Scottish bands

The ones you named, and throw in artists such as the Beta Band, Ballboy, Looper, Mogwai....

I actually desperately wanted to be Scottish when I was 19 I loved Scottish Pop so much ! OK, so there's been a lot of dodgy 'white soul' (Deacon Blue, Hipsway, Love and Money and of course Hue and Cry) but oh, the guitars !

On the plus side 'though there were also The Associates, Aztec Camera, Belle & Sebastian, Bluebells, Blue Nile, Delgados, Fire Engines, Alex Harvey, Josef K, Mogwai, Mull Historical Society, The Scars....

Not at all. Many non-Scots would agree with you. James Yorkston and the Athletes - they're Scottish, I think, and damn good, too. i also like Teenage Fanclub, Jesus and Mary Chain , Belle and Sebastian, Primal Scream, Beta Band, Boards of Canada and the Delgados.

Not even a Scottish one.

All together now:
"Let the winds blow high,
Let the winds blow low,
Down the street in my kilt I go
And all the ladies say hello
Donald where's yer troosers?!"

hahahah I lie really.

Best new band I've heard for years. Certainly the most original. www.lapsuslinguae.co.uk has a few mp3s worth having.

They knock seven bells out of each other live, which is entertaining.

it's called having fun. remember that? i'm way to old to be part of any scene or want to partake in arch ironic anti-coolness. i do it because i love it. you are fully entitled to hate it but i KNOW that it has been a very positive force in this city.

by the way, i've never seen kid606 so you must be mistaking me for someone else. but thanks for giving me much mirth on a grey sunday afternoon.

and gygax - cheers for the spamming heads up!

Simon, do you definitely mean the *first* 4 ? Most ILM posters on this topic mean the 4 that end with 'New Gold Dream' ie albums 2 - 5: are you actually including 'Life In A Day'?
(personally I only rate albums 2, 3 & 4 - I thought they had started to curdle on NGD, and never bothered with it.)

sorry bout vitriol, haha, my fingers spool out a lot faster than wheezy brain can run.

That hurt, I feel better now. I piss on your Manchester and Liverpool you steenking Eenglish peegs.

Funny reading the old posts about Optimo btw.

New great Scottish bands:

Sons and Daughters
Mother and the Addicts
The Fratellis (are they? I don't actually know)
who else?

just to answer this four years late - i don't have a clue what i was on about.

x post.

Nae Ganger thread at all! That's pure shite! Awesome band. Can we start them a thread?

What's wrong with Big Country? They managed to sound archetypically Scottish like nobody before or since has ever come close to, and "The Crossing" is one of very few cases where Steve Lillywhite did actually do an excellent production job.

Can something be archetypal, while at the same time be something nobody before or since has done?

second the ganger love! 'hammock style' one of the greatest (not to mention sexiest) albums of all time. was lucky enough to see them once before they vanished. just gobsmackingly good...

Do you have 'Canopy', the last EP/album? If so, any good? I've always loved Hammock Style and just got Fore today finally, which has some awesomeness on it too so far.

tho looking at tht list... wtf happened to scottish bands :(:(:(

1. Is Funk D'Void Scottish? I never knew. Heard something great in a record shop that was apparently him (them?) but either I never tracked down the right one or it didn't sound as good at home.
2. Oh hey, Laeto! I had an album of theirs - not that one - and liked it. Wonder where it is. No idea they'd done another one.
3. Any Other City was robbed, obv

travis! (only joking)

I'm not. Broke out The Man Who and The Invisible Band last night. Both brimming with gorgeous melodies, inventive arrangements, wistful vocals &c.

i don't really get into the third travis album.. but 'coming around' deserved a better fate than being a forgotten single-only track falling between those two albums. it's probably the best thing they did.

plus it has a great cover of "the weight" on the flip.

Keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Spanish Bombs.

I can't figure out what Noodle Vague finds so funny

Idlewild winning

hilarious

He's a jolly fellow

He was probably laughing because Idlewild beat a band a member of his family is in.

Tell you what: the Stark Palace LP (which is basically songs from their last three EPs, but fuck it) should be on that list too. Absolutely fucking superb. Should be a review floating about on Sunday.

Any love here for Dawson, Nyah Fearties or Shlebie?

if numbers 1 and 50 could be swapped in that list then it'd be a damn sight more otm

I started a Nyah Fearties thread years ago that is really too brief. Nyah Fearties
And there's a couple of other threads with stuff about Dawson. The "Bogshed - Kings of Swing" thread and another thread that's something like "Growing Up in Scotland".

LJ's definitive Mogwai ranking: Happy Songs >>> Rock Action >>>> Young Team >> Government Commissions > CODY > The Hawk Is Howling > EP +6 >>>>>>>> Mr Beast

Government Commissions gets ahead of CODY because its version of Like Herod is probably the most righteous (if not quite best) thing Mogwai have done

Young Team > Ten Rapid > Govt Commissions > EP+6 > Cody > Happy Songs > Rock Action > Mr Beast

Dunno where to put Zidane as I've barely listened to it.

Oh, missed Hawk is Howling, put that near the bottom somewhere.

Young Team > Ten Rapid > My Father, My King > Govt Commissions > EP+6 > Cody > Rock Action > Hawk is Howling >>>>>>>>>> Happy Songs > Mr Beast

though not an album, 'MFMK' surely has to be in there on the basis of its awesomeness. 'cody' would have been higher, but its version of 'xmas/christmas steps' is a poor cousin to the one on 'EP+6'/'no education'. there's very little space between 'cody', 'rock action' and 'hawk', but then a big drop-off to 'happy songs'/'beast'.

never heard zidane.

you sen this, mogwai people?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DD5sy_EnvE

Haven't seen it and can't at work but I'll take a look later, cheers.

I still don't think Mogwai have produced an album that even touches how good they actually are as a band, or comes close to encapsulating their potential. I love everything they've released, but I don't feel any of it is particularly solid supporting evidence for my frothing-mouthed enthusiasm about them.

I like that Burning trailer a lot. High hopes for that.

I still don't think Mogwai have produced an album that even touches how good they actually are as a band

This is completely OTM and I realise it more the older I get. Their two most concise albums really did capture SOMETHING, though. They forced themselves to be more concentrated, and they played around with electronics in a joyful, non-mundane manner.

young team still the best tho

Young Team is excellent and primal and influential but it's also messy and unfocused in a way that doesn't suit their precise build-and-bust dynamic. They're a band that needs regimentation; being all over the place isn't where they're comfortable. (It's actually their biggest limitation, and the reason I don't love them as much as I used to.) There's just this sense that they threw everything together without organising the album; they're an albums band, and that album could have used a bit of fat-trimming. I'd get rid of half the tracks! The shorter half, obviously. Doesn't need that padding.

yes!
herod
tracy
rusi2i
satan

^^^bang

i know this isn't an album per se, but imho it was mogwai's finest moment if you treat it as one:

http://www.discogs.com/Mogwai-EP-6/master/205749

i probably rated ep+6 a bit low but again that's because it's a sprawling, unfocused document of individual moments rather than an album piece...plenty of great stuff on it, albeit not as great as the greatest young team stuff

it also has 'stereodee' which is great in theory, and great in practice for about 5 minutes, but then it becomes a bit of a chore. i guess the speed-garage bit at the end is your reward

i know this isn't an album per se, but imho it was mogwai's finest moment if you treat it as one

I can never see those three EPs as anything other than three very separate, very different recordings: documents of a snapshot of my life. I remember going out to buy 4-Satin in Edinburgh, calling in to see a friend on the way home from Avalanche on Lady Lawson Street, getting unexpectedly bongoed on his surprisingly high-quality weed, and finally getting home to listen to it some 10 hours later, and thinking it was THE SINGLE GREATEST RECORDED ARTEFACT IN HISTORY, etc. My flatmate wasn't overly impressed with the volume I was playing it at, nor with the way I couldn't stop giggling at her when she shouted at me. Happy days.

The Christmas Steps EP is the authentic soundtrack to me moving to Glasgow: just a total fucking rush. The Stanley Kubrick EP is the authentic soundtrack to me moving into a damp hovel with mushrooms growing out the walls and thinking: "Thank god for music."

can i just say that my slimmed-down young team works beautifully as a double-side single LP

I'm not sure I agree all that much with that list, but I think it was voted for by readers?

Happy that "Any Other City" is in there, if a bit too low, and very pleasantly surprised the Laeto's 'Zwoa' is in there. A fine record, very different to their debut 'Make Us Mild'. There's been a third record ('LP3') in the works for a few years now, what I've heard is great but I'm not sure it will ever get finished.

Oh, Foil's 'Never Got Hip' brought a smile to my face there, mostly for "Reviver Gene".

So, er ... all this chat about Any Other City being "robbed" and everything ... this is all a big joke or something, yeh? Only I listened to it today, for the first time ever, and fuck me if it won't be the last. The C86isms are OK -- sometimes surprisingly decent -- but nothing to write home about; seriously, though, those vocals! I know I'm prone to sweeping exaggeration but that might be one of the most fucking horrible noises I've ever heard in my life :o

only one of these records is actually any good

50. Lapsus Linguae - You Got Me Fraiche
49. Funk D'Void - Volume Freak
48. Dead Or American - Ends
47. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
46. De Rosa - Mend
45. James Yorkston - When The Haar Rolls In
44. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
43. Found - This Mess We Keep Reshaping
42. Christ. - Metamorphic Reproduction Miracle
41. Laeto - Zwoa
40. Sons & Daughters - Love The Cup
39. The Delgados - Hate
38. James Yorkston - The Year Of The Leopard
37. Y'All Is Fantasy Island - Rescue Weekend
36. Foil - Never Got Hip
35. Half Cousin - The Function Room
34. Withered Hand - Good News
33. The Beta Band - Hot Shots II
32. Butcher Boy - React Or Die
31. Half Cousin - Iodine
30. Macrocosmica - Art of the Black Earth
29. Life Without Buildings - Any Other City
28. The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage
27. The Twilight Sad - Forget The Night Ahead
26. Mogwai - Rock Action
25. Arab Strap - The Last Romance
24. Aerogramme - My Heart Has A Wish That You Would Not Go
23. Idlewild - The Remote Part
22. Biffy Clyro - Puzzle
21. Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastophe Waitress
20. Malcolm Middleton - Into The Woods
19. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
18. Uncle John & Whitelock - There Is Nothing Else
17. King Creosote - Rocket DIY
16. Meursault - Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues
15. De Rosa - Prevention
14. Mogwai - Happy Songs For Happy People
13. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
12. Arab Strap - The Red Thread
11. Aerogramme - Sleep And Release
10. Mogwai - Mr Beast
9. Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
8. The Delgados - The Great Eastern
7. Arab Strap - Monday At The Hug & Pint
6. King Creosote - KC Rules OK
5. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
4. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
3. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
2. The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
1. Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows

you are both talking complete crap

david scott should leave scotland, he never gets any respect. i always thought it was the vocals on 'any other city' that made it anything other than run of the mill.

So, er ... all this chat about Any Other City being "robbed" and everything ... this is all a big joke or something, yeh? Only I listened to it today, for the first time ever, and fuck me if it won't be the last. The C86isms are OK -- sometimes surprisingly decent -- but nothing to write home about; seriously, though, those vocals! I know I'm prone to sweeping exaggeration but that might be one of the most fucking horrible noises I've ever heard in my life :o

Why u braek hart? Any Other City is my favorite record of the decade, from Scotland or anywhere else.

I was talking crap; only 2 of those records then

just a wee joke, let's be cool

Frightened Rabbit take a bewildering early lead
http://www.scotsman.com/CustomPages/CustomPage.aspx?PageID=81565

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VQbFP5fqfM

lol at this video.

http://thequietus.com/articles/06709-remember-remember

pure remember remember street teamed out my nut.

errors new album stream

http://drownedinsound.com/news/4144367-album-stream--errors-have-some-faith-in-magic

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/popstar-barman-hipsway-frontman-grahame-6977329

Anyone see that BBC2 documentary last night about Scottish post-punk? Not bad but I barely know any of them.

I like Dr Cosmo's Tape Lab

Cannot recommend Michael Train's "Kilt By Death" compilation more strongly for a thorough overview of Scottish punk and post-punk esoterica.

Turkey Bones and the Wild Dogs innit?
Mad Bad Missouri Buffalo

I enjoyed 'Big Gold Dream', didn't mind that it concentrated on the Fast/Pop:Aural and Postcard associated scenes, plenty to find interesting. Can see that it's maybe a bit narrow for general viewing.

Not bad but I barely know any of them.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 16 April 2017 14:46

That made it sound like a criticism, I didn't mean it like that.