The endless sprawls of water-board effects and glooping harmonies will no doubt resonate with electro-pop loving hipsters, but for those who’ve experienced the thrill of Ryan McPhun in full, unbridled flow this is a crushing disappointment. Percussively, it’s brimming with intelligent Tropicana beats that peak on Cranberry’s euphoric carousel ride. Yet, at their core, tracks like How Kids Fail and Dusty Fruit frequently meander into labouring psychedelic trances, induced by grating effects and tinny vocals.

The sad thing is Fight Softly should have been the making of the Ruby Suns. Instead, they’ve chosen to hop aboard someone else’s bandwagon.

First published in The Skinny

If I’m honest, I’ve been as much a part of this parochial tub-thumping  as anyone, championing acts I never truly loved for the sake of exposure on both mine and their parts. Of course, such emperor’s new clothesism is always found out when the hype machine reaches less readily agreeable hacks; their scything wordage usually being enough to douse out burning ambitions that have turned into wildfire.

None of this is new ground, I’m merely retracing steps trodden in this UtR post, but it’s got me thinking about how this fallacy theory transposes into a non-musical setting. Having fitted thinking cap upon noggin, it seems these scam are ten-a-penny in the broader sphere.  So, if you will indulge me for the next few minutes, here are my five favourite non-music related fallacies:

Robinho
You can’t say the warning signs weren’t there. After all, this was a man whose behaviour was deemed too prima-donnaish for a team not exactly lacking in prima donnas.  Yet Manchester City, the newly bestowed richest club in the world, decided to flex their cash-rich muscles and fork out a whopping £32m for the favela-born Brazilian who many considered one of the best players in the world. 17 months and a goal rate of one in four later, Robinho packed his suit case, auctioned his Lamborghini on ebay and retreated back to Sao Paolo, vowing never to return to the sky blues. Not that they’ll miss him, mind.

Urban Outfitters
This hipster whorehouse caused a tidal wave of excitement when it appeared on Princes Street at the bookend of last year. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why. First of all, they sell tatty, ill-fitting clothes that requires a salary of a Chief Executive to afford and the balls of a brass monkey to wear. Secondly, and really most importantly, they sell The Talking Heads’ 77 on vinyl for £15. Yes, fifteen fucking pounds.  That’s close to four times the amount you can buy it from Oxfam. The saddest thing is, you know it’s this sort of ravenous capitalism masquerading as ‘kitsch cool’ that keeps the waist-coat wearing fashionistas going back for more.

Twitter
Social networking is the bane of my life. For some reason Twitter has repositioned itself from pointless 140 character spouting message service to the future of THE WORLD. And it’s shit, really, really shit. Every day we talk about how we can use it to deliver our communications, and every day none of us can come up with an answer. Not one. It doesn’t matter how many people tweet, it’s still a better vehicle for the minutiae of our lame-assed lives than a tool for actual money making businesses. But for some reason, if you put a bandwagon in front of people in the communications world you can always guarantee they’ll jump on it.

iPhones
I have one, I wish I didn’t. But it’s not because this isn’t a brilliant piece of technology- it undoubtedly is – it’s just not a very good phone. In fact, it’s a pretty terrible one. From text message to just making a simple call to one of your pals, the iPhone is as flawed as an Ashley Cole marriage vow. For Apple to devise something that so exhaustively fails to meet the basic requirements of its users is an appalling oversight that implies they’re more concerned with reputation than giving their customers what they want.  My wife won’t agree with this, neither will 2million Apple devotees no doubt, but the iPhone was one of 2009’s biggest disappointments. Roll on my next upgrade.

Trams
This one will only resonate if you live in Edinburgh. Our ever prudent council are ripping up the roads and putting in a tram system that leads from Leith to the airport.  At the time it was deemed the best thing since Mr Hovis bought a bread knife.  In the here and now, it’s ransacked one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, ruined the best bus service in the UK (profits of £9m reduced to £900K in just a year), caused numerous local retailers to close and been delayed by 2 years.  Oh, and so far it’s cost £50m more than initially projected.  Great job Edinburgh council.

Not only does this read like the hyperventilating, pant-pissing of an American pre-teen who’s just been asked to join Corey what’s-his-puss in a Mickey Mouse Club boudoir, but it actually has the gall attempts to connect The War in Iraq™ with a music industry puppet who’s happy to espouse: “young people on the streets need to stop fightin’ and just be enjoying’ music cos that’s how we get down.” She really did say that. Those quotation marks prove it.

Essentially, someone else’s viewpoint, such as the above PR garbage, should never muddy your own opinion, particualrly when composing a review. The claw marks of a press officer’s prose is all too easy to spot and, with it, so is that often overused slight, lazy journalism. The whole point of this writing lark is to have an authoritative stance and use it as a clear, unaffected vantage point. You need to have your own voice and not someone else’s. Otherwise, you might as well give it all up.

Funny thing is, now I’m working in comms, I’m seeing it from the other side. The whole process is a cat and mouse courtyard of verbs, adjectives and nouns. It’s a question of who you can trust to tell a story right, and who you can trust to tell a story the way you want it told. A press office win is having a verbatim reproduction of well-oiled copy wangle its way into in the inky pages of newspapers. A hack’s victory is the exact opposite: cutting through the foliage of spin and hyperbole to get to the trunk of truth lurking beneath.

So what of that truth? Well it’s always there in some form. It can be dolled up to the nines like a spinster at a school reunion, but it will always exist. And that, I suppose, is half the fun of the whole charade. To think of it as a duel seems a little far-fetched, but I’m sure there’s scores of press and comms officers who see it exactly like that as they spend countless hours conjuring up more and more unique ways of filtering their messages through the media. Of course, the most effective way of doing this would be to buy up your own media company but I guess we don’t all Rupert’s money, do we?

For the bands that enthralled local gig-goers last year, the next twelve months are critical. Sure, the swollen cyber-palms of backslapping bloggers suggests a limited degree of success beckons, but true worth can only really be gauged if the tartan-kilted nest is vacated for a sojourn to more robust climes down south.

One glance at the upcoming gigs of our lauded young ‘uns shows a burning want to remain within the ball-court that begins and ends on both sides of the M8. Granted, there’s an admirable grit in believing success lies beyond fellating the barnacled cock of Big Ben, but even if the thrill of being sucked into a whorehouse of in-store shows and vacuous T4 slots isn’t your game, the possibility of discovering new audiences should be incentive enough.

In recent years, the most successful (and by successful I mean in terms of collecting critical adulation) Scottish bands to seep into the national hemisphere have been 4AD’s Broken Records and FatCat Records trio The Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Yes, they may be enrolled on national labels but these acts had already proven themselves as capable wooers of unfamiliar crowds; each band confident in its ability to unravel the crossed arms of cynics based purely on their music. And it’s this sort of confidence the new breed of Scottish act has to exude in 2010. They need to move away from the Scottish music scene’s cotton-wooled bosom and furrow a pathway through the UK, not just across the Central Belt. Almost certainly, many will fail and return to familiar haunts to be consoled by familiar faces but, hell, at least they tried; at least they can say they gave it a stab, even if they didn’t draw blood.

Positively, 2009 saw the likes of Meursault, There Will Be Fireworks and Panda Su make their first tentative footsteps south – 2010 needs to see this turn into a concerted effort on a broader scale. Many a promising Scottish act has rotted in the gutter because of a lack of national exposure. To avoid joining them, the new batch of Scottish music makers needs to grab its future by the balls because, quite frankly, no one else will.

So, this inaugural dip into the Scottish music scene is not a start of year tiplist. It’s more a roll call of the bands that are closest to being ready to step up and make the breakthrough from local heroes to national runners.

Conquering Animal Sound
The tightly woven swell of Conquering Animal Sound provides the perfect antidote to this year’s Siberian weather front. As enchanting as a pixie snake charmer, the resplendent chimes created by Jamie Scott and Anneke Kampman have caused a drooling melee in the ranks of Scotland’s indie press. Whooshing to the gentle hum of Scott’s deft guitar, each arrangement is blessed by Kampman’s pin dropping mew. With a mixtape down and a tour of the UK to come, you’ll soon find yourself being conquered by this animal sound.
www.myspace.com/conqueringanimalsound

Dead Boy Robotics
Like running your nails against a grater to pulsing tribal rhythms, Dead Boy Robotics (DBR) are very much an acquired taste. As co-founders of the semi-defunct BEAR Scotland collective Mike and Gregor were left toiling in the wake of their more accessible counterparts. But 2009 saw the synth punk duo crank up the engine from nihilistic electro-boys to resplendent lug-rapists, coarsely running against the grain of Edinburgh’s bulbous folk scene. With a new EP of abrasive hexagonal-sonics due to be unleashed soon, 2010 promises to be the year Dead Boy Robotics shunt the gear-sticks into overdrive.
www.myspace.com/deadboyrobotics

Dupec
If We Were Promised Jetpacks are the delinquent younger brother of Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad, then Dupec are undoubtedly their intellectual cousin. Bestowing a scree of math signatures and hexagonal percussion over James Yuill’s emotive tones, the Auld Reekie trio’s first two EPs helped soil the already befouled underpants of Scottish bloggers. Now with support slots alongside Rollo Tomassi and Crystal Antlers peeking over the horizon, as well as a much needed trek south, 2010 should be the year slip from the shadows of their more renowned, if lesser accomplished, compatriots.
www.myspace.com/dupec

Meursault
It may have bookended the Noughties, but Meursault’s Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues represented a new dawn on Scotland’s musical terra firma. Scruffy and ill-fitting, every cut embodied the fabled do-it-together ethos of Edinburgh’s Bowery congregation. Live, Neil Pennycook’s inimitable warble strikes the first blow; his masterful bellow strangling the airwaves just as readily as it soothes them. But it’s the group’s concentrated melodics that’s the real draw. By spinning together the frayed ends of parochial folk with wiry electronica, Meursault bleed a sound quite unlike anything in Scotland. Now with album number two on the horizon, this is a band that now has to step over the cusp.
www.myspace.com/meursaulta701

Mitchell Museum
When Mitchell Museum breached the lower echelons of Scotland’s toilet circuit last year, gas canister in hand (seriously), a jumble of words filtered into the brainboxes of easily amused hipsters: Collective. Animal. Wannabes. Thankfully, the Glasgow quartet proved to be so much more. A gargling waterboard of effects may cornerstone their effervescent cacophonies, but the bubblegum melodies and flash-gun rhythms cut a more populous pathway than Baltimore’s finest. Their debut album should rear its cranium in early spring and, with it, expect your ear sockets to be plugged with nothing else.
www.myspace.com/mitchellmuseum

Yahweh
Yahweh must be churning bile at all the Arab Strap comparisons. Desperate for a new miserable mainstay to call their own, musos up here have been flinging the tenuous simile Lewis Cook’s way over the past year. But buried within the Glaswegian’s cascading synths lies a beautiful songwriting accord that’s more akin to the bearded lilting of Casiotone’s Owen Ashworth than Aiden Moffat’s monotonic yarns. Either way, Cook’s star is on the rise and his intelligent, heel-gazing pop is coming your way – be sure of that.
www.myspace.com/thisisyahweh

Dupec
If We Were Promised Jetpacks are the delinquent younger brother of Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad, then Dupec are undoubtedly their intellectual cousin. Bestowing a scree of math signatures and hexagonal percussion over James Yuill’s emotive tones, the Auld Reekie trio’s first two EPs helped soil the already befouled underpants of Scottish bloggers. Now with support slots alongside Rollo Tomassi and Crystal Antlers peeking over the horizon, as well as a much needed trek south, 2010 should be the year slip from the shadows of their more renowned, if lesser accomplished, compatriots.
www.myspace.com/dupec

Meursault
It may have bookended the Noughties, but Meursault’s Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues represented a new dawn on Scotland’s musical terra firma. Scruffy and ill-fitting, every cut embodied the fabled do-it-together ethos of Edinburgh’s Bowery congregation. Live, Neil Pennycook’s inimitable warble strikes the first blow; his masterful bellow strangling the airwaves just as readily as it soothes them. But it’s the group’s concentrated melodics that’s the real draw. By spinning together the frayed ends of parochial folk with wiry electronica, Meursault bleed a sound quite unlike anything in Scotland. Now with album number two on the horizon, this is a band that now has to step over the cusp.
www.myspace.com/meursaulta701

Mitchell Museum
When Mitchell Museum breached the lower echelons of Scotland’s toilet circuit last year, gas canister in hand (seriously), a jumble of words filtered into the brainboxes of easily amused hipsters: Collective. Animal. Wannabes. Thankfully, the Glasgow quartet proved to be so much more. A gargling waterboard of effects may cornerstone their effervescent cacophonies, but the bubblegum melodies and flash-gun rhythms cut a more populous pathway than Baltimore’s finest. Their debut album should rear its cranium in early spring and, with it, expect your ear sockets to be plugged with nothing else.
www.myspace.com/mitchellmuseum

Yahweh
Yahweh must be churning bile at all the Arab Strap comparisons. Desperate for a new miserable mainstay to call their own, musos up here have been flinging the tenuous simile Lewis Cook’s way over the past year. But buried within the Glaswegian’s cascading synths lies a beautiful songwriting accord that’s more akin to the bearded lilting of Casiotone’s Owen Ashworth than Aiden Moffat’s monotonic yarns. Either way, Cook’s star is on the rise and his intelligent, heel-gazing pop is coming your way – be sure of that.
www.myspace.com/thisisyahweh

DOWNLOAD
[.zip] AyeTunes #1
PC: right click and choose “save as…”
MAC: CTRL + click and choose “save link as”

Subscribe to TLOBF’s Weekly Newsletter – All our content, direct to your inbox!
Click here to sign up!

TLOBF on Twitter | Facebook | MySpace | RSS

//

Related posts

• TLOBF Albums of 2009
• Introducing :: We Were Promised Jetpacks
• TLOBF Interview :: Frightened Rabbit vs The Twilight Sad [pt2]
• TLOBF Interview :: Frightened Rabbit vs The Twilight Sad
• Hinterland Festival – Glasgow, 30th April & 1st May 2009

11 Comments For This Post

1. Billy Hamilton Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 9:22 am Photo rollcall:

   Conquering Animal Sound – L. Hunter
   Dupec – N. Scullion
   Meursault – D. Matthews
   Mitchell Museum – D. Benko
   Yaweh – A. Hein

2. Anthony Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 11:27 am Love Meursault, looking forward to seeing them in Puregroove tomorrow and are coming down to play for me in March!
3. peenko Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 11:45 am there is only one AyeTunes! http://ayetunes.blogspot.com/
4. the last battle Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 11:54 am Completely agree with this. There’s lots of scottish groups vying to go down south and play. We have a couple festivals lined up and gigs in London and we’ve not even been together a year yet! I think our chums meursault out of all you mentioned Billy will probably go the distance, love c.a.s but don’t think they are quite at that stage yet!
5. David Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 12:05 pm Good bit of name plagiarism there, Billy. http://ayetunes.blogspot.com/
6. Rich Thane Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 1:20 pm i’ll take the blame for the AyeTunes name. though i have to apologise as i’d never heard of the blog. just a coincidence. look at it as a free bit of advertising or something.
7. Simon T Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 3:27 pm As the person who wrote the glowing Meursault album review for TLOBF I endorse a lot of this, and in fact am putting the aforementioned on (with support from Stairs To Korea, no less) in Leicester on 28th March.
8. Jules Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 4:48 pm How did you forgot about mags like Clash, The Skinny and The List, who all do a bloody good job of promoting the local scene themselves and speak to more than the 18 readers of any given music blog in the north?
9. Shiner Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 11:51 pm And if you want to see the only listing of every Scottish band on tour outside of the UK, (including Meursault’s first European tour dates), then you can visit DearScotland.com
10. james Says:
    January 27th, 2010 at 12:42 am i think 18 readers is doing some of the larger blogs in scotland a disservice. some are very well read, and i for one would look to several blogs for gig listings and band information before publications like the skinny or list. these magazines do cover local music, but it isn’t their primary focus, and their readership will be drawn by other factors. many blogs are primarily reporting on local and unsigned artists – a lot of these will likely have sprung up because of that gap in the coverage market. stands to reason that while they may not be as widely read, they may have a greater connection and understand of the scene, and that to me justifies their mention.
11. Jules Says:
    January 28th, 2010 at 12:48 am James, you’re babbling. Entirely missed my point.

1 Trackbacks For This Post

1. What’s on in Edinburgh This Week – 24th January 2010 | Song, by Toad Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 12:14 pm [...] and my friend Billy has written an article for The Line of Best Fit about the Scottish music scene.  In it he tells us what I tell every band we work with – [...]

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

<!–XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

–>

//

• MOST READ
• COMMENTS
• COMMUNITY

• Song Of The Day #10 // Retribution Gospel Choir: “Hide It Away”
• [Download] Chilly Gonzales: “Pianist Envy” Mixtape
• Song Of The Day #11 // Padraig Whelan: “Rolling Stock”
• Song Of The Day #12 // Perfume Genius: “Mr Petersen”
• Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – Kollaps Tradixonales
• Pantha Du Prince – Black Noise
• Peter Gabriel – Scratch My Back
• Song Of The Day #13 // Veronica Falls: “Found Love In A Graveyeard”
• The Dillinger Escape Plan – Option Paralysis
• A Broken Consort – Crow Autumn

• The Dillinger Escape Plan – Option Paralysis 3
  Rich Hughes, mjc, Wade
• Heaven Is Whenever for The Hold Steady this May 1
  Mark Gamble
• Song Of The Day #14 // Ana Silvera: “Rosanna” (Toto Cover) 1
  roland wedig
• [Exclusive] First acts announced for this year’s Camden Crawl event, TLOBF to be Official Insider 1
  Ash
• Imogen Heap – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, 19/02/10 5
  ImmiAppreciation, Rich Thane, Christain, ImmiAppreciation, ImmiAppreciation
• Yellow Swans – Going Places 3
  Ash, Rich Hughes, Ash
• Song Of The Day #13 // Veronica Falls: “Found Love In A Graveyeard” 1
  Anthony
• Vampire Weekend – Contra 2
  mister laurie, Valerio
• The Fall confirm new album details on return to Domino 1
  mister laurie
• Bertie Blackman – Secrets and Lies 1
  Wade
• Delphic – Acolyte 4
  Jessica Douglas, Rich Hughes, Wade, Rich Hughes

• Dick Dale/Chris Brokaw & Geoff Farina/Stinking Lizaveta …
• The Bubbly Blue and Green Festival, London Feb 24th-27th…
• FACEBOOK…
• ATP curated by Matt Groening – May 2010…
• 18th Feb- WITH THAT KNIFE + support. Bay Horse, Manchester….
• Pavement + The Clean – Brixton Academy – Tickets left…
• FREE – Sat 20th Feb – RoTA – Hold Your Horse Is + more……
• 26 Feb Scared To Dance in London w/ guest DJs Big Pink Cake!…
• Geoff Farina/Chris Brokaw/Dick Dale/Stinking Lizaveta shows…
• Now Playing: A rolling thread…

<!––>

// <![CDATA[
document.write('');
// ]]> //
// <![CDATA[
if (typeof(gnm_ord)=='undefined') gnm_ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000; if (typeof(gnm_tile) == 'undefined') gnm_tile=1;document.write('');
// ]]> // <![CDATA[
//[CDATA[
var m3_u = (location.protocol=='https:'?'https://ads.ad4game.com/www/delivery/ajs.php':'http://ads.ad4game.com/www/delivery/ajs.php');
var m3_r = Math.floor(Math.random()*99999999999);
if (!document.MAX_used) document.MAX_used = ',';
document.write ("");
//
// ]]>

// <![CDATA[
// // // // //

Ad by Ad4Game

//

//

• Black Eyed Peas Tickets
• Crowded House Tickets
• Florence and the Machine Tickets
• Jay-Z Tickets
• JLS Tickets
• John Mayer Tickets
• Kings of Leon Tickets
• Peter Andre Tickets

// <![CDATA[
function MM_swapImgRestore() { //v3.0
var i,x,a=document.MM_sr; for(i=0;a&&i<a.length&&(x=a[i])&&x.oSrc;i++) x.src=x.oSrc;
}
function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0
var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();
var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0; i0&&parent.frames.length) {
d=parent.frames[n.substring(p+1)].document; n=n.substring(0,p);}
if(!(x=d[n])&&d.all) x=d.all[n]; for (i=0;!x&&i<d.forms.length;i++) x=d.forms[i][n];
for(i=0;!x&&d.layers&&i<d.layers.length;i++) x=MM_findObj(n,d.layers[i].document);
if(!x && d.getElementById) x=d.getElementById(n); return x;
}

function MM_swapImage() { //v3.0
var i,j=0,x,a=MM_swapImage.arguments; document.MM_sr=new Array; for(i=0;i

INFORMATION

• Log in
• Subscribe via RSS
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Contact Us

// <![CDATA[
document.write('');
// ]]> //

//

// <![CDATA[
if (window.adgroupid == undefined) {
window.adgroupid = Math.round(Math.random() * 1000);
}
document.write('');
// ]]> //

//

// <![CDATA[
document.write('');
// ]]>

On paper, it’s a curiosity that threatens to escalate as an abomination. Yet Shaw’s adaptations of The Ramones’ Blitzkreig Bop and Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out draw a startling deftness of touch from numbers better known for their dancefloor packing heroism.

Some efforts inevitably fall short; the likes of Blondie’s Talking on the Telephone and Johnny Cash’s I Still Miss Someone lack their original verve and are escorted down a well of vapidity by Shaw’s earnest intone.

But, rather than coming across as an open mic night connoisseur, Iain Shaw proves himself more than capable of adding fresh flavour to some refined vintage.

Fluttering out like a cool morning breeze, the Portland-based duo’s sophomore LP is an irresistible 40 minutes of deceivingly minimal textures and rhythms. Much of the tranquillity comes from Dienel, whose glorious intone is an unavoidable focus. Wandering blissfully above the thumps of Icarus and, album stand out, Cataract, her gentile mew is as enchanting as an aural hypnosis session.

But to shrug this aside as another female voice-driven waltz does no justice to the musical finesse on offer. By knotting together reams of organic samples with spacious beats, tracks like Huron form an entangled, yet strangely delicate, mesh that does the groundwork for Dienel to take flight. Both pure and chingly simple, the only difficult thing about this record is removing it from your stereo.