Er, what? I hear you say. Tips from GoNorth? As in the GoNorth which took place on Wednesday and Thursday last fucking week?

Yes, that GoNorth. Basically, none of you really live in Inverness anyway, do you, so it’s not like you could go to the gigs in the first place. So the fact that the hangovers from the partying last week, the gig on the weekend and the inevitable results of a sunny day in Scotland means I am only posting this now presumably makes little difference – it’s basically just some music tips on the internet, one way or another, so who cares if they’re a week too late to actually see the gigs.

Cough. You all totally bought that excuse, didn’t you.

Good, then we shall proceed. On Thursday last week there was a bloggers’ showcase, curated by The Pop Cop, Peenko and myself so I suppose I’d better start there as you would bloody well hope I would like those bands, wouldn’t you.

Well the two I’d pick from our lineup would be two bands you’ve heard quite a bit about on here already: the surfy slacker pop of The Yawns, whose debut album made the Song, by Toad Top 20 albums for 2013, and the hyperactive, shouty guitar racket of Garden of Elks. The Elks have been playing an odd game of bass player top trumps with PAWS, and I’m not really sure who won, because the band sounded just as sharp and boisterous after the change as they did before it, so maybe it doesn’t really matter.

Apart from the *cough* obvious excellence of my own personal recommendations for the blogger lineup there were a couple of other right noisy bands who happened to clash with our stage times, but who I was determined to nip out to catch at least a bit of.

Both played one after another in what can best be described as the ‘cosy’ setting of the Market Bar, a place which is very much too small to be a venue, but nevertheless applied itself to the job with cheerful success. Birdhead are a sort of thunderous, two-headed Zack Galafinakis and were a mere day away from releasing their debut album when they played in Inverness. Their music is at times a bit too heavy for my personal taste, and at others, it’s ragingly, hypnotically awesome. And when they’re a yard ahead of you battering this stuff out straight at your face it’s even more impressive.

Pinact are a band I haven’t really written about as much as I should have on this site actually. I saw them at Sneaky’s for the first time about a year or so ago and they’re really good – sort of a cross between PAWS and Dolfinz I suppose, if you’re familiar with those bands. Or, to put it another way, slacker rock turned up loud enough that it broke my ears for two days afterwards and was played with such ferocity that the term ‘slacker’ seemed rather inappropriate.

 This is an impossible album for me to review objectively for a few reasons. Firstly, Rob St. John, who is signed to Song, by Toad Records is in the band, which doesn’t help. But also, having known these guys since I very first became involved with the local music scene here in Edinburgh, the band are good friends of mine now and so objectively evaluating their music is basically impossible.

Having said that, for a lot of their fans it will be the same way. We’ve been waiting for this album for over five years now, longer depending on how early in their development you first started going to see the band, and by the time you reach that level of tortured anticipation you can’t really hear anything without the interference of years worth of expectations and imaginings. It’s like seeing the movie version of a beloved book you’ve been reading and re-reading ever since your childhood.

That was kind of my response on first listen, as well: a sort of flat “Oh, right. Okay.” It wasn’t like it wasn’t what I had expected, because it was, it was more that after all this time it sounded exactly like an eagleowl album, rather than the massive flood of cathartic relief I felt that I needed. To give you some idea of what I’m hinting at, certain members of the band have been in the pub pretty much constantly since the release date – that sort of sense of relief! As a mere punter, however, I just had a record to listen to, not a euphoric sense of the final culmination of six or seven years of work.

Mind you, the time its taken me to get into the album sort of mirrors how I got into the band in the first place. Compared to their Edinburgh contemporaries, with Meursault and Broken Records it was instantaneous, with Withered Hand it was a delayed-but-sudden realisation, whereas with eagleowl the progression from ‘they’re pretty good’ to ‘fuck me this is awesome’ was slow and steady and took a good year or so.

On my first listens to This Silent Year I couldn’t help but struggle with the feeling of tension in it. Working on the album for this long seems to have smoothed out a little of the looseness and the ragged edges of the live show, and that is subtly but definitely to the detriment of the record, I think it’s fair to say.

Having said that, whilst that seemed significant on the first few listens, it has seemed less and less so as time goes on. The band don’t exactly vary things sharply, but this is a really well-constructed album with a proper emotional trajectory, and that means I have gone back to listen to it again and again since release. A little like when I first started going to see the band play, this has given me the time to let the inherent tension and tightly repressed emotional expression in the songs seep in slowly, so that the release I was expecting on listening to the album doesn’t come from the album as whole, but from allowing the album to deliver it when it’s ready. Until then, you just have to put up with more agonising and seemingly interminable anticipation.

The first little uncoiling comes from the second song, eagleowl vs. Woodpigeon, when the perpetual tease of Forgetting loosens up into something more expansive and lush. Even so, the true moment of catharsis doesn’t come until about five or six minutes from the end of the album. Here, all the gorgeous harmonies, rich, deep string arrangements and slow, clenched drumming cut loose into a massive crescendo which finally, finally delivers the euphoria I’d been expecting when I first listened to the album. And then there is five minutes of massive, krauty, messy cacophony, before it all burns off and the album closes with the whispered gentleness of Laughter.

So yes, they made us wait seven years for the bloody album, and even then they made us hang on for another bloody forty minutes before they finally give us that ‘fuck yeah’ air-punching moment we’ve already been made to wait so long for. It’s about the most malicious case of musical blue-balls I’ve ever seen. But umm, at least they deliver in the end.

Band website – Buy on vinyl or CD from Fence Records

eagleowl – Laughter (Toad Session) from Song, by Toad on Vimeo.

 It’s nice to be right.

I remember when this lot first appeared, with the awesome, shouty This Morning We Are Astronauts, the very first thing which went through my head was that age-old Toad mantra: don’t get too excited, it’s just the one song. I know I say that all the damn time on this site, but it’s more for myself than it is for you, I must be honest. It’s so easy in this business to hear something new and awesome and then to go rambling excitedly away about it before you really have much idea if the band are going to be any good or not in the long run.

Obviously a four-song EP isn’t all that much more new information, but in general I get a really good feeling about these guys. I saw them play live at Sneaky’s again recently, as part of the Wide Days festival, and they were great. Niall snarls out at you from behind his beard, Ryan seems to be powering the bass guitar entirely by the energy of a thousand crotch-thrusts, and Kirstin manages to look wild-eyed and rock ‘n’ roll and yet curiously calm and collected all at once. And it is, simply put, just great pop music. Shouty-as-fuck pop music with loud, snarling guitars maybe, but nevertheless infectious as balls and huge amounts of fun.

There are a couple of songs from the EP available for preview on the band’s Soundcloud page, as well as both the earlier singles. The EP is available to buy here on CD or cassette, and if you do so you’ll notice one other thing which bodes well for the future of this band. I’ve written before, in reviews of Brown Brogues and PAWS, that the danger of being a band largely defined by intense, raucous pop songs is that when you move on to album territory (assuming you do) then there is the risk of wearing out the listener a little by going at them hammer and tongs for forty minutes.

Limpy the Javelin Thrower, the third track on Extended Play, whilst just as wonky as the rest of the EP, gives the sonic battering a bit of a rest and in doing so suggests that this lot know what they’re doing a little more than you might be able to guess from two boisterous pop singles. Good times ahead, I would hope.

There really ain’t much on the internet about Law Holt, but this really is very, very good.  She shares a manager, I believe, with Anticon’s Young Fathers, who are based here in Edinburgh too. Well, either that, or the fact that he is both their manager and also my friend meant he simply passed something my way he thought I would like – I forgot to ask – but Young Fathers are definitely involved somehow.

Whilst we get on well, and agree about most things when it comes to aimless music industry chatter, Tim and I don’t actually share that much musical taste in common. Bagel Project was one we agreed upon recently, however, with that odd combination of muffled RnB vocals, stumbling samples and fuzzy lo-fi, and I think there is a link between the two – it’s probably how he guessed I might like this stuff anyway.

The assembly of the actual music is woozy and grumbly, with shades of dreampop and lo-fi. The vocals have a slightly glutinous quality, with the enticing impression of someone who could cut loose and warble the shit out of a song if she so chose, but who instead keeps it subtle and restrained. As this is music slightly out of my general area of familiarity I have no idea what I will make of future stuff, beyond the one song there seems to be available on the internet at the moment, but I will most certainly be going along on the 2nd May to the Love Music Hate Racism event at the Voodoo Rooms to find out more.

 It’s been a while since I randomly happened across a really good Edinburgh band on the internet – probably Magic Eye or Plastic Animals would be the last ones – but I clicked on this from the Facebook feed of someone I don’t properly remember a couple of days ago. It’s been sitting in an open tab in my browser ever since and it’s really, really good.

Without remembering whose link I clicked on, I honestly can’t tell you much about this lot. Their Facebook page tells me little beyond the nationalities of the two people involved – Portuguese and Greek, as it happens – but precious little else.

All I have to go on is this three-song, pay what you like download from Bandcamp, and as flimsy amounts of information about a band go, it’s pretty impressive.

I have to confess I wasn’t grabbed immediately, however. That happens a lot with me – working on something else, music playing in some tab or other, somewhat distracted, you know the drill – but the obviously infectious hook in the second song Justice is Light (and Blood) grabbed me immediately. The hook itself, as well as a lot of the other elements of this music, are evocative of some of the deep house or dark house stuff I’ve been sent recently, but I wouldn’t quite categorise the overall feel of the music that way.

There are shades of polyrhythmic indie music, sample-heavy electronica and atmospheric soundscapes, and the combination generates a kind of music which could easily not be my thing, but in this case very much is – probably because, for all it embraces all these elements, it doesn’t lean too heavily on any one, which I like. It makes it all seem a little more mysterious and less predictable.

Closer Green Land ends the EP in a wonderfully moody, dreamy fug, and Supersonic Speed Freak opens it with a fantastically insistent ukulele and drum-fuelled romp, and they sandwich the best pure pop hook on the EP.  Three songs, all quite different, but with a real sense of unity and, for a free three-song debut EP by a mystery band, a really impressive piece of work.

 Alright, let’s be straight about my subjectivity here: Johnny Lynch is a pal, and as tends to happen when my friends release music, I was terrified I wouldn’t like this.

Friendship apart, that wasn’t a totally unjustified fear.  One of Johnny’s favourite bands is Hot Chip, who I think are fucking dreadful, and his last big release was the disco-tastic* Silver Columns album.

Now, I loved Silver Columns but a Pictish Trail album which explored more Hot Chip leanings might very well not have been my cup of tea, and with the band’s recent penchant for huge, full-band wig-outs I was nervous that the idiosyncratic charm I find so engaging about The Pictish Trail might be a bit smothered.

I have to confess that my fears were not entirely allayed by the pre-release teaser track Of Course You Exist, which I don’t mind and which makes sense in the context of the whole album, but is nevertheless not my favourite Pictish Trail song.  I would have said the same about Michael Rocket actually – although that’s a song I have come to really like subsequently, I wasn’t smitten the first time around.

In fact, when you think about it, it’s sort of an odd tribute to this record that so much of it is comprised of songs I knew well before the release, and yet the album still managed to surprise me. Michael Rocket, The Handstand Crowd, Of Course You Exist and I Will  Pour it Down (see a really early Toad Session recording of that one below) make up much of the backbone of this record, but having heard those songs I still had little idea of how it would actually feel to listen to Secret Soundz Vol. 2 for the first time.

So, having added a remarkable number of caveats and mean-spirited asides, it’s probably time to admit that I love this album.  Funnily enough, it’s not so much the big songs which I have ended up loving, as much as it’s been the filler.  Not that there is filler on here per se, but when people call things ‘album tracks’ it sort of implies the same thing.  Here there are a good few ‘album tracks’ which, in my view, absolutely make the record.

You probably couldn’t take them out of context all that easily, but songs like Sequels and Wait Until are far less insistent than others on the album, and yet they manage to simultaneously be my favourite to listen to in and of themselves, and also to anchor the rest of the record.  Tunes I wasn’t as keen on to begin with, like Michael Rocket and The Handstand Crowd, find a place amongst songs like that which seems to make more sense.

The Pictish Trail – I Will Pour It Down (Toad Session) from Song, by Toad on Vimeo.

I may have known I Will Pour it Down before this album, but honestly, I didn’t know it as it sounds now. The recording on here is absolutely gorgeous, and perhaps hints at what I mean when I talk about certain songs providing the context.

The Pictish Trail can produce big old pop songs, but whilst they are good, and whilst they flesh out the range of the sound, they are several layers away from what makes this music genuinely special.  There is a simple, personal warmth about Secret Soundz Vol. 2 which mirrors its maker, and which gives the listener a real sense of belonging.  The slower, more elusive tunes seem to embody that more, somehow.  The wobbly synth and twinkling electronics, instead of adding coldness to the more organic elements of guitar and gorgeously delivered vocals, seem to add an approachable charm.

There’s a documentary about the making of this record embedded below.  For the last year and a bit Johnny has been living up on the Isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides, which is where this album was recorded. It’s easy to superimpose impressions retrospectively once you know the provenance of a record, but instead of imbuing his album with a sense of the bleakness or grandiosity of the Scottish countryside, or indeed of the isolation of living in a static caravan on an island with a sparsely distributed population of eighty people, instead this seems to embody the warmth of having a cosy wee home and the increased intimacy of the friendships you make in situations like that.

I’m still not sure about Of Course You Exist, I suppose, but everything else which I wasn’t as keen on in isolation makes sense when pulled back into the eddies of the album. This is a gentle, odd record of strange detours, and one with moments of genuine tenderness and emotional impact.

And by happy c0incidence, the band happen to be playing at The Caves tonight with eagleowl, as the final night in an epic month of touring.  You can buy this record there on vinyl, of course, or you can go to the Fence Records webshop and do so there instead.  I strongly recommend you do one or the other.

*Yes, yes, I know no-one says disco-tastic anymore.

The above video is for b-side Today’s Cross by Frightened Rabbit. I mention this for two reasons:

Firstly, I really like the song.  This is good news, as I wasn’t that keen on their last album, and they are really nice guys so I genuinely want to like their stuff.  Now I am looking forward to hearing their new record Pedestrian Verse, which is good.

Secondly, the video above was made by young Ian who works for Song, by Toad Records, along with some of his chums.  It’s a clever wee video in its own right, but its sheer slick professionalism rather raises the question of why everything at Song, by Toad Records is so fucking shambolic.  I assume this is a subtle hint that we could and should be doing better!

So well done old chap, a fine piece of work. If only everything around here were so well-executed!

 I have to say, I am not that convinced by the band name – lucky the music’s good.

There are two songs on their Soundcloud page and for all that doesn’t tell you much about a band, I certainly think these two tunes show great promise.

First tune Sleep With Me Baby is a louche, easy tune which recalls Mac DeMarco a wee bit.  It’s electronic pop, but lazily slow, and delivered with something of an arched eyebrow.  It’s lo-fi too, but the vocal is rich and soothing (or slightly predatory, if you’re lyrically inclined) and that gives the song a slightly more polished sheen.

Byron is a little more of a bedroom recording, but the underlying nature of these songs has a certain plush pop character, so I get the impression they might work as big lush recordings as well, but for now I don’t think that’s necessary.

I find I have the sudden urge to smoke cigarettes, drink martinis and wear a burgundy crushed velvet tux for some reason.

I have been waiting so fucking long for this album that first time I wrote about Rick Redbeard doesn’t even appear on the site anymore, because I lost it when a bunch of posts died in the great WordPress changeover fuckup of 2007.

I wrote about his music again that October, and said the following:

“If you put his songs up alongside those of Kurt Wagner, Sam Beam, Robert Fisher and Will Oldham then I defy you to spot the callow newcomer in amongst the indie legends. He is not copying this genre, he is adding to it, with gorgeous music that sits comfortably along far more illustrious acts with every right to hold its head confidently high in such company.”

As frontman of the Phantom Band, whose intervening success I assume has delayed this album as long as it has, you could hardly call Rick Anthony a callow newcomer anymore, but the rest still stands: this is pretty straightforward stuff.  It’s a sort of acoustic pop album with strong elements of folk and country, and if you combine that description with the comparisons I made above you’ll have a pretty clear idea of what you’ll be listening to.

It is a sub-genre which has existed for years though, and despite the additions to its ranks being so voluminous, occasionally someone comes along who creates something with such sparkle it manages to catch your eye, despite being the proverbial needle in a haystack. This is one of those albums.

Could I tell you why I think No Selfish Heart is exceptional? No, I am not sure I can. Subtle technical points can be made, I suppose. The variation of sound and song structure keeps the album interesting, for example, with floaty meandering tunes like the exceptional Old Blue at one end, the more traditional folk structures of Kelvin Grove at another, and more straightforward, acoustic pop songwriting like Any Way I Can at another.

Lyrically this spans the somewhat schmaltzy in Now We’re Dancing and the really rather creepy in Cold as Clay, but there are also moments of humour such as the moment he talks of “standing at the foot of your bed, wearing just my beard and a smile”.

The instrumentation is also beautifully judged, and everything has a reason for being there.  There is little more than what I think is a shruti box or an acoustic guitar at times, sometimes that is embellished with a little piano or some violin, and more rarely a very judicious use of drums and bass, but the latter setup is a rare one. Nevertheless these careful, if subtle, variations mean the album is absolutely never boring, and that for all the this genre has fairly little scope for surprise, it is always moving towards somewhere slightly different from where it is, and this last fact particularly makes it a constantly rewarding listen.

Technical pish aside, however, it helps that so many of the songs on No Selfish Heart are just plain fucking beautiful to listen to. Old Blue, Cold As Clay and Any Way I Can are stunning.  I’ve mentioned them already, but there are plenty of others.  It’s just a gorgeous album, start to finish, and well worth the six years I’ve been waiting for it to materialise.

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 Given that I have put these guys on in Edinburgh recently, and given that this album is comfortably in my top 20 for 2012, you’d think I’d have reviewed the fucking thing before now really, wouldn’t you. But no, that would have made sense, and things making sense is not what we specialise in around here.

Given that many of the people in this band have previous, and distinctly awkward previous in some cases, I wasn’t expected this laid back, slightly surfy guitar sound, nor the hint of swagger with which it is delivered. Frontman Sean Armstrong has done two albums (first – second) of his own stuff, both of which are rather less than polished, and a couple of the band play in Battery Face whose music is also far from gentle.

I am also always kind of intrigued when bands forgo the traditional route of drip-feeding singles into the world to gauge reaction and build anticipation and just go ‘ah fuck it, we made an album and here it is’. Commercially I am not sure it’s all that sensible a thing to do, but personally I have a bit of a soft spot for this approach – it just seems refreshingly blunt.

The album itself starts incredibly strongly; as openings go both Summer Wasted and Butterfleyes are absolutely brilliant. There’s a sort of insouciance to this kind of guitar playing which I love, and watching Sean perform at Henry’s last weekend, his awkward between-song banter was in something of a contrast to his dapper, cool delivery of the songs.

Every once in a while the guitar riffs can sound a little familiar from one song to the next, and I think halfway through the record things  are in dangers of just drifting a little.  Neither Jean Thumb nor I Win really grab me as much as the rest of the album. They’re not bad tunes by any means, but there’s a touch of sameyness about them which risks bogging down an otherwise excellent album.  Fortunately, that is swiftly alleviated by the nicely executed changes of pace of Take Me to the Moon Please and the meandering but excellent Gav’s Memory.

So all in all, it’s not perfect, this, but there’s a load of awesome stuff on The Yawns’ debut and their live performance was cracking at Henry’s the other night.  I think we might just have an excellent new band on our hands here, which is good news.

Buy digitally from Bandcamp, on tape from Giant Hell or on vinyl from Records Records Records.