint.

"The Narcotic Story" is your first record on Hydra Head. How has it been working with them? As a label, does it feel like a natural home for band like Oxbow and do you envisage remaining with them for the forseeable future?

In short order: GREAT. And YES.

You recently finished a tour of Europe with Harvey Milk. On the surface there are few similarities but from the audience's point of view it certainly made for an interesting and varied bill. Here's a 3 part question! What was touring with HM like?

Quite nice. Temperamentally the bands are coming from completely different places. They're, culturally speaking, pretty Southern Gothic, if that makes any sense and it is no wonder to me that some of my favourite writers are Southerners, so from my my vantage point this really worked. From their vantage point I think they expected me to be getting into a LOT more fistfights and were actually disappointed that this tour, sadly/gladly, offered very little of that.

What do you make of playing in Europe compared with back home?

Well our last tour of the States was with Isis... so it was GREAT. Our last tour of the States withOUT Isis can be best be described if you can envision a pair of boots slowly compressing your testicles, if you have them. and now imagine this forever. or for at least 6000 miles. Welcome to America. And truthfully: the UK is great for Oxbow but not very different in many regards, usually in the "fuck you - we don't care about you" regard, though the UK has always been cool to/for us... The stench of seen it all/done it all clings to the soundmen, support staff, promoters and venues here as it does in America. I say that though while also noting that this last tour was our best one ever in the UK and everyone we dealt with was unfailingly wonderful. it's just that my memory of the UK goes back 20 years and it has not always been so.

A bill featuring different "types" of bands can often mean one of them playing to the other's audience or at least an audience used to different fare. How do you feel about that?

We've played with A Perfect Circle, Isis, Tom Waits' band Oranj Symphonette, Mike Watt, The Melvins, Neurosis, and swing bands. Harvey Milk was as close as we're going to get to a band that sort of occupies the same art space. that is: one where the audience is OK with WHATEVER.

The Oxbow live experience was genuinely unlike anything I'd seen before! Intensity (an overused phrase but apt I think), performance art, feral noise... There were people near me who were standing literally open mouthed. I guess audiences, myself included, are not used to being part of such a truly visceral experience. For me it was thrilling. It got me thinking a lot of how it seems as if audiences for the most part clearly tend to want something cosy and traditional. I'd like to know if you agree with this? Also how important is it to you to challenge perceptions of what a live band does? Do you feel that that you consciously set out to challenge an audience?

I don't know about cosy and traditional and them really WANTING it. I mean people eat EGGS... I don't know how many of them really WANT to eat eggs. We are habituated in strange ways and if an evening's entertainment involves a LACK of real physical peril, existential anxiety, and psychosexual discomfort, well that would be fine for about 99 percent of the people out there walking around. decent people all, in all likelihood. there have been people at our shows who have wanted to, they say, see us and have not managed to for 20 years. This is virtually impossible, really, so I am left to assume that this is only the kind of thing you hear when you're ready to hear it. that is: understand it when you CAN understand it.

Or more prosaically... People who are real music heads like the accumulation of musical info as much as they like music. Right now I could not tell you at ALL what Yo Lo Tengo or Galaxie 500 or Linkin Park sound like but I have a GENERAL idea and for me? That's clearly enough given how short life is. this is the efficiency argument and this might play heavily into people saying "once you've seen one crazy Negro screaming to a noisy but highly proficient and divinely inspired band you've seen them all" but this is probably not true.

As for whether what you call the challenge is conscious, well I'd have to say no. Maybe if you have not read the lyrics it might emerge as a challenge but there is a direct one to one relationship between what we're singing about and how we're playing it and this has everything to do with how all of our lives are lived: with great difficulty. NOT sub-saharan African difficulty. We're all quite well-fed. But 1st world difficulties and clearly difficulties of the blood.

Eugene, how much do you see your live show as a "performance" as opposed to an act of "playing music" in the way other frontmen might approach it? Again, this goes back to challenging audience's perceptions with regards to the role of a frontman in a band, you often break down the barrier that exists between the band and the audience. Is this something you set out conciously to do or does it just feel like a natural thing to do?

Without the music what I am doing has no measure.

There are so many different elements to your sound. All these ideas and "influences", for want of a better phrase, fighting AND at one with each other at the same time. Being great musicians gives you the freedom to explore these different areas. Do you ever feel the urge to make a straight ahead "rock" record?!

Are our records NOT straight ahead rock records? They're not madrigals.

The amount of lazy descriptions of you I've seen are quite astonishing often along the lines of, "a metal band", "a hardcore band" etc. To me your music seems almost impossible to categorise even if I was inclined to attempt to do it. Are you bothered or frustrated by these types of statements? Do you thrive on them?

I am bothered and frustrated by capricious gods who see fit to under-reward me while those half as talented are over-rewarded. But naming conventions? I could not care less.

Eugene, could you tell us the background behind your book "Fight"? You've also written extensively elsewhere. Do you have any other books in the pipeline? As both a writer and a musician, do you ever find yourself having conflicting priorities or are both elements able to co-exist without being detrimental to each other?

Yeah. I wrote an article about my obsession with fighting and was flown to NY immediately afterward and given a book deal with Harper Collins. The gods were not so capricious that day, apparently. It's a great book that is NOT being distributed in the UK by the company publishing it because of the 2 pages I was urged to include on knife fighting and the idea that the book would aid and abet citizens of the monarchy in putting holes in each other. It's presently on sale ONLINE so... hey... I'm not asking for a handout... I'm just asking for A GODDAMNED HAND... Buy the book. Other books? Always... But nothing I've managed to sell yet. So: Air. And lots of it. Until a check gets written.

But do I find the writing/music thing tough? No. Writers are much more egomaniacal than musicians. I mean YOU know this, hahaha...

Finally, Oxbow have been together for close to 20 years. How do you keep things fresh?

Our music is not our business. I mean while we're involved in the business of music, we can't feed ourselves doing it and so then it becomes something done beyond real world constraints. like wicker basket weaving. it keeps us off the streets. I don't know if this equals FRESH but when no one cares what you do it can be quite liberating to do WHATEVER.

What makes you want to keep making music together?

Anger. And bitterness. Mostly. And a mutual hatred of fate. And our own wretchedness. And I wish I was joking but I am not.

How do you think Oxbow have evolved over the years?

Have we evolved? This could clearly be part of the "problem." Hahaha...

Thanks to Eugene for replying to our questions so quickly, it was a pleasure to chat to him. You can find out more about Oxbow and Eugene here:

http://www.theoxbow.com/
http://www.eugenesrobinson.com/

Record Review - The Pictish Trail

2008-09-02T23:15:00.001+01:00

The Pictish Trail
Secret Soundz Vol.1
Fence Records

Words: Andrew Cleary

The Pictish Trail – Secret Soundz Vol 1Johnny Lynch, the Pictish Trail, helmsman of the good ship Fence Records is, as anyone who has heard his work will attest, a talented chap. He has been impressing, both solo and as part of King Creosote's band, for some time now, so this debut album proper is certainly eagerly anticipated. And it is worth the wait. It kicks off with Secret Sound #2, one of the electronic non-sequiturs that intersperse the album, then we have the first high point in "All I Own" – initially appearing on last year's "Don’t Fudge With the Fence Made" compilation, it is an incredible song, contemplative yet full of wonder. It also gives the first glimpse of the beauty of Lynch's vocals – pitched somewhere between the aforementioned KC and Liam Hayes (aka Plush), they have a real fragility but also an instant charm that makes virtually every song immediately singalongable. Next up is "I Don't Know Where To Begin", which displays a quality of song writing that puts most "bigger" artists to shame. Other highlights are "Winter Home Disco", which signals a more upbeat change of pace and features the unmistakeable vocal talents of James Yorkston, "The Lighthouse" featuring a gorgeous opening guitar line and "Into the Smoke", a relative epic that would sound out of place on neither the biggest nor smallest of stages.

That last comment pretty much sums up the feeling that the listener gets from this album. While it encapsulates all of the finest qualities of the Fence Records output – warmth, a homeliness, lyrics that tug at your heartstrings yet make you smile and melodies to die for – it also has numerous songs that sound huge. Songs which one could imagine being heard by a great many more people. That is, of course, not to say that record sales should be equated with quality by any means, but it does frustrate that the public at large buy so much rubbish while songs of this quality might go unheard by the majority of the population. Still, it is exciting to imagine what the future holds for a songwriter of the quality of the Pictish Trail, and for now I, for one, am delighted to be in on these secret sounds.

Live Review - Kristin Hersh

2008-08-27T18:30:00.003+01:00

Kristin Hersh: Paradoxical Undressing
St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh
20 August 2008

Words: John Mackie

So, tonight's entertainment is in a drawing room, upstairs fromSo, tonight's entertainment is in a drawing room, upstairs from a museum of “early” music. Civilised it certainly is. It lends a restrained and reserved air to proceedings which will permeate into the spectacle produced. You"re not at a rock show or a kegger. You're at a recital. I expected James “Jim” Naughtie to come in with his big headphones and say "Here we are at the Concertgebouw…." My reason for entering this Old Town Howard's End is to see Kristin Hersh perform her “Paradoxical Undressing” show. This is a (mostly) spoken-word deal based around snippets from a forthcoming memoir of the same name. The readings cover such territories as the early days of Throwing Muses, her initial experience of mental illness, life in Providence and reflections on discovering she was pregnant for the first time. She reads out passages from the book accompanied by guitar washes and then intersperses snippets or full versions of songs connected (sort of/sometimes) to the text you've just heard. And certainly on paper it is a captivating concept from a performer who has undoubtedly meant a lot to me over the years.

Christ aye. KH. We do go way back. I first heard a Throwing Muses record in 1988 when I was hirsute and gamine as well as “skint and aflame” and the following year I started a regular habit of seeing them/her live. When I was 17/18 to me she felt like a revered creature from another lagoon, one where people were able to comment on their internal strife and seek insight into why it was taking place. In this land folk searched for a way to “express themselves”. Coming from a "Cultural Chernobyl" one is not accustomed to being around individuals who are “airing themselves” openly or who even risk talking about "internals" in case they might seem to be "making a fuss" or be accused of "being weird". At that age despite of/due to my confused/stifling incoherence I had secret and suppressed yearnings to tackle the weirdness and fuss making machineries which were going on "inside".

It's just this emptiness. I can"t chase it away.

KH was just what was required.

My pillow screams too and so does my kitchen and water and my shoes.

Thought this hardness was a shell. It's a hard, hard hard core.

Home is a rage, feels like a cage. Home is what you read. How you breathe. Home is how you live.

The way she sang these lines and the phrase "This is another ending" in a different tune were moments I used to move the needle to in an attempt to isolate her surges into and excoriation of the words. Listening to her was to hear a form of "self possession" I knew only too well writ on the largest scale. It blew my wee mind) and of course

The house is reeling. I'm kneeling by the tub. Lonely is as lonely does. Lonely is an eyesore. The feeling describes itself.

Quite.

The more time went on, I started to see what I felt were shortcomings to the lyrics in particular. I guess she was in her teens when she wrote most of these. Precocious stuff but subject to certain concerns and angles that one has at that age which are arguably peculiar to growing pains. For a while I grew out of what she was doing. I wanted fire and ice youth and joy and all that. It never fails to fascinate and frustrate the hell out of me how people can listen to the same piece of music and not only interpret meaning/tone etc in totally opposing trains of thought but also like it for entirely different reasons and pick up on hugely differing facets. Obviously a high number buy records due to the call of fashion or habit but, returning to musical factors with regard to KH, I loved the sense of liberation that was there in her voice. The meaning was there to be seen if you peered in hard enough and if you wanted to make the effort but before you got there you were faced with this magnificent clouded mass of words, of torment and non linear distress, of a sense of hope fueled madness, of words in battle with each other spitting out of a mind way too active for it"s own good. I maybe couldn"t articulate it at the time but there was so much of my experience in what she said and how she said it. The difference being she was able to get a grip on the words for a millisecond or 2 so she could use them. She needed and (often on an involuntary basis) channelled the turmoil, the flux, the rage. It was the thing for me. The music was jerky and seldom stopped changing. Angular. Wired. Skewed. All the best stuff. I have to quote this in full. Here's how KH herself describes the Muses sound in those early days. She sums it up perfectly.

In order to play them right, we gotta play twitchy. In other sections, if we don't play behind the kick, we sound like a giant spaz. We have to hit our notes a breath after every kick beat, even if the passage is racing by at a hundred miles an hour. And they do race by at a hundred miles an hour. Nervous energy is implied in every song; sometimes we gotta downplay that just to make the band less annoying. We don't downplay it for long, though. For the most part, we play as fast as we can, staring at each other, wild-eyed, racing down musical stairs, juggling as we go.

Sadly the more her career went on. I sensed that folk probably saw and heard something slightly different. Maybe they liked the fact that she used acoustic guitar quite a lot. Maybe that was enough to categorize her as an earnest "authentic" performer. Maybe they picked up on how she was prone to occasional stereotyped phraseology in the midst of the mad genius. They seemed to love this type of verbiage the most. The music definitely calmed down and got slicker and less fevered. It lost elements of the frenzy and density and concentrated pain which characterize her songs on the first coupla records. TM closed in on easier (dare one say it) TALKING HEADS (one of my musical arch enemies - "The Observer magazine just about sums him up e.g. self-satisfied, smug") territory at times and the solo records became reserved affairs with a hint of an MOR sound (with outré lyrics). Something started to go amiss. Her best songs have little roots which I prayed would start to branch out and take her into wild and uncharted territory. That's what I wanted her to do. That was the aspect of her that I always picked up on. I wanted more of that. I wanted the music to be heavier, gnarled, crushing, to be charging after and catching up with rawest voice and thought but they seldom did. The music became reliant on specious concepts of a "simplicity" that is not "simple enough" (it seems to me that “pared back” and “stripped bare” are good… declining to use one’s imagination when in a recording studio isn’t) so that you are left with “neither one thing nor the other” (Bob Cunis and John Arlott RIP).

I still needed the frenzy. I needed to hear the pain god damn it. I'm in pain. "We're all in pain". I need to hear this represented in “my music” (with Steve Race). I can't conjure it up for myself. I need to hear my inner workings reflected back to me by a better person in twisted kinship. I still attempted to listen to some of the solo records. They were hard work for me. Some sparks and flashes but song after song just faded into a jungle of increasingly samey themes, bland instrumentation and straight "all on one level" production and arrangements. I would scream at the Binatone. "She has to push herself!" I also seemed to be surrounded by pals who didn"t get her. I think this played on my mind - "a lot of screeching about nothing", "there's no dynamics. It's still on that same level". This one did hit home. It meandered along. No surprises. No ups and downs. A pretty, maudlin soup with some hints of colour and of feist (with a lower case f). It felt like she tried to measure and rein in her voice. It wasn't strange, shattered, huge, erratic anymore. It was often muted and collared and almost genteel.

This pleased the type of crowd I didn"t want to have anything to do with - Silencers/Carol Laula fans. "Blandness" made her very popular amongst folk who consume per se "singer songwriters" with a vengence. In my mind, Michael Marra began saying things like "have you heard this girl? She"s oh so kooky and so great that I'm going to stop writing wee ditties for the common man about Hamish MacAlpine". Growing appeal from these dubious staid sources became apparent. Collaborations with "celebrities" like Stipe (or "Snipe" as the late great D.Boon once called him (by accident)) didn"t help. I thought of all the people I'd like to see her collaborating with. Mackaye, Bazan, Sparhawk and and and…Come on, experiment, look for something, fire, anger, let's have it. I thought this was edgy music which maybe a few misfits like me (that's Dogs D'Amour isn't it? or is it The Quireboys? anyway...) would get. Fuck, now it's filled with people who dig music which they see as being insightful or clever mainly because they do not put themselves in the position to discover any type of music which is "difficult" to them and have no real wish to discover anything else to compare their “favourite” to. These people are not music fans. The act of listening to music is secondary to "other factors" in their lives which might drive them to put on a record.

The older her audience got she seemed to attract "ultra fandom" too. THE LIFELONG FAN - unchallenging consumption, anorak-y documenting, concerned with the act of "record collecting" as opposed to listening. I BUY ALL HER RECORDS. I GO TO ALL HER SHOWS. I AM A FUCKING AGEING SHEEP WITHOUT OPINIONS OTHER THAN THOSE GLEANED IN MY MYTHICAL GOLDEN DAYS "She's got some voice on her that lassie…" Anyway, ahem, there's a show to review…

It's getting close to show time. The crowd is meagre and mostly just older than me (the 40+ niche). There are some keen as mustards in here. There's a guy to my left recording the show on a video camera. He"s even got it on a tripod! Maybe he's been "capped" by "Beanpole" as well. There is another piece of weirdness going down. Namely the practice of playing what sounds like a mix tape of her own songs over the PA. I tried to consider what the motivation for doing sic a thing could be. I guess that if you come to see a KH show then you"ll probably quite like it if they play her music ower the PA at half time as well but it sticks in my craw the same way that I dislike Iron Maiden's obsession with wearing their own T-shirts on stage. I'm thinking to myself. What is this? A scoffy celebration? A lack of other available CDs? A sales pitch? A granny, a sheep shank or the infamous round turn and 2 half hitches as mentioned in the book of Ezekiel? Something about it made me hellish uneasy.

It does lead me towards a reconsideration of some of the more recent stuff. I think to myself, look maybe there has been some effort, at least to keep moving and to reinvent. The record of Appalachian folk songs she did - "Murder, Misery and Then Goodnight" comes to mind. Some of the tunes played wash over me. I start believing that listening to the whole albums these come off must be like wading through hardened gruel. I long for a bit of danger. I think out loud “could more of her solo stuff not sound more like "Listerine" with it"s massive build up and control and pitch perfect lyrics?” This isn't on the mix. I try to think of justifiable reasons for her mellowing. I realise that my head is getting way too hardcore. Jeez, she got married and had more kids and did seem to find happiness. I really am pleased for her at the moment when I think of that. Not long after that smidgeon of happiness, Billy O'Connell, her man, comes on and introduces her and encourages folk to applaud and to behave naturally! Apparently punters attending the show have been doing the "classical thing" and applauding nothing until the end/not laughing at the funny bits etc. I feel very sorry for Kristin at this moment. I can imagine that she may be flummoxed by such po faced reactions. I immediately recall how much I liked her in the day. Billy is an avuncular chap and no doubt and he sets up one of the motifs of the show by describing that the missus is painfully shy (her performance later bears this out. She doesn’t interact much aside from the readings themselves which she does “perform” rather than just “read out”.

From previous gigs I know that she can be something akin to chatty between songs. Tonight she says next to nothing but demonstrates she is a most expressive narrator who seems to know where to pitch a laugh or a tragic moment (of which there are undoubtedly many) and would struggle to describe/announce the info/advice he"s just supplied. He announces her and she comes on in a low key fashion. The colour swirls start up on the screen behind her. She plucks a pleasant meander on the guitar (which as ever with KH appears to be twice her size) and then starts reading from her "script" on the lectern. It's a good omen to see a lectern on stage. I don’t think I've seen a bad gig performed from a stage with a sheaf of lyrics in full view. I'm thinking expression, ramble, thought, discourse. It starts very well indeed.

The jerry-rigged Jesus on Mr. and Mrs. Bolduc"s living room wall has no face, just a gasping, caved-in head with blood dripping down its chest. He appears to have been crucified on some popsicle sticks. His mottled green and gold surface reminds us of fish scales, his paddle-shaped toes fan out like a tail. It is a singularly gruesome crucifix. We call it "Fish Jesus".

This first extract continued in that vein. A heavily Beat-influenced treatise on a former squat she stayed in once owned by one Napoleon Bolduc. Reading over this I am struck by just how smoothly it reads. It's laconic and downbeat and funny but it has flight of fancy and a glint that I love. It"s a vibrant, fluid piece. Full of that life and joy. Intoxicating. Her speaking voice has a drawl and a weariness in it which is pleasing and rewarding to listen to. She knows how to tell you a story and she doesn't do it in a showy or Vaudevillian fashion. This is a voice of experience but of essential kindness. She finishes the first reading, it would be apt were she to sing the song "Fish" after this and she does. We see a device central to the show for the first time. She does the readings illuminated in front of a series of woozy, washy backdrops. The lights go off at the end of each reading and she sings the songs in the dark. It has the effect of making the songs act as scene changes or chapter headings. It’s like she's strumming a tune somewhere "off" while you gather your thoughts for the next bit.

She sings "Fish" very well. The effect of hearing her voice raised and rasping is powerful after you've heard her speak for the first time in a soft tone. Also the effect in silhouette of the head bobby thing she does is mesmeric. She does try to set up some motifs during the show. The text has a number of mentions to how she stares in front of her in a piercing manner and bobs from side to side too. The effect builds and builds at each interlude until the end when she sings the last song in glorious Technicolor with the lights fully on. The effect of her stepping out of the darkness after the closing reading (which is a positive story involving sandals made from dung (it's true!) re: absorbing the shit in life and getting on with it) is a mighty potent one. She has always had this incredible way of staring straight in front of her while singing (the references to the way she looks on stage complete with the head tilty-ness and stare appear all the way through the readings and act as a sort of plot device link between the music and the text) with the most piercing gaze imaginable. She looks rapt and as if she's held in a trance (another motif of tonight is how the music comes out of her without being composed. It is part of her and as a price it may consume her. To see her at this moment is to believe this is possible).

Tonight she was directly in front of me and stared straight in my direction. I have been in this position at her shows before and it is a thrilling feeling. She is a striking woman. A mix of crippling shyness, inner strength, fire and kookyness with a face and eyes which speak with some eloquence of the turmoil in her life. In one of the excerpts she describes herself as being "short and not weighing any pounds". She is a wisp but there is a real whirlwind within the small frame and to see the sense of oneself bursting out and being conveyed through this act of stepping out into the light is genuinely affecting. It"s the simplest way in which you can say "This is me. I'm still here. I'm telling my own story" It is a highly obvious metaffer and I predicted it's use right from the first note she sang in the dark but man it works. Mainly because of her sheer presence but this helps too- when she comes into the light she sings the song "Cartoons". I have to quote these words to you.

This war's ok. In a sweet old fashioned way. Like a game we play. Guilty of something we forgot. I wasn"t staring. I was just looking far away. Dazzled by something I forgot. Here, drink this down we've been here way too long. Acting this way is a craft I'll shut up soon then we'll go home Covered in band aids and casts.

Beautiful indeed. Look, it's a piece of choreography but for me it was a hellish hellish poignant finish.

So you have a great beginning and end. Looking back maybe these were enough. It's strange tho'. I left the hall at the end of the night feeling saddened and disappointed. On reflection my feelings have changed. I think this is down to having read the excerpts from the book which she's published on the interweb, maybe less than half of which were used on the show tonight. I can't help feeling that something somehow got lost between the page and performance. It is so hard to lay my finger on it. Simply put, it works so much better as pieces of prose to be read rather than performed and listened to in a staged setting. I can't fathom why this is as she has a voice and presence which captivated and in a highly civilized arc demanded me to pay attention. I think it might have been the chopping of the text to fit it into manageable running time for a show. Her word’s reflective canon become constricted through being shoehorned into a timescale. The excerpts she published are far more fully realised and expanded and reveal the power she has as a writer. The style is without mania or frenzy and probably because of this is so adept at describing frenetic and manic moments in her life, of picking through the past clear and cool. The show’s structure is disjointed and the focal points seem to jump all over the place. It's hard to get a grip on where you're starting and finishing. It doesn't appear to have a full narrative and hence it seems to build towards little. Themes emerge and then tail off. I feel that in this format, somehow it needs to be expanded and rounded off to make sense.

Maybe it would work as a simple "book signing reading thing" even. Then she could read selected bits from the book and there wouldn"t feel like there was any expectation of a context or a flow. I do think it has to have more to it to work as an entity like it is at present and Billy did describe this as "a workshop performance", i.e. a work in progress/evolution and one which has been in gestation for some time. For me the role of the songs is uncertain. Possibly she prefers to have the songs so she has the excuse to have a guitar there which she can stand behind for protection. Maybe she feels it's expected of her to sing some songs or the fans won't come along. She's a "singer/songwriter" after all. I do wonder if she needs the songs in this show. I tend to wish/feel that the songs could go and that this show would work better as purely a spoken word piece. She could get more material in and tell the story with greater room to breathe. For someone known as a “musical performer” it would also be a most “challenging” thing to attempt.

She often just performs snippets of songs, something which is irritating in itself from a musical point of view (if you like the song in question then you would want to hear it in full. If you don't like that particular one then it"s a merciful release I guess) and does tend to give a feeling of the musical interludes as being extraneous. One or two of the songs tonight were not to my taste and from a performance pov were obviously knocked off quickly so she could return to the main purpose of the evening. It did seem as if she was on autopilot at these times. I started thinking the "push yourself" thoughts again. Get out of the cruise mode which "they" love so much. Her singing voice was not always at its best. She struggled when she tried some of the higher screamy stuff. The sound from the PA was oddly muted and distanced as if she were just a figure in the dark croaking through a wet blanket. This stripped yet more layers of immediacy and presence from a voice which at it's best is close and ragged and ablaze. Also when you listen to a bunch of different songs from various parts of her career does it show the similarity in what she's done and highlights the (arguably) relatively narrow furrow she has operated in. Song selection tonight seems to be on the arbitrary side (some complement the previous reading and some don't have any obvious connection) and from what I gather has varied significantly throughout the early stages of this project.

Some work - "Fish" and "Cartoons" obviously and there is also a nice snippet of the folk standard "Wayfarin' Stranger" which comes after a piece on a suicide attempt. This underpins and comments on what she's said in a wry yet objective way. The rootsiness removes any chance of the story being purely a dramatic one and returned it to the real in a subtle way which I didn"t particularly grab at the time. Something about this show stays in your mind even if in the flesh you do notice a number of flaws. I'm left thinking again of the shortfall in structure. Some themes were left unexplored or undersold. She hinted at areas such as becoming pregnant with her first bairn but there was little about family life (at other shows she has included material re: growing up on hippy communes. Having read the excerpt in question, this would have been a valuable addition as it left a key area untouched). Even with what was used she does seem to have so much material (written and musical) at her disposal that it will remain a struggle to fit enough in without resorting to Ring Cycle length or leaving out important avenues. Some of it feels thinly spread and threadbare in parts. It doesn't build to a structured end or plot as such either and was partially undermined by the lack of build up towards a finale. We heard loads about the band, a fair bit about mental illness, a quick bit about falling pregnant then the sandal thing and the end which came too abruptly and deflated some of the obvious power to the story. Again using glorious hindsight I would guess she is looking for a written tangential invocation of memories in her past and the show simply is not intended to be a narrative based one. I couldn't see this at the time. All I could think was "she has really lived and I want to hear the story of this life. All of it". She has a campfire storyteller thing going on and it won me over.

The one problem I feel with the writing is the symbolism she uses for mental illness - snake, wolf, bee etc. She's always used these terms in her writing. They get the meaning across clearly and simply but I've heard "an illness of the mind" (including my own) described in this fashion so frequently now that I do find it hackneyed and almost am dram. It's the default way to describe depression and mania and distress. Use an animal similie. "Monkey on my back". "Black eyed dog" (ha!) etc. These were the times in the show when I lost interest and conversely these were while she was tackling the themes I most wanted to hear her talk about. I do feel a sense of genuine disappointment about her use of this kind of terminology. It has something of the “Violet Elizabeth” about it I’ll scream and scream until the bees and the snake go away. Of course if this is not metaffer and she genuinely did see snakes/bees etc well she can only be congratulated for her courage in surviving it all and I will feel a right bastard. I’ve seen some strange things in my time too, I can assure you. Did I ever tell you about the day…?

Anyway the show is over. I feel down about it in the immediate aftermath and the unceasing adulation pouring forth from the tables - the one to my right in particular - does not help. This area provides a standing ovation… from one person. The lady in question was being a little overly keen and chatty with KH on her appearance at the start and she seemed a mite "blocked up" in her effusiveness. Clearly she enjoyed the show but I hope the ovation wasn't dished out in the style of a "lifetime achievement award". That's a load of keech. Music is not about blind consumption and strong brand loyalty. It's about changing perceptions and development of tastes and strong likes and dislikes. I like to live in the now when it comes to applause. I do apologise whole heartedly but I didn't feel this was a show/performance which merited a standing ovation. I had a horror flashback to my attendance at a Stockhausen "show" at Triptych some years back where he received a standing ovation from the assembled ranks of academe/"youth jazz orchestra" members for conning us into paying £30 to sit in a hall while he sat at a mixing desk and played us a couple of his records. I feel confused and stretched. I go home and mope around. Then I read the text which I’ve just heard her “perform” and I wonder what is going on with me, my opinions, my perceptions. I think of these quotes from a source youse have not heard of -

I don't want to forget all the longing for the good things gone bad again.

If you're given a choice you'll go where you know there's a weight that takes you down sometimes.

Everything you do, what does it add up to, move yourself to be where you're going to be when you are not here.

I think I’ve spent my time with KH expecting her to be some kind of dream performer and it seems that what she is is enough to “pass an hour on a rainy Sunday” and to make me greet when I read things like this.

Terrified of people, I found any contact with the outside world deeply unsettling. Yet having invited songs into my cave, they convinced me that I was burning with sound, not frozen with fear, that I should say, look at us. This sound isn't me; I didn"t even make it up, it just fills me. And it"s my way down to where we all are. That's the spark. I didn't really wanna go down to where we all are, but as it turns out, I'm a member of a deeply social species in which the only truths worth speaking are the most naked. I had planned on wearing all my clothes into these freezing woods; songs asked me to wear none.

That’s magic and why isn’t it enough for me? Anyway…

Live Review - Calvin Johnson / National Park / Withered Hand

2008-08-26T19:56:00.004+01:00

Calvin Johnson / National Park / Withered Hand
Lansdowne Parish Church, Glasgow
9 August 2008

Words: John Mackie

As I head through to the Weedge for this gig, all I can think of is how many wee hipsters are going to be there. I can't get my mind off them. This is Calvin Johnson I’m going to see after all…head of K Records… Beat Happening… Dub Narcotic… friend of… known as… recognised as… etc. I fight an internal battle all the way though. He has flown over from Olympia (a place which I picture as being some kind of “nearvana” populated solely by girls who look like Josie Long, the shops are exclusively “wee individual stores”, the only clothes shops are second hand and culty, the only shows are all ages, the talk is all ethical in content etc etc, i.e. an idyll of sorts but somewhere I am also very scared of). I feel so much cynicism in my heart when I think of all this. Maybe it’s me (ha!) but I see all these good efforts as being only for middle class people who look skewed and “stylised” and who are able to project their adherence to these values. I can't do that. I’m too wracked by 37 years to relax.

I feel that the youth see me as the enemy straight away. I attribute that to their perceived aesthetic dislike for my chain store clothes, my fatness, my lack of obvious charisma or pleasing shyness (i.e. hiding behind a fringe for 10 minutes but then giving you a discourse on Of Montreal B-sides…”oh he must be ok after all”... nah, I can’t do that…), my poor background, my lack of “Uni” education, my lifelong feeling that projecting any image intentionally is a dishonest thing to do and my recent awareness that this is one of the factors which excludes one from life. I felt tonight that I was likely to walk into a torture chamber of vogueing and oratory and adherence. I keep trying to remind myself how much I love Beat Happening and Calvin’s music and voice. I make this into a mantra - “Music and voice. Music and voice…” That’s what it’s about. That’s what it’s about.

I’m in the legendary and legendarily leafy west end of the ‘”underground” music capital of Scotland now. At times I imagine this place as the 2nd scariest on earth. Gangs of slickly dressed young bucks terrorising any working people or “genuine social misfits” (what are they really? I only know that certain factors surely make me one. Natch...) who may stumble into the Free State of “alt-dom” by mistake believing it to be subject to the humdrum ways of the rest of the world. In this neck of the woods twee-sters in duffel coats with teddy bears called Aloysius stuffed into the pocket hold court re: their sense of loathing at the average square’s lack of awareness of the works of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. I never picture this place as being full of inclusivity. I tend to feel extremely intimidated by these bairns. I say to myself, “shit, maybe they’ll know that I drink milk these days” or might have deviated from certain paths and they’ll all “presume” that I could never understand them and their penchant for ninny-ish dancing at discotheques.

It’s funny tho. The closer I get to the venue, the more settled I become. I think the sight of a few folk clearly older than me is soothing. What is more calming is the sight of the most violent overflow pipe in the world spewing water out of the side of the church. Hell, we’re all going to drown anyways… Aye tonight is a drink free “all ages show” in a church hall complete with pulpit, the trappings of “community” activities and a number of massive bell-rope things (without bells) hanging in a distinctly noose-y fashion from the oak beams (no doubt these were “dedicated” by “the verger” i.e. the funny wee Tetley Tea man from Dad’s Army or the local Jeremy Beadle in 1213). The Tracer Trails people putting on the gig have also come to the fore and avoided any “cock ups on the catering front”. No scrabbling around for a few scrag ends for them. They’ve provided a sugary yet warming spread of pink lemonade, crispy cake things and soup. I like this immensely. It is cutesy as fuck but, even if the motivation is to do it “the way they do it in Olympia”, I don’t really care because it seems rather nice and civilised all told. Dare one say it, the act of providing civilised fare comes across as “friendly” and not as self conscious as one might expect it to. I sit down and try to focus on my mantra and add lines about how it is OK to be positive in social situations.

I look around. There’s a guy right in the middle of all the pretty girls and speccy boys who has acquired the look of a proper dissipated distracted 40-something bohemian. He is wearing a lengthy coat, bright red trousers, and a Joseph Beuys/Gunter Von Hagens (surely they are the same person?) hat/”death rictus” look. He’s something of a fish out of water in ‘ere. His voice is that of the crusty - middle English deliberately twisted into something way more suitable for that of an urban warrior. He is not genteel. He is just a little too loud for the reserved murmur billowing politely over the PA’s tinny “K Recs” “wacky pop” music. The kids are suspicious of sic a creature. I’m enjoying the spectacle thoroughly. He mills around for a while looking for a kindred spirit. I think he was looking for the bar. He seems to be trying to commit the cardinal sin of “trying to talk” to the youth who are there (this is of course the worst thing one of the uninvited can do in “certain” social settings). Maybe he is there “just to feel girl’s bottoms”? He’s creating a murmur or two of unease as well as a general human seepage away from him into the soup/ lemonade/ cake/ knitting area. Finally, he’s had enough. Right in the middle of a moment’s grace from the chit chat in the room he answers his phone at high volume and he’s gone just like that, off to find a friend in a modern, cold, sober world. Maybe his night will end in a glorious lost whirl of Gitanes, peyote and Gary Snyder after all. Sigh. The room is not bereft of those who fall into the cracks but the others are more timid. The table near me is populated by 2 Everett True/Nigel from East Enders look-alikes, both old enough to be grandfather to some of the folk selling the pink lemonade. And then there’s me of course? Remember, I’m a GSM (see above). I sit in the awkward seat in the corner on the outskirts taking it all in and wondering how to engage with it. I start thinking of all this as metaphor and then thankfully…

The first act up the night are Withered Hand. Jeez man, I loved this set and it was such a nice shock to the system. It re-established balance within. WH are essentially a one man operation called Dan backed up a minimal crew of 3 on auxiliary duties - Bart Christmas aka “The Craig and Charlie Man” from Eagleowl on a mandolin type thing + voice plus a lass on cello and a quiffy guy (who suspiciously looks like an ex-member of a group of local indie bairns who once incurred my wrath going way back) on drums. Basically Mr WH has a certain look - geek, nerd, whatever you call it and of course me being me I immediately imagine it’s a look based entirely on a fashion code laid down by somebody you’re “supposed” to listen to. He’s an outwardly uncomfortable looking awkward guy with glasses, tousled hair and a baseball cap. He’s a ringer for Jad Fair, a realisation which possibly opens my mind a little. It is fully open by the time I hear him coming out with lines like “I lived my life like my heart wasn’t always in it” and “You can keep your blood you can keep your glory. I’m just looking for my voice” It goes on. “ We’ve all got things that make us evil, we’ve all got things that make us cool” and “…and your lips were warm and your hands were cold I never thought I’d feel this old. Isn’t grey hair just the first light of a new dawn?”.

The voice is high and strained but before I know it, it has a soothing effect. It’s because it is not forced. He sounds a bit like Doug Martsch one minute and at other times draws from some of the more obvious “alt folk” sources in phrasing if not in timbre. He is one of those vocalists who have a voice which you can’t quite compare readily to others. He’s no Wincey Willis or whatever he was called so in this case I use that statement very much as a positive. The songs are so natural and relaxed even tho’ they come from experience and disappointment and life - uplifting without artificial sunshine being trowelled on. The music is rattling, and on one occasion rollicking, and warm and the group are sympathetic and light of touch in their playing supplying folky homespun tones and adding the right amount of exposition to the tunes and nothing more. Shit, it seems wholly without contrivance. His songs are pithy and couthy and emotive and offhand and small and wry. There is nothing of the “singer/songwriter”/Martin Stephenson about him tho’ I guess he is a guy with an acoustic guitar singing his own songs about himself in his own way. I think it’s time once again to reinforce the reclamation of the perception of this role from the many dullards who jump to mind when you think of one person playing their own songs. He has a disarming onstage demeanour to die for. It looks as if he tends to forget that he is in front of a mic and talks between songs like he’s gabbling to himself. I like the effect of this hugely. He also says things like “this is for anybody who’s been depressed. That’ll be all of you”.

Being a sad old person, I think I’m just so happy to listen to somebody who seems to write about life remotely as I know it - domestic despair, late night wanderings, uncertainty, where is my direction in life?, is there any point to “having a direction?”, bemusement, the search for happiness/meaning etc. These themes are all here in the wonderful music of Withered Hand and within the songs on his fantastic “Religious Songs” EP. This week it really has been “seldom off my turntable”…in a virtual sense. As a postscript to WH, there’s a rather touching interlude later when Dan bumps into someone in the crowd who is wearing the same jumper (white and stripy), hair and general demeanour. He seems to enjoy this immensely and the 2 pose for a photo! Seeing the 2 of them together was incredible. The doppelganger seemed more than a little uncomfortable. Dan didn’t. The contrast is amazing to behold. One of them looks like he was quite simply born to look like he does. The other guy does not. In my jaundiced mind (I do admit this is not the nicest of observations!) I can see the other guy primping and preening before he left the house, trying to assume a look. I just can’t picture Mr. WH doing this. It seems to sum up the liking I have for him and his music.

Aye well, on to National Park. Frankly this lot at best fell into the non-descript category following on from Withered Hand as they did. The feelings of total anticlimax were intensified further by the ensuing Calvin show to an extent where it felt as if they were akin to “athletes competing in different disciplines” i.e. one feigning “passivity” sandwiched between 2 multi-taskers. I found NP to be so standard, so reserved, so safe, so secure (just like thae friends who are left behind “amongst the books and all the records of your lifetime”) and so nonaligned was their performance with the sense of otherness/excitement/quality engendered by the other 2 acts on the bill that it felt as if, instead of watching a “live” act we were simply sitting idly staring at a grainy TV recording of “A SCOTTISH JINGLE JANGLE ACT c. 1990” i.e. one that you didn't like, probably featuring Joe McAlinden.

For the duration of the set it was as if the “twee” ones in the room had been replaced by many of the youth I encountered in those days when the UK was on the cusp of the “great” indie crossover. Goodbye to my beloved Talulah Gosh and yer Shop Assistants. The Milltown Brothers are here. We’re talking over the show. It’s all about aggro and 30” flares now. I’m at an indie night in Fife, a bunch of baggy scum have invaded and there are fisticuffs every time Bill Gimmix tries to play either “Touch Me I’m Sick” or “Baby Honey”. The scent of soup from the kitsch kitchen next door brings me back to reality. It’s not Joe Mac on stage but it is a man who looks too like Edwin Collins to be trusted. I’m sorry Jim but they appear to be playing tunes that are too Teenage Fanclub oriented to be enjoyed (by me). (Oddly enough I learn later that Gerry Love is/was an occasional member and that they are longstanding legends of the scene with the Edwin guy having been in BMX Bandits and others. I also read a quote that refers to them having no similarity to bands such as TFC. I’m sorry but that is completely wrong…).

The “fannies” brand trademarks are ever present - loping wee ditties that sound undernourished and puffy, repetitious of passages heavy on “chiming” guitar strolls. They play in a flat manner, perhaps explained by the presence of 2 locums filling in at short notice. The most enjoyable times come when they do one (an instrumental of all things) that sounds like The Vaselines. This tune had a rattle and a ramshackle rasp which at least possessed a semblance of life and vitality. For once it sounded as if they were putting their stones into it and like the Frances and Eugene show of yore there was a heady suggestion that they might no make it to the end of the song but the important thing was that what they did up to that point was a snippet, a bare moment of glory, a hint of SOMETHING. The rest of the set relied heavily on humdrum plaintive Norman 'n’ Gerry and returned to safe and planned and cosy. I think my reactions were probably stirred by the Edwin thing which was on my mind throughout, i.e. I became consumed by fear that I was about to witness the total horror that is that skinny white boy funk guitar sound and would have to endure a massively unnatural way of vocalising. Acht, it wasn’t anything which scared me in the end. I was just numbed a little after the unexpected high I had witnessed before they came on. There were not offensive. The lass on the drums had a jazzy way of playing which probably hinted at the “droney” and loose textures and soundscapes which they are most likely aiming for and that the rest of the world seems to think they are producing. Aye it is strange how perceptions do vary...

Sanity in the sense of deviation from the norm was restored with Calvin Johnson. Firstly, all amplification was removed from the scene, well unplugged at least. The “house” lights are on and he comes across in his pink flip-flops and picks up a raggedy guitar. He wanders to the back of the “stage area” (there’s no stage you see, just an area where the music is produced and strangely at this point I think of my bedsit days, i.e. I sleep in a “sleeping area” instead of a bedroom, have a wank/think about “going to the bridge” in the “living area” etc etc) and releases that voice. In an era where crass and gross acts of exaggeration are commonplace this voice is surely a truly unique entity - a bottomless, trembling baritone, wavery in note but trenchant and unswerving in passion and conviction. His themes contain something of the Norman Rockwell (if he frequented drive-ins). All sock hops and hula hoops. He has written seemingly exclusively about stolen kisses and delightfully bruised ankles and hidden glances for 25 years. His songs are from a land and time that never was - chaste and lovelorn but bereft of the negative part of longing (i.e. the sense of reality when it hits you with all the what ifs and loose ends) and seeped only in a satisfying sepia hue of romanticism and “carve his/her name on my desk” (distinctly softcore) heartstring tugging.

This is all from a world completely unknown to me but hell I can dream too goddamn it. Yes it is VERY TWEE. I don’t think I can defend that and I don’t really want to. He has always made other worldly music all of it underpinned by the lush theatrical voice, one of a storyteller with a hint of a shaggy dog glint. The songs could be show tunes if he lived in another dimension. Big and camp and sparkly but perfectly balanced by one of the other features of the Calvin aesthetic ie the punk rock side. Perfection and “playing ability” are not considerations to him. It is all about the moment and mood, impact and feel. Tonight the songs are wholly sparse and unadorned. The majority are just voice and rudimentary guitar with one memorable and spectacularly straight faced one about sitting alone at the movies (see what I mean about the “off kilter” nature of it?) has voice only. Here he indulges in some entertaining and thrilling hand gestures, the kind which surely started the “Calvinism” cult adhered to in certain parts. It’s so impassive that it makes me want to laugh out loud and I think that’s the point.

A fair few numbers seem to be off the cuff affairs. Near the start he announces “here a few songs. I just made ‘em up” and it does sound like that, as if he is simply riffing and ad libbing on his familiar themes and dipping into the tried and tested CJ phraseology but man it’s exhilarating. You can’t keep your eyes off him. He plays one or two recognisable songs - including the lovely “Can We Kiss?” from his skeletal first solo record “What Was Me”, the arrangements and tone of which tie in more closely to the set up of tonight’s show than his most recent “…& The Sons Of The Soil” LP recorded with a group of K alumni. His songs have changed so little over the years that he might as well have been doing a set of Beat Happening classics. As much as I would have liked that to have been the case for the sake of selfish and shitty spent old man nostalgia it really didn’t matter and it would have been somehow inconsistent with his non-careerist and evolving makeup and rightly so. Look, there’s nothing that hasn’t been said about him over the years.

Leaving aside underground aesthetics and all that (info can be provided from anywhere on the interweb) I find his lack of willingness to do a rock or an indie show thing liberating and his committed, undeniably contrived and arch performance and presence have an element of the mesmerising to them. It’s as fascinating to watch other folk’s reactions as it is to watch Calvin himself. I have officially the worst seat in the house and because he tends to stay near the back of the stage his head becomes an unused PA cabinet (a brand manufactured by a company using my surname) and his torso a pulpit. This situation and my shyness in terms of attracting attention by being seen to move to a better position/not wanting to block other folks view does lend itself to a drifty feeling and an opportunity to observe what’s going on in the rest of the Sunday School group. Because he has such a massive reputation and position in the “underground” fraternity you can see that folk don’t know how to react to him at first. He doesn’t say anything for a while and then embarks on a long and deadpan ramble about British money which people seem to react to in an edgy fashion. Is he meaning to be funny? How are we supposed to react to him? Is he saying anything seminal etc? The stripped back nature of the show is obviously dividing opinion tho’ folk probably will not allow themselves to register any voice of dissent or feelings of discomfort re the fluffed notes and the wobbly singing for fear of being seen not to ‘understand’. I can see this factor at large in the room. There’s a mix of genuine joy as well as chin stroking and jaw dropping and confusion and bemusement going on and I’m really relishing it.

At these moments I love him even more for testing the resolve of the more flamboyantly attired in the room. It makes me sad that people are obviously reacting and double taking in this way. FOR THE SAKE OF FUCK. If you like something, shout and scream about it from the rooftops. If you don’t like it go and find something else. I just wish folk wouldn’t have ulterior motives for listening to music. That’s a theme that I can’t get away from. I listen to music because certain things produce indescribable effects and intangibles within. I don’t continue to listen to music because a certain publication or fat bloke writing in a carpetless hovel lovelorn in the middle of the night told me I should or because I think it might get me “in there” or advance me. Seeing reactions from folk like I did make me sad but they also strengthen my resolve to (a) keep listening to music for my own reasons and (b) realise how much I love Calvin’s music. I come back to myself and his voice is still going. It’s warm and treacly and I love it for what it is and what it isn’t and everything in between. That’s why I like him. I start thinking of the words to a BH song and I realise that “everything I learned has been burned…” I would hope that some of the folk sitting agog had their minds blown because that’s as it should be.

Interview - Eagleowl

2008-08-24T00:25:00.002+01:00

Words: Chris Hynd

Edinburgh trio Eagleowl create this quiet, beautiful, slow, melodic sound - guitars and strings meld into one and their voices complement the hum and whir of the instrumentation perfectly. Guitarist and vocalist Bart from the band agreed to answer some questions so, albeit delayed due to the band releasing their debut EP and the work Bart did curating the Retreat Festival, here they are.

I was reminded by a friend recently that I saw you a couple of years ago supporting A Hawk And A Hacksaw at the Subway Cowgate I think it was so you've been around for a wee while now. Can you give a brief history of the band, how you got together, what brought you together and all that?

Eagleowl has existed for about three years now. It started with just Malcolm and myself. We knew each other through mutual friends – we used to get drunk and watch horror films together. I guess we still do. I think that was important to be friends first and have similar interests outside of music. We played for about a year or so (including the Hawk and a Hacksaw show) before being introduced to Clarissa. Malcolm and Clarissa already knew each other, but didn’t know she played music until we all played a gig together with another mutual friend – Mark Hamilton from the Canadian band Woodpigeon. He was over in the UK on his own and wanted it to put together a large backing band for some shows. It involved us all playing together for the first time during sound check, then having a quick rehearsal in the car park outside the venue. I have a really nice memory of that evening, though I’m sure the audience probably don’t. It was a bit shambolic.

As a quiet band with a sparse sound when you play live, is it difficult to not get distracted by the chatter of the crowd especially of those who aren't paying attention? Obviously, I'm thinking specifically of those who were talking over you at the Low Lows gig - how disheartening is an experience like that to you onstage and to those who are paying attention to you?

I remember the Low Lows gig well. It was really tough. A lot of the songs are quite personal to me, and I think we each individually put a lot into our music. So for a large proportion of the crowd to treat it as ‘"background music" for their conversation, it’s really hard to take. It’s frustrating, but you just got to focus on the positive. Even if it feels like the worst gig you’ve ever done, or that no one in the room cares – there’s normally someone in the crowd paying attention. Even if it’s just the sound guy. We’re not naïve – we know that not everyone is going to be into the kind of music we’re playing (nor would I want them to be). So you just learn to deal with it – concentrate on what you’re playing, and hope that it’s reaching someone out to someone.

You've played a lot of shows around Edinburgh now and are probably seeing a nice little DIY scene developing, centred around what you could call nu-folk/anti-folk bands. As a band with more in common with the likes of Codeine or Low, how do you see yourselves in relation to those more folky bands? Or is it more to do with finding yourselves among like-minded souls and helping each other out in a city that's maybe viewed in a lesser light gig-wise than it's counterpart to the west?

It’s hard to say. I know what you mean – there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening at the moment in Edinburgh. We’re part of the fife kills: collective – which is a group of like-minded musicians based in and around Edinburgh. I don’t really like genre terms, but the collective is primarily what you may call "nu-folk" with people like Rob St. John and the Wee Rogue, but it also has elements of electronica, courtesy of Groaner. I think we get labelled "folk" quite a lot, as we use a range of what are viewed as "traditional" instruments. I think what unites the fife kills guys is a willingness to experiment – it's based on folk but there’s a desire to push things forward and experiment with the form. So it breeds quite a healthy diversity. We’re also good friends with the Bear Scotland guys – Meursault, Withered Hand, Les Enfant Bastard, the Foundling Wheel, etc. I think it’s a similar thing – we share similar influences and have a similar DIY approach to making music and putting on shows, but it’s the desire to experiment and push things forward that keeps things interesting.

Following on from that, do you think more can be done to encourage and develop DIY promoters/bands/writers/artists etc in the city or is it just a matter of word of mouth and people finding things out for themselves?

You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I still don’t know. I’ve been playing in this band for over three years. I’ve been putting on shows for about two. You mentioned Edinburgh being viewed in a lesser light than Glasgow in terms for gigs. I see a lot of great things happening in this city. There’s a really strong community developing and a lot of great musicians here. I hope it’s only a matter of time before the press and wider public pick up on that.

But at the same time, even if that never happens, I kind of feel that we’ll carry on regardless. We didn’t start this band to make money or get famous. We just wanted to write the best songs we could. If people want to hear them, then that’s great. But if not, we’ll keep playing. Even if it’s just for each other.

I picked up your 2 track CDR at the Fence Homegame a few months back you were part of a really strong night of music curated by Tracer Trails, how was the night for you? And what did you make of the weekend as a whole? As someone who went for the first time, there was a great atmosphere and a sense of being at something really special, did you get that sense as well?

It was my second time at Homegame. I have to say it’s my favourite festival. It’s the only one we’ve ever played at (if you don’t include Retreat! I guess!), and I think we were a bit spoiled that way. It’s such a relaxed vibe, and there’s no ego or bullshit. There’s no divide between the artists and the audience – mainly because most of the audience are in other bands. That’s the way I like it. Fence have done a wonderful thing for Scottish music in general. In terms of DIY promotion, they pretty much wrote the blueprint that we’re all following.

I mentioned your CDR, which is very lovely indeed. Do you have plans for more recordings and how do you approach writing and recording your songs? Do you all bring ideas to the table and thrash it out among yourselves or is it one person writing the songs?

Actually, in the time it’s taken me to reply to this interview (sorry!), we’ve released our first proper EP. It was recorded around the same time as Homegame, and the first time we’ve tried to do a proper studio recording. We’re very pleased with it – to the extent that I’m now a little embarrassed by the demo recordings we’ve been punting about for the last couple of years.

In terms of writing, I write most of the songs – but I generally come up with the basic idea and a loose structure, and then we flesh it out in practice. And Malcolm (violin/ukulele) has written some songs for the band as well. We’re trying to work together more in the development process. I’m not very comfortable as "front man". I’d prefer it if lead vocals were shared – I just think this helps vary the sound and make it more interesting for the listener. But it’s hard to write words for other people to sing.

Finally, what are the rest of your hopes and plans for the band in the coming months? Hopefully they won't involve more gigs with an overly loud and chatty crowd!

Now that we’ve got our first proper release, we’re hoping to play as many shows as we can up to the end of the year, then hopefully work on some new material. We’ve got a mammoth two date UK tour planned (Edinburgh, then London) with our friends Small Town Boredom, who are promoting their rather beautiful LP "Autumn Might Have Hope". We’re also playing the Gimme Shelter festival in October.

Eagleowl's debut EP, For The Thoughts You Never Had, is out now. Check out the links below on how to pick it up.

http://www.eagleowlattack.co.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/eagleowlattack

Live Review - The Pictish Trail / HMS Ginafore

2008-08-22T22:24:00.000+01:00

The Pictish Trail

Avalanche Records, Edinburgh
6 August 2008

HMS Ginafore
Scottish Scullery, St John's Church, Edinburgh
6 August 2008

Words and Photo: Chris Hynd

Instore performances are often a strange thing. It doesn't take on the appearance of a gig, the record store is still going about its business so it is to a few dedicated Fence Records fans and the odd intrigued passer-by that Johnny Lynch, the Pictish Trail, takes to the floor at the back of this venerable Cockburn Street institution. Lynch begins by acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation, like I said above, this is no ordinary gig. He's here to play songs from his upcoming Secret Soundz Vol.1 LP and is completely without amplification. People pass by, people continue to browse the CD racks but Lynch seems unfazed. "All I Own" is a beautiful opener, Lynch picks out a fragile guitar line and his voice strains and cracks along with it and it all sounds rather wonderful. They talk about being able to adapt to the particular surroundings you find yourself in and make the best of it? Well, Lynch certainly did that.

He showcases the best of Secret Soundz Vol.1, joined by fellow Fence head honcho King Creosote on melodica and backing vocals for the majority of the set. "I Don't Know Where To Begin" flows quite majestically, KC's melodica coming to the fore, the stripped back nature of the song accentuating its grace, "Into The Smoke" builds and builds as Lynch and KC harmonise (and try to get us to harmonise along with them!) and lolls and lilts and "Words Fail Me Now" is a little poppy gem for the big set closer (as much as there can be a "big set closer" at the end of a few tunes in a record shop!) and works tremendously here.

Having seen Lynch in solo mode and with band before, I always seem to yearn to hear these songs in a lone acoustic style. It's well-known that Lynch has great ambition for his records and performances as The Pictish Trail but sometimes there's that little bit something extra special about seeing those ambitious songs taken right back to their base, to where they started out back in the East Neuk of Fife. For this half hour, they feel like your songs too and that you're part of what Lynch is trying to put across. I hope he wouldn't have it any other way.

To the other side of Princes Street then as a foul Edinburgh day turns into a foul Edinburgh evening. The Retreat Festival, taking place in the St John's Church Scottish Scullery, is showcasing the best of the country's alt-folk talent and curators Bart (from Eagleowl) and Emily (from Tracer Trails) have put together a fine programme. A programme that includes a rare yet welcome live excursion for Jenny Gordon as HMS Ginafore. Gordon's reticence for playing live is fairly common knowledge so to see her onstage this evening, this time accompanied by a drummer and bass player is an absolute treat and makes you wish that this would be a more regular occurrence.

"Gregory's Girl" opens proceedings, Gordon's voice is unprojected and unfussed but the song is rather sweet and lovely, much like the film from which it takes its basis and the band lends a slight and understated backing but it all comes together well. Gordon often looks like she'd rather be anywhere else in the world than on a stage in front of people at times but her songs more than compensate for that unease, even though she visibly relaxes as the set goes on. "Buccaneer Chic" is a glorious sea shanty and the majestic "Thar She Blows" closes the set on a down beat, yet utterly compelling note.

The band sound certainly seems to suit Gordon's songs in the live arena and while her releases may be lo-fi and scratchy there's a gift in what she does. You may need to dig deep at times but once you're there then it's all the more delightful. Perhaps Gordon's lack of live presence though makes this show extra special, that it's our little secret that we only occasionally get to share with others, that HMS Ginafore should be discovered when you least expect it. Perhaps that's what Jenny Gordon wants all along but I know that when you make that discovery then there's no going back. Gordon's songs will seduce you, enthrall you and enchant you, the fact that you have to work that little bit harder makes it extra rewarding.

Live Review - Harvey Milk / Oxbow / Take A Worm For A Walk Week

2008-08-12T00:29:00.002+01:00

Harvey Milk / Oxbow / Take A Worm For A Walk Week
Stereo, Glasgow
13 July 2008

Words: John Mackie

Sunday night in a cellar with hissy plumbing and a pillar in the middle of the floor. Take A Worm For A Walk Week are 4 westenders ("I was born a stone’s throw from The Captain’s Rest" etc) who left me feeling not a whole hell of a lot. Maybe it’s cause they wear matching spandex leotard things. Maybe it’s the feeling I could be watching ANY band who have set foot in the LOCAL west coast "noisecore", and heavy leaning variants thereof, arena since the late ‘90s. They don’t go into full pelt near enough for my liking and tend to exist in a limbo where they haul back the "paste" and the speed to self consciously shoehorn in a mathy (I guess I’m showing my age and lack of recent engagement in life. Nobody uses that type of terminology any more. We have evolved, you know... aye…) "bob and weave" here and there. Stabs of unwelcome confusion enter the tunes and I find myself wanting them to just put their fucking backs into it rather than continue to try to out think me. That’s not to say that, at least on first listen, they don’t emit a skittishness and disquietude which seems mostly unadulterated by contrivance and their sense of a momentum rush is appealing when they allow themselves the indulgence of letting in the rock.

The musical similarities with tonight’s openers Desalvo (who thankfully I missed, given my previous brushes with their brand of Burntisland Youth Theatre am-dram and lumpy, grumpy, pishy "noise") are clear. Again the culprit is mostly the misplaced humour (see later), though Take A Worm... are obviously a superior act. In short hand terms they favour the jumpy to the elephantine. Take A Worm…’s "presentation" is not reliant on butcher’s aprons or the extremity of your opinions on how shocking you find public appearances from a fat man’s blubber. Sadly their appeal does seem to rise or flounder on how entertaining you find the sight of students leaping around in Rollerball priapic-bulge leotards. I lost all focus when I felt the pain of realisation that the floppy haired vocalist had worked too hard on the sourcing of his onstage banter. I detected the hand of something akin to "exclusive to you" excerpts from thae wonderful worlds of Meatwad and (Erwin) "McSweeney’s" and "Wonder Showzen" and "Adult Swim" or whatever it’s called, as if prior to tonight he had consulted his pals on just where to trawl those archives of alternative Americana which those folk with shoulder crossover "record bags" all love so much. "Well, maybe after song 7 I’ll give them a burst of series one episode 7". I guess he’s spent some time thinking of how such infra dig quotes will sound coming from a man dressed as one of Hesketh Racing’s pit crew. I’m a perma-peeved soul these days. I appreciate folk who play music and don’t give you any shite along with it. Sadly in my fickle mind I now can’t hear any quality in Take A Worm...'s sound. I can't even remember how they sound. All I can recall is one very smug young git in fancy dress trying to impress his pals with some quotes. Maybe I’m being too harsh.

In this worn frame of mind I come upon Oxbow. They are a band I’ve been vaguely aware of since almost the dawn of my time being aware of music and I feel aggrieved now that I never took the time to explore their sound and look on them as being anything more than what I thought to be - "noisy generic hardcore with a muscular semi naked black frontman". Lazy perceptions, though of course only the first bit is wrong. I saw the pictures of an animated grunty Eugene Robinson in full flow and presumed he was espousing the punker "heavier than thou ethos". I guess that ER’s onstage persona is concerned with the challenging of said perceptions or of (racial/sexual) identities or at least the rules of stage craft.

It starts with the sight of Eugene, the aforementioned "muscular, soon to be semi-naked, black man" sharp suited and booted throwing a mic stand into the crowd, yelping randomly, casting off a distinct air of foreboding and cutting many a multi-hued shape. The band rumble and squeeze out dense blocks of sound which break into jerky rhythms and build to cacophony and back in moments of brooding and tenderness one minute and then emptiness and reflection next. They have a great sense of control, of how to build and release and there’s a "restless stranger"-ness to it which I find hugely enjoyable.

Different soundscapes are explored on a whim throughout. Howling blues, folk inflections, the momentum of hardcore, sheer glorious angularity, the precision riffage of the Scratch Acid-types, the old school beats of "the type of band" one used to see in my "glory days" of US noise, the uncertainty of life and the assault and "abrasive textures" of The Swans. It all seems to come from an avant-garde sensibility. The feeling you get when you realise that it’s up to you to create your own tone and identity and rules. The liberation of performance and the search for something, man. These things are all there in Oxbow and I feel an undoubted buzz and shiver from watching them. I found that there was a visceral thrill to be gained when you looked and there was Eugene, rambling and riffing, twisting and projecting, with the falsetto kicking in just as you expect him to unleash a scream and then vice versa, removing a garment after every song until by the end he was leaping around in a pair of boxers, a leather waistcoat and a pair of white socks. For a second I think, maybe it’s all vaudeville and no "depth"?! Then I think, look, would I know depth when I saw it? What is depth anyway? It is awkward at times to gauge the tone of Robinson’s performance (he also seems to have been taking his clothes off on stage/doing a similar show for the whole of Oxbow’s 20 year career), including as it does frequent bouts of "willy adjustment" and fondling.

In my head, I cannot resist the delicious feeling that any sense of spectacle which might have been produced by Take A Worm... wearing "blatantly "cock-hugging uniforms has now been made wholly irrelevant by the nature, as well as the basic abundance, of Eugene’s act, some of which is undeniably vaudeville. This is performance art goddamnit. I have thought long and heard since this gig of whether I should be sceptical of someone who performs and who puts on a "show" and of whether it is wrong to enjoy something so much primarily because of the up front IMPACT of it. Did Eugene’s act make me challenge myself, whatever that means? Well I guess it did. Next to me, a group of Desalvo and Take A Walk...'s WAGs appeared to become genuinely excited by the sight of a well-endowed man pawing himself. Their reaction was of the "Are you feeling hysterical?" "No, he’s feeling mine" variety. Of course for a while in my attempts to "unfold the cranium" I tried to claim that I responded to it in a manner full of probity and intellectual challenge but of course I didn't! I enjoyed the absurdity, the madness, the moments of high camp and for once I enjoyed the attempts to drive through the murk and the mundane and find, as my beloved Werner Herzog would call it, "an ecstatic truth". The feeling which Oxbow left me with of, for once, feeling as I if I was attuned to an ability to look outwards as well as always, always inwards was priceless. To use a cliché popular amongst "you, the living", for once in my life, I went with the flow and I loved this hour of my life with Oxbow.

And after all that came Harvey Milk. Aye, I’m afraid I feel drawn to crass terminology and description. Quite frankly I found them to be …entertaining… but to say that for me they paled in comparison with the massively multi-dimensional Oxbow would be to imply a level of understatement which is clearly beneath me. I guess in the internal climate I was in at the time any band would have seemed severely meat and potatoes after the full smorgasbord presented by Oxbow. HM fully confirmed what I think of them from the records. The pulsing riffage is great and warm and cocoon like, the volume is massive and tantalisingly close to being fully enveloping. "I only wanted the spark, I only wanted your hearts…I only wanted the high, wasn’t much more to my life." Yes. What I wanted was to wade in the volume and the noise and the jest and zest of distortion and bludgeon, something I do dearly love. I do, but I wanted a surprise or two to go with it.

The setlist might well have been written thus -

"1. Slow, lumber-y one lasting for 12 minutes."

"2. Slow, heavier one with a lot of messing about in the middle."

It was just so uniform, so straight. I struggled to see where it was going or what impact it could make on me. I do appreciate the effect of power and repetition and drone but there was something missing on the evidence of tonight’s show which I couldn’t really put my finger on. Maybe it was the intense distraction provided by all the messing about/"indistinct" bits? These have festooned their recordings from the year dot. I just can’t find much appeal in the act of interrupting a passage of pleasing, heavy guitar with some shouting in a silly voice and/or an inexplicable gap in the tune to accommodate "humour". I suspect these additions may be evidence of HM’s own avant-garde/experimental roots and leanings (see above) but for me they present a significant barrier to enjoyment gleaned from HM. At the least, I would class these interludes as "wearing" and as "longeurs" which make me want to tell them to "shut up and play yer guitars", a request which I don’t feel is anything to be ashamed about despite the fact that I am probably from the demographic who you might stereotypically "expect" to offer such advice.

At worst, however, these interludes come across as oddly gloaty and perverse and inexplicable. I guess I’m being too harsh again. The persona of this band of course is not one of smug Take A Worm... young bucks. They do of course have legendary status and first semi-released material in the early 1890’s. Quite simply, they have a pleasing look to them, generous of girth and follicle and are clearly in love with primordial guitar. Their persona’s are warm and it looks like they’re all enjoying it.

I feel mean for fixating on one aspect but the final straw came when a hugely pleasing grinder, one which had more musical ululations and deviations than some in the set, descended into a full take on "Jerusalem" - aye that one, Quentin Blake, or whatever he’s called, God nutter AND handy at drawing the BFG with a red crayola - hollered by the wonderfully named Creston Spiers to a cacophony of comments along the lines of "Fuck Oaf Ya English Bastard" from the knowledgeable, ever-shouty Glasgow crowd. I believe this tune in reality is called "Anvil Will Fall" but whatever its title, it just can’t, all told, be seen as a highlight of any band’s oeuvre. They get away with it because of their affability and the fact that there doesn’t appear to be any wankery motives in doing it. Maybe they’re simply having a blast, and enjoying the response it produces from "typical Weedgies". Look there’s nothing wrong in all this (rewind to what I wrote aboot freedom and avant-garde above). Sadly, it ultimately "challenges" me to an extent where I become confused and leave the building. I can't see the point to it and feel frustrated in how often they deviate from what I find enjoyable in them. Ach, I’m sure the joke’s on me. Well, it is. I think by accident I just found the overall theme of tonight.

Interview - The Pictish Trail / King Creosote: Part 2

2008-08-10T20:26:00.003+01:00

Words: Chris Hynd

And so we return to our heroes where we left off with them in the corner of Edinburgh's Doric bar. Kenny had just got a round in, Johnny resisted the temptation to say naughty things about him when he wasn't there. Let's return to the story.

Going on to talk about Fence Records, you've been receiving a bit more attention of late, for example from the national press, TV and radio. Does that bring with it some extra pressures or is it just a good thing for what you're doing to be getting that extra interest?

JL - “Yeah, it's nice totally, the positives outweigh the negatives. We've had some good national press and also have ambassadors for Fence recording on other labels, Kenny's one with the whole Warners thing, James Yorkston was arguably the first bigger name, Gordon with The Aliens and more recently KT Tunstall. That was a different audience for us but it was getting the name out there it brings in a lot of folk. There were people at that instore there who were at that KT Tunstall gig we did last month and I know who are big KT Tunstall fans so it's weird as we're not looking to convert Tunstall fans, it's not going to happen!”

KA - “One at a time!”

JL - “One at a time. The thing is, the perception of how Fence is is that it's bigger than what it actually is. We struggle to sell a lot of records but because it's pretty much a 2 man operation it doesn't really matter...”

KA - “Well, it does! If we can do well in a year then we can do more records by more artists, the more people buy the more we put out, the less they buy then we have to cut it back. We never get into a financial stushie, or we're having to borrow money or thinking “we have to sell!”, it's the other way round. If we do well, let's make more, if we don't do well then let's make less.”

JL - “On a big scale, we're not selling a lot of things. With The Caves gigs, it takes a lot of effort to get people to buy tickets for them, I'm always very frantic the day before the show thinking “oh shit, we've only sold 60 tickets” but we've been lucky with the last couple of shows managing to sell a couple of hundred but it still requires a massive walk-up. I'm still aware that people don't have to have it immediately, unlike the Homegame, but there's other things that haven't got there yet. The ideal thing for us I think is that in the next 5 years if we can get a fanbase of say 500 people, at the moment it's about 200 that are hardcore, who just have to have everything then that's perfect. We wouldn't have to worry about losing money on a record.”

KA - “If 500 people are willing to buy 1 record a month...”

JL - “That's unrealistic.”

KA - “It's 12 records a year, I think it's quite realistic. Imagine at that stage if we had, maybe not the cream of Scottish bands but better bands who were willing to do smaller runs of things then you could do that, you could have one a month that 500 people would be willing to buy. I'm not saying it's within our grasp, we've got to work hard for that but we've received bigger bands approaching us to do things and we're like “why?” It's like you said, the perception of it is bigger than it actually is. There is a lot to be said for playing that Homegame. The thing about Homegame is that it attracts the media, and not just the Scottish media but the likes of Channel 4 have been up filming and it's just unusual. So even though you're playing to a few hundred people in a completely inappropriate hall, there's a spin-off from that in that it's so wrong it's completely right! I think by Fence remaining small, that's the attraction for it.”

JL - “It's really tiny, that's the bizarre thing. You have all these major labels, Kenny was on 679 - a major label trying to be an independent label and they got it because they were getting into certain media streams, they could get TV and adverts and stuff. Conversely with us, we're managing to get some good mainstream media coverage that doesn't really equate to record sales. I don't know if that's because record sales are on the wane, for us they've gone up year-on-year, we're probably the only record company in the UK that's managed to do that but only because we're not selling that many anyway.”

KA - “We were a label when we were selling less than 10 CDRs anyway and we were a label that other labels knew about so we were attracting the music fans within those record labels and still had music fans working for them, that was the thing. It wasn't anything to do with numbers, it was about people finding music they like and there's probably very few people working for major labels who actually give a toss about the music they're putting out because if they did they wouldn't work there. So, if you're working and trying to sell a product you don't like, that's a certain type of person who would do well in any business but if you're working with something that you're precious about you'll either do exceptionally well or you'll do nothing because you just happen to like something that is just so obscure and ridiculous so it's a trade-off for us. We want to attract music fans but they've got to be the type of music fan that we want to attract! We don't want to attract people who are expecting too much, you can't attract somebody who's only been to about 3 gigs that year, they're only going to be disappointed.”

JL - “These people who are only going to a few gigs and they just happen to stumble across a Fence thing, maybe they will enjoy it and maybe they will keep buying stuff...”

KA - “We know that we have got acts that you have to grow to like.”

JL - “Yeah, there are acts on Fence that people hate, who are totally different to King Creosote or myself, but there are those who think they're the best act on Fence. There's people who think Art Pedro is the best act on Fence, he's not, but he's really good and he's totally insane. He's just given me another EP, his third EP in one month, the guy is so prolific. Seeing the type of music fan who likes that sort of thing the most is quite interesting. With Art Pedro, it is quite difficult to get into. He can't sing, he can't play guitar in time but he writes these amazing songs. Lyrically, it's quite heavy going but you have to persist.”

KA - “Even in the early days, we never made it easy, you know with that whole Shinya Mizuno thing? At the time, that really shocked the Fence hardcore, it was proper Japanese pop and really bizarre but at the time people were used to Lone Pigeon, myself, Pip Dylan, Billy Pilgrim, they had an idea of what Fence was and along came this thing that slapped them in the ass.”

But it's a good thing to challenge people though isn't it? Make them feel uneasy and take them out of their comfort zone and have to try a bit harder to get it?

JL - “Definitely, but you can't make everyone happy. I like pretty much everything that's on Fence, I don't think that there's anything I don't like or wouldn't listen to regularly but we can't expect that of our audience at all.”

KA – “It's 2 people's music tastes, I mean our tastes are slightly different but Johnny and I haven't yet had a major clash over a band. Johnny may try and convince me of the merits of an album by whoever and vice versa but we each know that we're not going to both like that thing, it just becomes the white elephant in the room. For us, it's music that's got the right spirit behind it, and there's other things that influence what we release. It's about bands that are willing to play live, well maybe not HMS Ginafore who's the most unwilling to play live, she has no expectations, she's not phoning us every day saying “why is my album not doing better than it is?” so there's this sliding scale of people who are desparate to play everything right down to people who never want to play live but when they do it's just jaw-dropping and there's just everything in between. It's up to Johnny and I to work out where we place them in some kind of pecking order. It's like “this guy is working really hard, he's amazing, we need to at least match his talent” and we've got people who have huge talent but don't want to play live so we don't base this thing on how they play live, we've just got to think of another way to do it. That's what we're good at, we always come up with some bizarre way of overcoming these obstacles, but there's 2 of us to do that.

“When KC got busy, I just couldn't run Fence. The KC thing is a shackle, there was so many things to sort out but we made the decision a while back that it was actually good for Fence that KC goes forward because King Creosote the live band is very much a Fence Collective band. It's done Johnny no harm, it's done On The Fly no harm, we're like a united force under this one name and that's how it should be. The KC thing will dip and Johnny's thing will come forward then his thing will dip but hopefully we'll always be there in some form pushing things forward.”

Cool. Continuing the Fence theme, I grew up in Kirkcaldy just down the coast from yourselves and growing up there was just nothing culturally interesting in Kirkcaldy...

JL - “There still isn't!”

There still isn't, and that's why I moved but just up the road from me something was happening musically. What do you think it is about the East Neuk of Fife that has led to the setting up of what's now known as the Fence Collective?

JL - “For me, when I was first introduced to Fence as a student at St Andrews I was a big fan of the Beta Band and Belle and Sebastian and The Delgados, at that time up and coming Scottish music. Within my first week seeing Kenny playing in a bar in St Andrews with this batch of musicians with him, hearing him play for 3 hours I thought it was incredible, I hadn't heard anything like this. I went back 2 weeks later and he was doing the same thing but totally different songs and with different people playing with him but still the same crowd who were there and just loving it. I saw that there was this thing going on in this town, people are seeing this music and they want to be involved.

“The Fence thing for me that totally bowled me over was seeing Kenny and his brothers singing together, the 3 of them, I think the best musical thing I've ever seen. There was just this spark and I think, like Kenny said, there was something about the Fence thing that just attracted fellow musicians. I had my own songs at the time that I didn't want anyone else to hear and after seeing them do that...”

KA - “What you've got to remember is that Johnny was just one student in a huge pile of students that just breenged into that bar and I'd say that most of them left the bar because we weren't playing a Crowded House song or something that they knew. That's what I was saying about Fence, it attracts the people it's meant to attract. Johnny has an ear for that and we impressed him enough but a lot of people probably thought “yeah, it was alright but there was a couple of real bum moments. It sounds like they don't rehearse...” but it did weed out the people who were for it.

“The reason I stuck in St Andrews is because I'm from St Andrews and spent the best part of a decade in a band doing what you're meant to do as a band only for that band to fall apart at the seams. St Andews is a university town so it's very transient, every four years you get a completely different audience. I just had this idea, “you know what? Let's just play here.” 1 – there's no music scene, nothing to compete against. 2 – people don't expect anything so it's like you're saying, if something kicked up in Kirkcaldy it would probably do amazingly well but it would take time. We took the best part of 2 or 3 years to find the audience that liked us. When we started, for every 40 people in the bar, 38 were like “well, that was pretty guff” but that 2 were ardent fans. And then the next week, they were joined by another couple but it just took time. Johnny arrived in 1999, we'd been doing that for 3 years and that audience changed all the time but the students in St Andrews who did get into us they took that away as, not one of the highlights of their university career but certainly something that they treasured. We had some amazing, mad nights.”

JL - “Such incredible nights. One of the best things I went to see was Kenny, his brother and the rest of the band dressed up as women, they made a proper effort, it wasn't just guys in drag, they properly looked like women, really ugly women!”

KA - “We'd done this thing before, the 4 Davie's, so let's do this covers set but let's dress up as our own dads. So we dressed up as older guys, my dad's really into that scene, ceilidh bands so we did that and it was funny. I just got it into my head that we should just do this regularly, the next thing should be the 4 Mavis, i.e. wives of that band, so that was the next thing. The next thing was the 4 Boris, the Ukrainian cousins, just stupid stuff, ridiculous stuff. We'd do the same gig, every second Wednesday without fail, it went throughout the summer. We found out that during the summer when the students were away you had to play a different thing, you're playing to golfers and a few celebs and a few more locals as well so we had to modify it. During that summer we thought “you know what? We should do more covers but let's not do them as us, that's quite embarrassing. We were competing with this other guy who did covers, we played Wednesday's because we didn't want to play weekends because we thought everyone's out at the weekend, we wanted to play a night where people have to make a bit of an effort and that thing where “wouldn't it be great if a weekend actually started on a Wednesday night?” Thursday night was always a big night for students as they all had Friday off. We built this Wednesday night up but it took time as nobody was out on a Wednesday night, it was completely the wrong night.”

Going on to talk about this year's Homegame, which you've mentioned, you were both heavily involved in the setting up and the running of it. Did that leave any time to actually enjoy the weekend?

KA - “That Homegame we did, for me, was my favourite one. One of the main things about it was that it was a return to an earlier Homegame, we kind of built the stress levels up. The first one was really difficult...”

JL - “Oh man, so many mistakes.”

KA - “So many duffers, but we learnt from it, The second one, there was new mistakes. The third one, new but by the fifth one we kind of went back to something like Homegame 2. It's like when you're studying for your Highers and you're looking back at an O-Grade paper and thinking “why was I so panicked about that O-Grade? It's so simple”. It was kind of like that for me, taking a step back. I knew where Johnny was, he knew where I was, it just ran like clockwork, it was easy. There was a lot of work in the background, Johnny did a lot of the set up work, for me running a PA and doing sound there is a stress doing that and the first time I did sound, in Pittenweem, was horrible, I thought I couldn't do this. But this time, I stood back and it sounded good. If you could have taken that sound and multiplied it and made it a big gig it would have been the best live sound you could have, it just sounded brilliant. There were times where we were right in the firing line but we were always there and present and in years gone by, was it Homegame 3 where we had that press deluge...?”

JL - “That's the worst thing. There's press up for it and you know you have to impress them , you literally can't spend 5 minutes with them every day so you have to let them fend for themselves. And these are the people who kind of have the best time. The Homegame thing is good. I've pretty much organised all the different bits of it, the booking of bands, scheduling but a lot of the onus is on the bands to be there on time, set up and go and there's been a bunch of things happening where me and Kenny haven't been there and the band have just gone on and played. If you were at any other festival, people would think “this is really rude! Why aren't we being told when to go on?” but because it's Fence bands they know we're off doing stuff. I email them beforehand to let them know that if we're not there then please just go on and do your thing, set up your own sound if you need to. We're going to make it bigger next year...”

I was going to ask that, whether it was going to become bigger? There's a lot of interest, tickets sell out really quickly and it is becoming a really big deal to play there and attend it.

JL - “There is a lot of pressure to make it a really big thing. Kenny's managers are big managers, proper mainstream big and they've got this thing that we should make it a 10,000 capacity festival. We were like “well, we're not going to do that” but at the same time we would like to make it a bit bigger, it feels shit for all the people who don't manage to get tickets because you know that those people who want to have tickets will really fit in. Festivals only get shit when they really have to push on individual names, they have to drag all that kind of stuff in and maybe Homegame will get to that stage. I don't think it has to but at the moment we've already got some names for next year which are really big and we're really excited about but we don't want to announce them. If we announce them, we'd have 10,000 people wanting to get tickets and we don't want to do that.”

KA - “It's back to getting the wrong type of people.”

JL - “Exactly. You want to have a crowd there that feels special because they're seeing this act. I am really excited about the next Homegame. We're going to sell as many tickets as we can to folk that want to be there through the Fence website and we'll cap it at a certain level, we might announce 1 or 2 acts afterwards. We're going to look at what we can do in that time, look at what we can fill up without making it shit! Without making it just like any other festival.”

KA - “That Homegame just passed was kind of like an exam in a way.”

JL - “It's the one thing on Fence where everyone knows they have to get a ticket early. It's the same case this time, there'll be a privilege ticket upfront, if you're one of the first 500 you'll get a special thing. We just want to keep that sort of thing in there, “I was one of the first 500 so I got a 7 inch”, that's why I do this thing at the Caves where you get a 7 inch. Hopefully it'll get to the stage where you can't buy that thing afterwards, you can only get it at that gig. That's what we want to do with this Homegame, create an excitement for the real hardcore and if other people want to come and they're excited then great.”

KA - “And it's leaving it loose enough where we can put in these random things, every year there's this random thing and we allow that to happen and we encourage it. If you go to the type of festival that's so tight where every slot is filled, well what was great last year was that there was empty slots. People couldn't turn up or didn't turn up – one of the highlights was that Three Craws set which only came about because Lone Pigeon didn't want to play after all. I'm sure he would have played a blinder but the thing about Homegame is that people always zone in on the things that have been shoehorned in there, like us playing in The Ship. People expect an after-hours thing at Homegame, everyone's twittering about “what are they going to do?” and that's brilliant.”

JL - “It's catering for an audience that are total Fence fans and real music fans and are excited about new things happening and don't yearn for the old days and it being better in the old days, people who are excited about what's coming next.”

KA - “We did have people at that Homegame who had basically moaned at every Homegame since the first one – not as good, not as good, not as good, then at that one just went, “actually, pretty good.”

JL - “I think this year as well with there being less people and it being more exciting, trying to instil that feeling. At the moment right, I'm getting these phone calls while we're speaking from this guy from The Skinny and Drowned In Sound about this interview I was meant to have with them this evening. Well for me it's more important to do an interview like this for a zine that's going to be passionate about music, generating more excitement about something within their small little thing.”

Cool, thank you sir. Just to finish up then. How excited are you about the future of Fence Records and who from the label do you tip for success?

KA - “I think The Pictish Trail!”

JL - “Sickeningly enough, I think Rozi Plain. We've got this album coming out in October, and I'm doing a tour with her in September, it is absolutely stunning. She's this girl from Bristol who sent us this thing last year and it was the most lo-fi thing you've ever heard and we were like “look, no-one's going to buy this. We like it, the song's are great but there's potential in this record and the songs are big enough to go for it a little bit more and add these other things.” She went back and recorded stuff in Fife, recorded stuff in Bristol and has come up with this album that to listen to is an absolute joy. There's so much going on there but it's sparse at the same time, she doesn't over egg the thing. Every time I listen to that record, and I've listened to it twice every day for the last 5 months or something, I always get something new from it. I think she's absolutely amazing and has that thing the first Beth Orton record had when it came out, everything that was great about that and holds promise for all the ones after it. Her voice is amazing, her playing's great, her lyrics are really sparse, there's hardly anything to the construct of the songs but they hold it together. I've done some press on it in this past couple of weeks and we've already had some feedback from people like BBC 6 and Word magazine, the sort of medium-level media things, they're not Mojo or Uncut or Radio 2, the champions of new music and they're really into it. We know this record's hopefully over the course of a year will get an audience. That's the big thing for me, but we're also working on a Fence Collective record.”

KA - “It's still in our heads!”

JL - “It's still in our heads but we have a pile of songs and it's hopefully going to happen over the next 3 or 4 months and make an actual Fence Collective album and not just a compilation.”

KA - “We've also got The Red Well in the studio and hopefully we'll get that by Homegame.”

JL - “They might be gigging that by the end of this year so we'll hopefully release it by February/March next year. There's a few things that are coming in. There's a band called Love Stop Repeat that I really like.”

KA - “I got an amazing demo sent through by Animal Magic Tricks. Check them out on their Myspace, it's this lo-fi, hard to describe, sounds old, like 1940s. I dunno, it's just bonkers! We've got HMS Ginafore.”

JL - “Kenny and Jenny have done a record together, we're putting it out in November. That is amazing. I'd forgotten about that actually!”

KA - “It's because it's already in there, it's already a classic!”

Well, it sounds like the future's bright, the future's Fence! I can't tell you how much of a joy it was to speak to 2 people who care so much about what they do and about the music they're putting out, whether it's their own or other people's. As they said, it's a rare thing for those running a label to be such music fans, and just downright good people. They even gave me a lift to Johnny's gig at the other end of Princes Street, which they were running late for because this interview went on beyond the time I thought it would. You could do worse than have these 2 on your side and I wish them all the success. They bloody well deserve it.