Another Scottish Saturday. My favourite day of the week in my favourite country/adopted homeland. Why not share some more thoughts with the general public about scottish indie?!

Is there something peculiarly scottish about indie music? There seems to be a sort of idea that pinpoints to things perhaps having a certain sort of aesthetic ‘Heartfelt/shambolic/twee/quiet-loud-quiet-VERYBLOODYLOUDLYYARADGE-(nowquitesoftlyeractually)’…and there are so man

y bands who might come into this category. There have been as many debates about what actually constitutes ‘indie’ as to where and when, exactly punk rock started (I think we really might just have to accept that it was about 1965 in the US and 1975 in the UK. It’s like discussing Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers album; there is never going to be a definitive answer).

I’ve mentioned many bands before on these pages – Sons and Daughters, Arab Strap, Franz Ferdinand have had mentions on this page, and I should get round to covering so many, many more (I don’t know whether I’m teaching people to suck eggs when I write this stuff, but if there’s someone else who hasn’t heard it, and 99 who have, I guess I may have added something to someone’s life. I like to think so, anyway).

Anyway, today’s Scottish band of choice are Teenage Fanclub. I could tell their story – but it’s actually done pretty well here at their own website.
I first heard them in 1992, when I bought Bandwagonesque (still my favourite fanclub) album. There was just something so cool about them, I didn’t understand ‘slacker’ in those days (Rutland was in a time warp, it was lucky the album slipped through), and I hadn’t heard many of the references points. But when an album starts off with feedback and by the second verse they’re singing ‘She don;t do drugs but she does the pill…’ Well. Another parent-worrying line that hadn’t been heard since, ooh, my Mum bought me Nevermind The Bollocks a year or so previously. I hadn’t heard Dinosaur Jr or even heard of Big Star, but they helped lead me to them. They were loved by Kurt Cobain, who also loved many of the Scottish inide scene’s finest, and Oasis and Travis must have been taking note too (Check Travis’ ‘All I Wanna Do Is Rock’ single from 1997. Pure fanclub). As the years went by, and the band issued more albums, they were compared more to Neil Young, but they still remain just as west-coast as ever (Scotland as much as US). Everytime I hear Grand Prix (my second favourite fanclub album), I remember the year I left school, 1995, when the singles Mellow Doubt and Sparky’s Dream made it into the Top 40. I remember singing along in my friend Duncan’s car as we headed off to Leicester to buy hair dye for the Leavers’ event (Duncan was still being called pink hair at Gastonbury a month later), and the world felt full of possibilities. It still does, but like most 29 year olds, I’m wiser and mellower than was at 18, but slightly more cynical and realistic. It’s always a risk taking bands for granted, but I’m glad they’re still here. Last year I saw them twice, h

eadlining at Edinburgh’s Liquid Rooms and then on a bill with Idlewild and the Pixies. They made SO much sense there, and I hope they always will.

May I suggest you try this for starters, if you have never heard the band:

Teenage Fanclub -‘What You Do To Me.’ mp3 from 1991’s Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub -‘It’s All In My Mind.’mp3 from last year’s Man Made

If you like like what you hear, try Insound or Epitonic for more legal mp3s.

Also on their website, they have also put up some mp3s of work they have done – not necessarily hits -but cool stuff none the less.

Go here to buy Teenage Fanclub

Hello again people. The end of another week, with it’s usual mixture of up and d

own, but mostly up, in music, education and life

.

I was extremely flattered earlier this week to discover that Tony at Highway Five had written a very complimentary review of 17 seconds on his blog.
To quote:
” Have been trawling through the blog sphere and found this wonderful music blog.
Written with passion, style and elan its a great place to go a read someone writting well about music that moves them.

A Scotmans living in Edinburgh, Ed has a fine way with words and great taste in music. There are reviews of new releases, video links and other gems awaiting you.”

Apart from the fact that I am only an honourary Scotsman, I am very flattered and touched by this. (You reading this, Mum?!) please check out his blog.

Another blog I must direct you to is The Merry Muses of Caledonia, where the blogger lists his all-time favourite Scottish singles. As with many of these sort of lists, I agree with the inclusion of many, even if mine might rank slightly differently. Do go check it out.

Added to which, given that I do not spend my entire time at my computer listening to music (whatever my girlfriend may think), I have also been getting on with teaching. I showed my head of department at school the

You Tube site, which as he’s a bit technophobic (his own description), he hadn’t come across. Anyway, we had been brainstorming ideas for teaching Impermanence in Buddhism, amongst other things. He had heard the song for hurt by Johnny Cash but not seen the video. It remains one of the most powerful videos ever seen. At the end of it, there was silence in the classroom before he eventually managed to open his mouth. I’m still trying to build up the courage to show this, showing as it does, Cash and his wife June Carter, close to death. She died a few months before he did; someone once said that ‘She’d gone to get the house ready for him.’ That’s possibly one of the saddest but most loving things I can think of.

Hurt

Buy Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around on Amazon (this version includes the video)

‘Listen ah know it must sound absurd
But I can hear the most melancholy sound ah ever heard!’
sang Nick Cave on the title track of his debut solo alhum From Her To Eternity in 1984. I’ve no idea whether or not he’s a fan, but the most melancholy sound I have ever heard is played out below in these two videos by Abba.

Yes, Abba. 1974 Eurovision winners, camp pop (yes, that’s POP, as opposed to indie, alternative, punk, whatevah) makers, famed for such upbeat perkiness have actually recorded some of the saddest, but most wonderful heartbreaking music ever heard.

In his utterly fanastic This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles since Punk and Disco, Garry Mulholland outlines an interesting theory: that Abba and Joy Division seem to have a fair bit in common, lyrically at least. Alright, so Ian Curtis didn’t live long enough, alas, to make ‘divorce pop’ (though having read Deborah Curtis’ Touching From a D

istance we can but speculate what the third Joy Division album would have been like). He points out that the first line of ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’ is:
‘No more carefree laughter/silence ever after.’ Put this after Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, he says, and you wouldn’t miss a beat.

For me, even as a Cure and Joy Divison fan, The Winner Takes It All is simply the saddest song ever recorded. The point at which Agnetha Faltskog sings ‘But tell me, does she kiss, like I used to kiss you? Does it feel the same, when she calls your name?’ …If this does not make your heart melt, sorry, I don’t want to know you. I mean it. You lack the basic emotional makeup that should allow you to exist in this world.

ABBA- Winner Takes It All

This next track was Abba’s final song before they pretty much disintegrated (they never formally split, just stopped working together). It only reached no.32 in the charts at the time, but it’s my favourite Abba song after The Winner Takes It All (yes, even better than Dancing Queen). The video is almost entirely Agnetha (ironically, given that it’s Frida who’s singing, according to several sources I have checked). The opening ‘I must have left my house at

eight because I always do’ could conceivably be delivered by Ian Curtis, just as he could have done an amazing version of The Winner Takes It All. Funnily enough, although it’s the girls who sing these tracks, it was the blokes who wrote the words, as not even slightly subtle digs at their former wives (even the mere idea of two former couples having to work together must be uncomfortable. Just ask Fleetwood Mac). Watch this video, and then the two Joy Division videos down the blog for Love Will Tear Us Apart and Atmosphere and then decide if you really think Mr. Mulholland’s theory is so strange.
There really was something unique about Abba. After all

, you don’t think Kurt Cobain and John Peel bestowed their affections on just anyone, do you?

The day before you came

Buy Abba on Amazon

Record Review: Yo La Tengo ‘I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Be

at Your Ass.’

Released September 11, 2006 (Matador (UK))

Just as you shouldn’t necessarily judge books from their covers, so it’s possibly advisable not to judge records from their titles, regardless of how familiar you might, or might not be with their work. Yo La Tengo’s follow up to 2003’s Summer Sun is probably not the aggressive record that you might expect.

It certainly fits in with their back catalogue, and on first hearing is similar to Summer Sun in the sense

that so many of the tracks are pleasantly gentle and comforting. That is, in the same sense that a record like Jim O’Rourke’s Eureka, or Sigur Ros’s Agaetis Byrjun are comforting, they are records that you can lose yourself in, but you know that they come from a proudly leftfield tradition in a way that ‘Easy Listening’ or MOR doesn’t.

There are some definitely rockier moments on the album, the album’s two epic bookends ‘Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind’ and ‘The Story Of Yo la Tengo’ and ‘Watch Out For Me Ronnie’ are excellent examples of this side of Yo La Tengo. But there are horns throughout much of the record, adding a hint of soul rather

than saturating it. ‘Sometimes I Don’t Get You’ is a waltz, and ‘Daphnia’ one of the best tracks, is like Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th remixed by Mogwai.

It’s not Yo La Tengo’s best album – my money’s still on I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One – but there’s a seam through this album, even allowing for the shere diversity of influeneces running through it, that makes it consistent, enjoyable

, and I suspect, rewarding listen.

7.5/10

Either get yourself over to Amazon or visit your friendly local independent retailer this Monday.

To hear tracks from this album and other Yo La Tengo albums go here

I’ve got to be honest, I’m starting to worry slightly. Since I started this blog about two months ago, at least three of the bands in the right-hand column have split up. First there was Death From Above 1979. Then Hope Of The States called it a day. And now Arab Strap have decided that, ten years since ‘The First Big Weekend’ appeared that they will finish.

It’s ami

cable enough and you can read all about it here on the Chemikal underground website. It just seems a sad, sad day for music, especially for my beloved scottish indie scene but uncharacteristically, the press release says it more eloquently than I could.

The band leave behind a fabulous back catalogue; check it out at the band’s own

website, and on insound. They were a truly unique band, who wrote about life honestly, and recognised that sometimes being honest may not always be easy, or easy to listen to. ‘I work in a shit bar…’ from ‘I

work in a saloon’ or the immortal ‘It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen. but you’d no idea where that cock has been’ has passed into folklore, from the opening track on 1998’s Philophobia, Packs Of three. Peurile? Only in the same way that some people might accuse Trainspotting of being pro-heroin; that you’re not lokking at the whole picture and just dealing with the first bit you encounter. Personally, the most resonant lines for me are from ‘Here we go’, again from Philophobia:

” How am I supposed to walk you home, when you’re at least fifty feet ahead?’

Buy Arab Strap on Amazon. I recomme

nd starting with eiether The Last Romance or The Week Never Starts Around Here.

Thanks for the music and musing, guys…

There are certain bands whose importance cannot be understated. I could probably spend all night making a list of how they

changed things, but let us just say…Without Joy Division, bands like U2 and The Cure would have sounded radically different, the entire ‘goth’ movement would have been hugely unlike what it is (Ian Curtis was the inspiration for The Crow), the ‘indie’ scene would have been radically, utterly different (and worse) and I’d have to have to have a different all time song instead of Atmosphere. There are possibly people who have never heard these songs (it’s that gap in your life) so watch both of these then go and buy all the stuff you can on Amazon, if you don’t buy second hand vinyl (and shame on you). In all seriousness, if I had to grab one record out of my collection if the flat was on fire, it would be the 12″ of Atmosphere/She’s Lost Control (yes, I could probably buy it on a co

mpilation CD, but if you make remarks like that, you’re not quite getting it, are you? Hmm?)Yes, Joy Division became New Order after Ian Curtis’ suicide – but let us not focus on this. Instead, these two songs will change your world. The only song in the world that is more heartbreaking than Love will tear us apart is The Winner Takes It all by Abba – but that’s a post for another time…

Joy Division Atmosphere

Joy Division – Love will tear us apart

Do yourself a favour and go and buy Joy Division albums

Every so often, you hear something that is just the equivalent of a putting your fingers in the plug socket…er, only in a pleasurable way, that is. A few years ago, on hearing the Rapture’s House Of Jealous Lovers

12″ I knew I would not be the same agai

n.I have been trying to post on Norwegian band 120 days for a while, and finally I have! One of the things that held me up was as I tried to find out what was available usually pointed me in the direction of the place where (I am assuming) they took their name from, the Marquis de Sade’s The Last 120 Days of So

dom. I have also struggled to find a useable photo. I haven’t read the book, but I did track the band down to their myspace page and also to Vice Records, where the following mp3 comes from:

120 Days -‘Come Out(Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone).’ mp3

Also go to 120 days on myspace where there are two other tracks to stream, So This Is Suicide and Sedated Times. These tracks are less krautrocky but still have something amazing.

The myspace seems to be their only website, but if i get any more information I will post it here. Come Out is one of the most amazing tracks I have heard so far this year. As far as I can tell, the album will be out in October in the US and Norway, but there is no listing for it on amazon at th

e moment.

Another band who are making my ears tingle app

reciatively..hand on, cat, off my shoulders when i’

m trying to

type…er, make me want to know more are London band Scanners:. They remind me of the Duke Spirit, Life without Buildings and THe Pretenders. See what you think…

Scanners -‘Lowlife.’ mp3

Buy their album Violence Is Golden

OK so it’s my personal opinion, but there’s something about the ‘Cloudbusting’ video that just hits the s

pot. The second single from Kate Bush’s ‘The Hounds Of Love’ LP, this is just something special.

Donald Sutherland (he of Don’t L

ook No

w and Pride and prejudi

ce fame, as well as being Keifer Suthe

rland’s Dad) stars as Wilhelm Reic

h, and Kate stars as his (on-screen) son Peter. Considering the video is now over twenty years old it still packs a punc

h. Oh, and the songs pretty damn amazing as well.

Cloudbusting

Pretty cool, huh?

Buy The Hounds O

f Love

I sat in bed this morning, faced with two dilemmas; what to post about, and what to get my brother for his birthday (I have asked several times; he doesn’t know).

Anyway, the focus of the post is About A Boy: Book, Film and Soundtrack.

Like a lot of people, I read About A Boy when it came out. While High Fidelity presses the right bu

ttons in terms of how a lot of blokes feel about music, and indeed, the male psyche (I know a lot of women who are passionate about music too, it’s just that the book managed to link both). About A Boy the book manages to deal with the male psyche with regards to the issue of settling down, and also (something that I see a fair bit of as a teacher) – Is it sometimes necessary to learn how to follow the crowd, at least a little bit, in order to fit in at school? Answer: Actually, sadly, YES. The book is brilliant and the film didn’t disapppoint either. Nice to see Hugh Grant doing something other than just playing Hugh Grant.

And the soundtrack…strange to think this was only Damon Gough’s second solo album. Coming between The Hour Of Bewilderbeast and Have You Fed the Fish? it’s actually my favourite Badly Drawn Boy LP. And the reason why I am posting it for our kid’s birthday is that I remember the pair of us dancing around his flat to this song, much to the delight/terror of his flatmates. Happy Birthday our kid!

Badly Drawn Boy -‘Something to talk about.’mp3

Buy About A Boy O.S.T

Buy About A Boy DVD

Buy About A Boy by Nick Hornby

Buy DVD, CD and book

…and if the Badly Drawn Boy song has got you wanting more, try this, from his debut LP ‘The Hou

r of Bewilderbeast.’

Badly Drawn Boy -‘Once around The Block.’ mp3

Buy The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Felt like posting some cover versions – but decided that would I would post the videos!

The first time I ever saw The Futureheads was April 2004. They were playing in edinburgh at the Venue (now gone, no doubt to be turned into executive flats that no-one I know can possibly affprd. Grrr). I went with my brother, and the gig was pretty poorly attended. Shame, because they played an absolute blinder, as far as we were concerned. I remember watching a grin break over my brother’s face as it started to dawn on him what the song was. A year later, it was a top ten hit. Apparently Kate Bush loves it, and rang to tell the band this. Stop being so goddamn precious.

The Futureheads – Hounds of Love

Buy The Futureheads

I first heard this next song in 1996, on a homemade compilation tape I had borrowed. I loved the Cocteau Twins and this is one of Liz Fraser’s best ever vocal performances. A while later, at Kensington Market in London (another place that has gine! Is nothing sacred?) I found the album this comes from, This Mortal Coil’s It’ll End In Tears. On vinyl, natch. The Gods were smiling. Tim Buckley’s original version should also be tracked down. (yes, he was Jeff’s Dad. Come on, keep up).

Song to the Siren

Buy It’ll End In Tears

Finally, a discussion about great cover versions when I worked in a record shop led to me hearing about this track. This cover, which I did post as an mp3 in an earlier, er, post truly defines why great covers are great covers. It reinvents the song, and remains just as heartbreaking as the original. One day in Germany I spent an entire afternoon trying to find this without success, and ended up getting the Rough Trade Shops Electronic 01 compilation instead which has it. I have no idea what Morrissey makes of this, but if you don’t have The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths’ third and greatest album, you are letting yourself and the whole class down.

Schneider TM – The Light 3000

Buy the 6 Peace EP