Of all the trumpet-blowing adjectives marketing departments choose to bestow upon their latest products, sorry, bands, ‘ambitious’ has to be the most regurgitated. Yet, ironically, ambition’s quite often the one trait missing from the armoury of these media-savvy hipsters.

Aye, the eager young scamps crave a slurp from the garish chalice of celebrity, but can churning out ten-a-penny indie-poppery truly be classed as trophy craving intent? Simply carrying a tune is, surely, not enough when it comes to scaling the music industry’s unforgiving, oxygenless peaks; there has to be, no, there needs to be something so much more.

Play: Late In The City

With their sugar-pop ditties and effervescent canters, Cancel the Astronauts [CtA], thankfully, provide the perfect antidote to such contradictory aggrandising: “I think we can one day make over £100 from a gig and sell more than 4 CDs at once,” decrees band vanguard Matthew Riley. “So far the most we have made is £93 in one go and the most CDs we have sold is three. So I will go with that. Step by step, little by little and that’s all - as Ocean Colour Scene once sang.”

Riley’s lack of bravado belies CtA’s sweet melodic swoon. Citing “pasty white-boy guitar pop” like wallowing miserablists The Smiths and The Cure as influences, the Edinburgh quintet have been spray-painting the city’s venues with luscious sound swathes for the last six months.

Despite this spring-chicken exterior, CtA are eager to prove they’re no fledgling greenhorns: “I have been writing songs for 10 years ever since I first picked up a guitar and it seemed natural to eventually play them to people,” explains Riley. “We all have a passion for music and we are creative people… We all enjoy the thrill of playing live. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my time and it’s the same for the others too. “

CtA’s debut EP, the magnificently titled ‘I Am The President of Your Fanclub (And Last Night I Followed You Home)’, is blushed with heavenly drifts of synth and guitar that stretch out into a dreamlike blur of gorgeous retrograde-pop. It’s a sound aimed entirely skywards; bound for a destination that far outruns man’s cosmonautic capacity – not that you’d know by the name, mind.

“We have no actual anti-space agenda, and given the chance I think we would all like to be astronauts - provided we’d get to fight space-aliens and blow up near-earth asteroids,” says Riley. “I think the name was the least offensive we had. We thought we’d keep it until we thought of something better, and now it’s too late change. We have since thought of lots of things better.”

Not a band to rest on its laurels, CtA has one foot on the musical ladder and is hellbent on climbing every rung. As Riley puts it: “I don’t write songs in a vacuum, and I think my influences are pretty clear. We definitely fit in to a specific musical genre, and I’m not trying to be original, just to be good!”

Now that’s ambition.

Play: Love Somebody

Words: Billy Hamilton

Cancel the Astronauts: stellar talents or a faulty take-off? Discuss…

Play: Electric

It’s a brave soul who goes against the grain and speaks out against the indie-centric press coverage of Scotland’s music scene, but Iain Bethel, lead singer and bassist of Glaswegian four-piece post-hardcore outfit The Whisky Works, is not a man to mince words.

“I think if you dig deep, there’s a lot of great stuff going on in the Scottish music scene,” he says. “It’s become a lot better in the last few years, it has gone from being very formulaic to a lot more dynamic. Personally, I think Scotland’s music scene could do a lot better from promoting less singer-songwriter types, I really don’t think we need any more of them!”

Fighting words, perhaps, but his broadside will get many nods of agreement from those who have seen the alternative scene in Glasgow go stratospheric over the last couple of years while the taste-makers have looked on, oblivious. Then again, one would expect nothing less than polemics from a band quietly confident that they can “tear a new one in the UK music scene” with their upcoming mini-album Deficit Attention Program, due for release in August, and a summer tour which will see them travel the length of Britain from Elgin to Somerset.

Listening to tracks from the forthcoming EP, it’s easy to believe The Whisky Works can do just that. Driving rock songs like ‘Electric’ are deceptively melodic, while the rhythm section is rock solid, laying down a tailor-made base for Bethel’s impressive vocals.

The band draws influences from post-hardcore staples like At The Drive-In, Cave In and Rival Schools, as well as more eclectic acts like the late, great Aereogramme. But despite such a firm sonic grounding in the genre heavyweights, Bethel is adamant The Whisky Works’ sound, and especially their live show, has its own character.

“We thrive on creating a great sense of energy both through our recordings and our live show, which we feel is something a lot of bands overlook,” he enthuses. “Without trying to sound clichéd, what we believe we are doing is our own thing, we are not imitating anyone or trying to sound like our favourite bands, we just do what feels natural for the four of us.”

The Whisky Works have been lucky enough to have had Iain Cook - of aforementioned Glasgow post-rock demigods Aereogramme - behind the desk for the recording of Deficit Attention Program. The band can’t speak highly enough of Cook and believe his input was invaluable in the creation of the mini-album. Bethel explains; “Working with Iain Cook has been incredible! I honestly don’t think you could ever meet a nicer man. Aside from the fact he is really great at what he does, he also gave us a large amount of control over the mix.”

So where next for The Whisky Works? Their upcoming tour and EP will likely keep them busy for some time but, looking ahead, the band sees the next 12 months as a real make-or-break period. The guys hope to build on their existing fanbase, establish themselves as a nationwide presence and make sure their new record gets the respect and recognition it deserves.

Whether that will be enough to make those looking for the next breakout indie act sit up and pay attention to the post-hardcore scene remains to be seen, but on the strength of Deficit Attention Program, we wouldn’t bet against it.

Like what you hear? Catch The Whisky Works live at the following dates:

18 Jul: The Orange Box, Yeovil
19 Jul: Nikhs Bar, Newcastle
20 Jul: Venue TBA, Brighton
26 Jul: The Tunnels, Aberdeen
27 Jul: The Loft, Elgin
28 Jul: Balcony Bar, Dundee
30 Jul: Captains Rest, Glasgow (mini album launch)
1 Aug: The Venue, Dumfries

Play: Monster! Monster!

Words: Jodi Mullen

Will you be raising a glass for The Whisky Works? Let us know below…

There Will Be Fireworks: It’s not so much a name as a statement of intent.

The Glaswegian quartet - consisting of Nicholas McManus (above), Gibran Farrah, David Madden and Adam Ketterer - coil shimmering melodies around escalating post-rock structures to create music that mortar strikes your very core.

Somehow unsigned, the band release their self-produced debut LP today (1 July). And before the eponymously-titled record hurtles into the public sphere like an atomic bomb, UtR caught up with frontman Nicholas McManus to get the track-by-track lowdown on this astonishing album.

[The band were kind enough to allow us more or less free reign with the MP3s we chose to include, but we think it's only fair that some of the album is kept aside for those of you who go out and buy it.]

1. Colombian Fireworks

The spoken word part was written and performed by Kevin MacNeil, the author of The Stornoway Way. He came to one of our gigs, and I asked if he fancied doing us a wee turn a la Edwin Morgan on Idlewild’s The Remote Part. Happily, he agreed and wrote the piece for the album, recording it on Shetland with his brother and sending the file to us.

2. So The Story Goes
Just before this starts, you can hear Marshall – the sound engineer – say “just go for it”. We like leaving things like that in. It’s the first song in which our friend Karen Fishwick plays trumpet. The vocals were recorded with my mouth literally an inch from the condenser mic, so you can hear every little nuance. The idea with that was to make it sound intimate because, lyrically, the song is quite intimate. And quite sad.

3. Midfield Maestro

This was one of the first songs we recorded and is the oldest on the album. Writing it was a bit of a turning point for us. We stumbled upon how we sound now by simplifying everything to write this song, and discovered a poise that we hadn’t had before. The song is named in honour of this little figurine I used to have of Diego Maradona. I got it in Asda when I was six or seven and used to put it on top of my amp but I left it in some smelly practice room and haven’t seen him for over a year. Gutted.

4. Guising

This is a quiet wee vignette-type-thing. Again, recorded with really close mics so you can hear every nuance and the, vaguely disgusting, noise of my mouth moving. The guitar and vocals were done live at the top of a stairwell. The weird noises are that of an ebow on an acoustic guitar, using a slide. It’s quite an innocent song in a way; really just a couple of random memories stuck together. Someone described it as ‘knowingly naïve’ which is probably about right.

5. Off With Their Heads

This segues straight in from Guising. We were really keen to have an album that flowed as much as possible – a complete work rather than a collection of songs – and a lot of the time there are no gaps between songs. This is probably the heaviest song overall. I think we wrote this song the night before we recorded it. Probably not a great idea but it worked out OK.

6. I Like The Lights
This was the last song we recorded. Karen sings in it. We’ve got brass, strings, two drum parts and all sorts in it. It’s basically about when I was in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow at night time with someone. I really do like the lights there – they’re pretty. It’s a very short song so there isn’t much to say about it except that it took me ages to get the piano right in the bit where everything kicks in because I have useless stubby sausage fingers.

7. A Kind of Furnace
This was the first primarily piano-led song we wrote. The spoken word part in the interlude is a passage from the Ian McEwan novel Enduring Love, spoken by Marshall the soundman using a really cool mic that looked like a walky talky. There’s a random accordion and organ progression at the end which we put in for a laugh because we found an accordion and thought it would be in some way wrong not to use it.

8. We Sleep Through The Bombs

After the rather sprawling nature of A Kind of Furnace, this is a welcome tune. The reverby guitar noise at the start was recorded by facing an amp into the hollow of a big piano. It probably doesn’t make much of a difference to how it sounds but we like to experiment with daft things like that and pretend we’re mad sonic pioneers like Phil Spector, but with better hair and less mental.

9. Headlights
Another piano led song. It’s quite striking, with quite a distinctive guitar line. The weird voices are Gibran singing wordlessly, with backwards reverb on. Basically, we recorded him singing gibberish, reversed the gibberish, put some hefty reverb on it, then put the gibberish back the right way round.

10. We Were A Roman Candle
Another vaguely angsty tune – I should really cheer up. I really loved recording the vocals because I got to scream like a maddy, which is always fun. A recording studio is the one place where you can shout and scream ‘til your heart is content and people actually say ‘well done, that was good’. After it, my vocal chords were torn to shreds and the next day I had a sexy husky voice. Sadly, it’s back to normal.

11. Says Aye

Probably the most optimistic song on the album. It’s about a kind of stupid wild optimism; a wide-eyed hope, but a good one. The little sample at the end is Edward R. Murrow; we found a random US Government infomercial from the 1950s about the threat of nuclear warfare that he had narrated. We couldn’t resist putting it in.

12. Foreign Thoughts

This is the poppiest moment on the album which is a bit paradoxical because of the weird instrumentation. David plays a non-bassy bass part, using a slide and a since-deceased delay pedal. Gibran used a really old, really cheap Yamaha keyboard played through a guitar amp. This is the one I’m most proud of lyrically – it’s basically a stream of consciousness but I like the scansion and the flow.

13. Joined Up Writing
Another optimistic song. At the end, when everything is fading out, I did a little raggedy acoustic bit, which is lyrically and melodically a throwback to Foreign Thoughts. It was intended as a not-very-subtle homage to the end of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel – I thought the way Jeff Mangum references back to Two Headed Boy at the album’s close was stunning and shamelessly pillaged the idea.

Words: Nicholas McManus (and Billy Hamilton)

The album launch is at Nice’n'Sleazy, Glasgow tonight (1 July), with support from Lions.Chase.Tigers and We Hung Your Leader.

You can buy the album online here.

Will there be fireworks? Discuss…

Last month the famously provocative former NME writer Steven ‘Swells’ Wells died aged 49 after a battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma disease. His passing has led many to comment on the present state of music journalism and lament its apparent lack of authority and credibility, as a legion of bloggers threaten to swipe away the mantle of influence.

For our second podcast we investigate the situation in depth, enlisting viewpoints from both sides of the journos vs bloggers divide.

Billy has spoken to Mike Diver, former Drowned in Sound reviewer-in-chief and now online editor at Clash Magazine, and Matthew Young, the passionate blogger behind the influential, Edinburgh-based Song by Toad. Their answers make for a fascinating dissection of the future of music writing.

What’s more, we have tracks by a fine array of UtR-tipped bands, including There Will Be Fireworks and Cancel the Astronauts, and we look forward to T in the Park with music from My Cousin I Bid You Farewell, Dead Boy Robotics and Tango in the Attic.

Enjoy, and let us know where you stand on the journo/blogger debate below…

Play: Podcast #2

Under the Radar podcast #2
(Right click and choose ‘Save Target As’ to save to your computer)

You can subscribe to the Under the Radar podcast at this link.

Running order:
01:20: There Will Be Fireworks - Foreign Thoughts
05:49: Cancel the Astronauts - Late in the City
10:34: Special report: music journalism v blogging (Mike Diver / Matthew Young)
20:18: Second Hand Marching Band - A Dance to Half Death
26:37: My Cousin I Bid You Farewell - The Contented Hearts
30:00: Dead Boy Robotics - We Drown Ourselves
32:59: Tango in the Attic - Jackanory

Words and Podcast: Billy Hamilton, Nick Mitchell

It's been a crazy week in music this week. The sad news about Michael Jackson has shocked everyone, but on a high note, the Glastonbury coverage has been great. Festival season has very much kicked in so I'm sure loads of you will be finding new bands that you love. We had a brilliant gig at The Mill Edinburgh last Thursday, so if you want to look fro some more new bands, I suggest you check out The Gillyflowers as soon as we get it uploaded. I am just listening to the audio tracks - Kirsten Adamson's voice is brilliant! I really like Hold Me Down just now.

Next week at The Mill Glasgow Franco Neon and The Apple Scruffs are taking over. It's looking like another busy one so get your tickets soon. We have done a deal with both Glasgow Met radio and TMS Radio who are both featuring Mill bands so if you want to check out what anyone coming up sounds like, go check those stations out.

The Debuts, who are playing next at The Mill Edinburgh, already have material on the site if you fancy getting an idea of what they are like in advance.  

We could sense the anticipation building in the blogosphere, but the wait is over. It’s time for part deux of our now regular (until the sheer inanity of it all hits us like a Tyson uppercut to the chin) Twitter round-up. This week: band news, recommendations and even a spot of film criticism.

Tango in the Attic have a hair-raising time in Stirling…
@TangointheAttic: Just back from Cape in Stirling - fun gig, the mics gave us all electric shocks! Ouch!”

Miss the Occupier set up Twitter account, fail to tweet…
@MisstheOccupier: “______________”

Come on John B McKenna! We’re not as bright as you…
@JohnBMcKenna: “Annona humboldtii Dunal [Monogr. Anonac. 64, t. 3. 1817] (= Annona humboldtiana Kunth)”

Frightened Rabbit threaten to go all Big Brother on us…
@FRabbits: “Getting a camera tomorrow so we might film ourselves making dinner if that’s ok with you? Suggestions for ingredients welcome…”

While My Latest Novel threaten to go all rap on us…
@MyLatestNovel: “On the way home from our session for Marc Riley on 6Music. Felt good. Real good. In the hood. Don’t be rude.”

Jonathon of My Cousin I Bid You Farewell consults his inner film critic…
@mcibyf: “Michael Bay needs an editor badly. Seriously. I completely lost interest. I miss the theme tune too. ‘Transformers! Robots in Disguise!”

We Were Promised Jetpacks big up their Mancunian contemporaries…
@wwpj: “In case anyone was curious, Tell You So by The Longcut is the best song ever.”

The Gothenburg Address make a half-hearted attempt at a gig plug…
@gothenaddy: “playing 13th Note this wednesday .. come doon .. unless your at the ATP premiere .. which would be understandable .. “

The Vaselines have some good news…
@the_vaselines: “We’ve been writing new tunes this evening. Cant wait to finish them so we can play them for you. Soon.”

While De Rosa have some bad news…
@wearederosa: “To all who listened. De Rosa has come to an end. If you liked our music or came to see us play we’d like to thank you all. Goodbye, De Rosa.”

Words: Nick Mitchell (and Twitter)

Musicians of Scotland: Tweet something interesting/funny/newsworthy this week and you too could feature in Tweet Nothings. Just think how proud your Mum will be.

Spotted any other tweeting gems we’ve missed out on? Share your favourite weekly tweets with us below…

[Beerjacket photographed by Lisa-Marie Ferla]

Play: Drum

Becoming a singer/songwriter, on the face of it, seems easy. Get a guitar, learn a few minor chords, let some feelings out.

However, once you have seen it done well, you realise how much talent is actually required. There is no hiding place when you do everything on your own, and there are few in Scotland right now who do it better than Peter Kelly.

Beerjacket, the name of Kelly’s homemade solo project, very nearly disappeared soon after it began. It started in 2004 “as a goodbye to music…a bitter farewell show”, after which he planned to stop for good. Thankfully, enough people liked the show to keep the project alive and, five years on, Beerjacket is still going.

Although he plays most of his live shows in Glasgow, Kelly says he can’t claim to be a Glasgow musician as he doesn’t spend much time there. Instead, “Beerjacket happens alone in a toy room in Lanarkshire,” he says.

His most recent album, Animosity, is a return to simplicity after Kelly felt previous work had become overcomplicated. The songs have the classic singer/songwriter appeal: simultaneously sad and uplifting. ‘Violent’ and ‘Drum’ perfectly sum up the honest tone of the album, whilst ‘The Gun’ is moralistic without any accompanying righteousness.

The album attains considerable diversity in its ten tracks too, especially on ‘Evil Air’, which adds colourful bluesy edges thanks to some neat slide guitar work.

The stripped-down, back to basics approach is certainly noticeable; Kelly describes his set-up as “one the most primitive you’re likely to find – acoustic guitar, vocal and foot-stomped tambourine”. The one-to-one feel of this minimal intervention policy gives his lyrics more immediacy.

There is also something hugely appealing about an artist who has decided to go it alone. As Kelly says, “I have opened for many of my heroes like Feist, The National, Kristin Hersh, Rilo Kiley and Arab Strap, released six albums and received airplay all over the world. And all this without a manager, PR, publisher, record label, agent or other band members to thank or blame.”

Kelly is also keen to praise those he has worked with: “I’ve been fortunate in playing with many of my influences. They have all inspired me”. The Second Hand Marching Band opened a show for him recently and also played along on a Beerjacket cover, which pleased Kelly to the extent that he forgot the words to his own song.

If comparisons are to be made, then the most obvious, in terms of style, seems to be Elliott Smith. But the tagline of ‘the new Elliott Smith’ has weighed heavily, usually unhelpfully, on many artists before. Kelly’s work stands alone perfectly well.

In a cluttered genre, Beerjacket has emerged as one of Scotland’s best singer/songwriters. Going it alone is a brave decision, but his work demands recognition. Wherever he goes next, it is sure to be well worth following.

The new Beerjacket album Animosity was released digitally on 8th June on iTunes, eMusic, LaLa and Amazon MP3. A limited edition digipack CD of the album will be in independent record shops soon.

Play: Violent

Words: Stevie Kearney

What do you think of one of Scotland’s best new singer/songwriters? Discuss…

The Edinburgh International Film Festival embraced its musical side on Wednesday night, with the UK premiere of All Tomorrow’s Parties, a documentary that lovingly edited down over 200 hours of fans’ footage from the festival of the same name, and featured the likes of Belle & Sebastian, The Boredoms, Nick Cave and John Cooper Clarke.

Along with a range of Butlins-style entertainment (bingo, donkeys, cabaret etc) presented by Future Cinema at the HMV Picture House, Glasgow post-rockers Mogwai played a mesmerising live set after the film that included tracks like Hunted By a Freak and Glasgow Mega Snake.

[Bonesaw]

Jodi Mullen returns with the second installment of his introductory guide to the more extreme forms of rock music in Scotland, from folk/battle to drone/doom, with a few choice recommendations thrown in.

Warning: if you think Muse are too ‘rawk’, you may want to go away until normal indie-centric programming is resumed tomorrow. Feeling brave? Read on…

Somehow, in spite of all the apathy and adversity, metal in Scotland has not only survived and endured, it has thrived. Each of our major cities has a rich and vibrant metal underground, focused around a handful of venues and extremely dedicated fan communities. Glasgow is the undisputed jewel in Scottish metal’s spiked crown, being the home of perhaps our most successful metal act, Man Must Die (more below) and a regular stop-over for the metal world’s biggest touring acts. The city is also home to bands that span the full spectrum of subgenres: death metallers Madman is Absolute, folk/battle metal outfit Alba Gu Brath and black metal titans Daemonolith are just a few acts out of dozens.

Play: Madman is Absolute - Resolution

As well as a plethora of rock and metal bars, Glasgow plays host to a number of small to medium-sized venues that specialise in the most extreme forms of music. Ivory Blacks, The Cathouse, Captain’s Rest and Maggie May’s form the backbone of the city’s gigging circuit for metal acts, though many more venues feature prominently too.

The metal scene in Edinburgh perhaps isn’t quite as vibrant, particularly with the announcement last month that popular rock and metal club Studio 24 was set to lose its license. Bannerman’s remains a favourite for extreme acts and regularly hosts shows with some of the most interesting and varied lineups around. While the capital may not have quite the same number of metal bands as Glasgow, it is home to some of the more eclectic bands in the Scottish underground, including drone/doom instrumental act Jackal-Headed Guard of the Dead.

Proving perhaps that there is something about the frozen north that brings out the metal spirit, Aberdeen has one of Scotland’s longest established scenes, with venues like The Moorings becoming institutions in their own right alongside the likes of Moshulu and The Tunnels. Local favourites Black Atom seem to have been on the verge of becoming the next big thing for well over half a decade while death metal outfit Bonesaw are one of the country’s most brutal acts. Meanwhile, Ascension, one of Scotland’s finest power metal acts split their time between Aberdeen and Glasgow.

Play: Bonesaw - Necrosexual

Outside the big three cities, smaller scenes exist in Dundee - home to traditional metallers Swordmaster - Perth and Inverness with various other acts coming from small towns all over the country, including What The Blood Revealed, a post-metal act who call Irvine, Ayrshire their home.

Over the next few months, Under the Radar will be examining Scotland’s emerging metal scene in detail, starting out with a look at the country’s ferocious death metal community next month. In the meantime though, we introduce two of the very best homegrown acts who are currently flying the flag for Scottish metal around Europe…

Alestorm

With the release of their second album, Black Sails at Midnight, Perth’s Alestorm look set to become the latest Scottish act to make it big on the international metal scene. Branding themselves “True Scottish Pirate Metal”, the four-piece play upbeat, traditional heavy metal with strong influences from the worlds of power metal and folk music. Alestorm revel in their ludicrously over-the-top buccaneer image; band members take to the stage dressed as pirates and song titles like ‘Wenches and Mead’ and ‘Keelhauled’ are the order of the day, though a reworking of ‘Flower of Scotland’ has been known to creep onto live setlists every now and then. Signed to Austrian independent metal label Napalm Records, Alestorm will join legendary Finnish folk-metallers Korpiklaani on the Paganfest tour of Europe this autumn.

Man Must Die

Four young men from Glasgow with a penchant for loud noise and violence? Who would have thought it? Man Must Die’s star has been in the ascendancy for several years now, during which time the band has landed much coveted support slots with the likes of Kataklysm and Aborted but forthcoming album No Tolerance For Imperfection will hopefully see them becoming one of death metal’s leading lights in their own right. Driven by crushing riffs, Man Must Die’s brand of death metal is unrelentingly brutal and aggressive and frequently delves into the kind of grisly lyrical subject matter for which the genre has become infamous. Matters of taste aside though, one can’t help but admire some of the virtuoso musicianship on display as the band push their instruments and themselves to new heights of extremity.

Words: Jodi Mullen

Metal: music to your ears or unbearable racket? Discuss…