Well, after last year’s obsession with rough and ready lo-fi garage rock, this year* has already thrown up two excellent Scottish releases which, whilst they share a lot of the lo-fi aesthetic, are very much more morose, downbeat affairs.

The first of those I’m going to be discussing is Smackvan, who formerly released with the excellent but now sadly defunct Benbecula Records.

I’ve not been particularly prompt about reviewing this album, I have to confess, but that shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of enthusiasm.  It may be downbeat and low key, but even at the first listen I really enjoyed this album.

It sounds very much like a bedroom recording, but then again it’s a bedroom sound delivered in the style of a late night conversation, so the production really.  It does drift intriguingly though, with the lo-fi growly guitars and rattly drums being superseded at times by something smoother.  It’s almost as if the late night conversation I mentioned had moved from sharing a couple of cans in a bedsit to sharing a whisky in a dark Victorian living room. This contrast shows up most noticeably in the development from awkward opener 4am to the lush and lovely Black Eyes.

It’s an odd stylistic shift, and one you don’t see too often, but it works very well.  On an emotional level it seems to imply that the feelings being expressed are well-contained, resigned on some occasions and raw and bitter on others, which seems to fit well with the emotional range of the songs themselves.

For an album like this the challenge always seems to be to retain the attention for the full length of the record, but this is relatively short and the aforementioned shifts in mood, as well as timely interruptions by the likes of the wonderful instrumental song Cello keep my attention comfortably. I know people like me taking ages to review it is partly to blame, but as Scottish releases and Scottish bands go Smackvan and Sound in Space seem to really be quite criminally underrated by the musically inclined population around here.

Smackvan – 4am

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Smackvan – Black Eyes

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*Time of writing, not time of release, obviously!