Scuff
This is a recommendation from Sparrow & the Workshop, albeit one I am finally latching onto properly something like six months after I was initally tipped off during their Toad Session.
The band, or nom-de-guerre I suppose, in question is Scuff, and there are still only three songs on his MySpace page, so I suppose things have hardly been progressing with a frantic sense of urgency in his part of the world either. Only three perhaps, but they are really good songs.   The only sentence on the MySpace page that offers any sort of insight into what we’re listening to is this one:
band stuff can get complicated and it’s nice just to be able to play a bunch of songs that you like
The songs sound just like that as well. I maintain that the Scots, and the Glaswegians in particular, have a unique flair for a characteristic form of rambling interior monologue. These are rendered special by their signature blend of grandeur and melodrama, mixed with irony and scathing self-mockery. They are simultaneously entirely serious and entirely tongue-in-cheek and I have never really heard their like elsewhere.
Scuff’s lyrics, coupled with that one line about eschewing the complications of bands, seem to put this music in a similar sort of territory. It’s one side of a random personal conversation, delivered in an open, uncontrived manner, and it really works. The guitar style is really nice as well and I don’t know how many more songs like this Scuff (Dougie, if I remember correctly) has in him, but I for one am very keen to hear more.
Scuff – Sailing 3 Sheets to the Wind
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I really like the dirty guitar sound, though I’m not sure I could sit through an album of it. Actually what the fuck am I talking about, I’ve only heard two tracks, who knows what tricks this lad has up his sleeve. Sorry for spraffing all over your lovely blog.
Well I feel a bit like that in the other direction. The other song on his MySpace page is good, but not something that I think is amazing, so there’s really very little to go on. These two songs, though, sound really promising.
They do sound good, it’s surprising what a full sound you get from a gritty guitar.
Well I think he’s got other projects on, so we might well not be able to expect anything new on a regular basis.
We should get him on a major label. Then they could add bass and drums and lots of bastard cymbals and strangle the fucking life out of it. Wouldn’t that be nice. I took a while to get used to that kind of sound, mostly via early Billy Bragg, but yes, I absolutely love it now.
I saw a bland band over the holidays and the drummer had a hexigon shaped cymbal, is there any need
Yes. Because it will hurt more when it gets shoved up his arse for being a tit.
Sabian have had an octagonal cymbal in their range for some time.
They tend to offer a clipped attack and a raw, rough-edged decay. They are apparently more durable than round cymbals, too.
I’d still go for Paiste though.
Oh my god: they call it a “Rocktagon”.
It’s clearly what I’ve been looking for all the years. If I get one of them then my band’s sure to be “rocking”. Oh, huzzah!
Rocktagon has got to be word of the week surely.
Sounds like another t-shirt’s brewing…
Do they sell a funkazoidal one?
Funkazoidal Rocktagon would be a good t-shirt just by itself.
Band name? The Crankangular Funkazoidal Rocktagons.
Someone always has to take it too far.
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It’s fun to stay at the…
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I am going to make this suggestion, and I don’t want anyone to take it the wrong way, but I am starting to see signs that one or two of us might just have a little too much time on our hands. Just maybe.
[...] received an email the other day from a friend of mine who records under the name of Scuff (MySpace here) tipping me off about a band he plays in called Fur Hood. And they’re [...]