great song with a terrific bassline, Baby Strange is the title of a track from T-Rex’s 1972 album The Slider, and it’s now also the name of a three-piece from Glasgow who don’t sound Bolan-esque at all. They’re much more in the vein of those bands who have tended to peddle the idea that they are in touch with rock’s dark, druggy side.
They’re punk with a dash of grunge and their songs veer between drones and dirges. They wear their art on their sleeve, with their ideas and their worldview made pretty plain. And so just in case you were wondering where they were coming from, their last single was called Pure Evil and they’ve got another called Mess. Closer inspection reveals their dark vision is a little unfocused. Pure Evil finds the singer complaining that he is “tired of my generation” and comes with a video featuring E’d-up acid casualties raving circa 1990 that suggests they’re having a go at vacant pleasure-seekers and calling for a new revolution to counter this era’s apolitical hedonists. When asked about the song, the singer does indeed admit, “I’m just not very happy with the way things are around me”, and yet he says of the video, “We’re all huge fans of electronic music and we love everything that comes with it.”
Bullies, bastards and bullshitters beware, Glasgow’s Honeyblood have cooked up 40 minutes of sonic chemical castration and they’re coming for every lover and loser that’s ever fucked them over.It’s been a rather dramatic year for our favourite all-female Scottish two-piece, they’ve been on something of a meteoric rise to fame ever since signing to Fat Cat Records and releasing their self titled debut album. Just when things seemed to be going almost too well, half the band, in the form of drummer Shona McVicar, left mid-way through a tour, so full credit then to singing guitarist Stina, who not only decided to carry on the band but had a new drummer up and running just a matter of days later, evidence of the old cliché, the show must go on!
And thank heavens for that, because that debut was unquestionably one of the most intriguing albums of the year. A stunning middle ground of beautifully harmonious vocals and angry barbed lyrics, of gorgeous melodies and crushing walls of noise. They recalled the honey dripped harmonies of 60’s girl bands, and the raw power of grunge. The bands name Honeyblood really couldn’t be more apt.
From the playground chanting of Super Rat, to the Idlewild recalling opening track Fall Forever, and the almost country-grunge of Bud (a song that’s much more appealing than country-grunge makes it sound!) they created a varied and excellent debut album, one that surely surpassed what even their most ardent fan could have imagined.
Honeyblood and their eponymous, debut LP. Recorded at legendary producer Peter Katis Tarquin Studios (The National, Interpol) in just ten days last November, ”Honeyblood” is an accomplished and delightfully fierce record. “Peter was the perfect match for us,” singer/guitarist Stina Tweeddale said of the recording. “He perfectly managed to capture our live performance in the studio.” From the urgent guitar and dive-bomb drums of opener ”Fall Forever”, the album twists through the gutsy punk of ”Killer Bangs”, to reveal discordant anthems like ”SuperRat”. It has pared down alt pop gems in the likes of ”Biro” and ”No Spare Key”, but also more country/folk influenced moments like, ”(I”d Rather Be) Anywhere But Here”, ”Braid Burn Valley” and ”Bud”. The band started from humble DIY beginnings, organising their own guerrilla show at The Old Hairdressers in Glasgow to commemorate the release of a raucous two-track cassette entitled, ”Thrift Shop'”. Honeyblood quickly ingrained themselves into the bustling Glaswegian scene, fast becoming one of its most talked-about names and going on to play festivals everywhere from The Great Escape to their native T In The Park. But with their full-length debut ready to go, big name supports, and world tours locked, 2014 certainly looks to be the year with Honeyblood”s name written all over it.
New Year Memorial. Members include There Will Be Fireworks singer Nicky McManus and Iain Thomson LightGuides, ex-lions.chase.tigers. Noëlle sounds perfect.
Glasgow six-piece The Phantom Band have announced plans to release a new album, ‘Fears Trending’, just a few months on from 2014’s ‘Strange Friend’.
Out 26th January on Chemikal Underground, the new full-length acts as a companion piece to this year’s full-length. Following four years of near-silence after 2010, turns out the band have hit a prolific streak.
Guitarist Duncan Marquiss calls the new LP “the evil twin of ‘Strange Friend’ – they’re stranger friends, oddball vestiges and hybrids.”
Leading the record is ‘Tender Castle’, a track that flips any notions that ‘Fears Trending’ might be a last-minute add on to ‘Strange Friend’. Chugging out crystallised guitar parts alongside skittering percussion and odd, convention-dodging structures, it’s The Phantom Band all over, invention running the show.
Even so, few acts have been quite as tinny and muddy-sounding as the debut release, issued on cassette last year, by this Glasgow duo Honeyblood’s Thrift Shop EP, it will come as no surprise when you hear it, was, according to the info on their Bandcamp, “recorded in a bathroom with a 4-track tape-deck” in January 2012. “Recorded in a bathroom deep underground with a 4-track tape-deck smothered in cotton wool.” The lead track, No Spare Key, sounds like Taylor Swift’s We’re Never Getting Back Together performed by two Scottish goth-girls doing an impression of the Jesus and Mary Chain in a tomb, Since that time the band have changed drummer released their first album and toured all over the world.
Fatherson are a four piece band based in Glasgow and formed in Kilmarnock. They have been making waves in the Scottish music… scene following a string of supports with bands such as Frightened Rabbit, Panic! at the Disco, Feeder, Twin Atlantic and Idlewild. Fatherson have released two singles. “Hometown”, through King Tuts Recordings, showcases the band’s ability to write anthemic indie songs that will be running around your head for weeks to come. 2012 saw the release of “First Born”, strengthening the band’s reputation & helping to build a fan base all over the country.
Graeme Black met Pete MacDonald while they were working in a library in Glasgow in 2004. After subsequently bumping into each other at various gigs they got talking about music, enthusing about Lambchop and Clem Snide and comparing favourite Smiths songs. Considering this to be a pretty good sign, they tried playing some songs together in Graeme’s kitchen and, when this wasn’t a complete disaster,… decided to call themselves The State Broadcasters.
After some early formative gigs with Graeme on guitar and vocals and Pete on piano and trombone, they asked Pete’s brother Fergus to join in to fill out the sound a little and play all the extra guitar counter-melodies they felt would suit Graeme’s songs. Fergus and Pete had spent much of their teenage years playing Wilco and Josh Rouse songs together in their living room, so the Broadcasters knew he would fit perfectly into their quiet “no-guitar-solos” musical ethic. The State Broadcaster’s first full-length release ‘The Ship and the Iceberg’ arrived in March 2009 on Electric Honey to much acclaim including 4 star reviews in Uncut Magazine described as a harmony soaked gem, with hope and beauty and there can be few whose lives would not be enriched by a little more hope and beauty this typifies the State Broadcasters sound
Nieves are Glasgow based Folk Rock duo Brendan Dafters (vocals/guitar) and Herre de Leur (piano).a ‘Straight Line’ and ‘Winter’ are releases from our debut EP coming soon.
Glasgow band “Honeyblood” taken from the self titled excellent album “Honeyblood” have played a lot of shows this year with original drummer Shona McVicar suprisingly departing the band before the start of the last tour, now replaced by Car Myers and with a co-headline slot on the next NME New Breed tour with Birmingham band Superfood and a new video for the song “Choker” a song based on Angela Carter short story “The Bloody Chamber”.
Turning plates are a bunch of musicians from Glasgow some classically trained orchestral professionals and some members of jazz and rock musicians that all got together wanting a different sound with new instrumentation beautifully chaotic then soulfully delicate with their song “Tin Man” from 2011 winning awards for best production to the EP “Escapism” being among the top 50 albums of the year in the Herald
The Fat Angel Sings 