Bankruptcy, bailiffs and eight years down the line, one of Scotland's finest bands have finally released a new album. Campbell Docherty spoke to the Trashcan Sinatras about the long road back from the brink.
The great god of rock'n'roll can be a capricious, Jehovan sort of deity.
He takes this pre-destination thing pretty seriously too, puts a lot of thought into which bands are going to make it and which ones are going, no matter what they do, to be flicked back into obscurity after a brief dalliance with the big time.
At least, this is the only explanation I can find for how some dreadful acts thrive and others, infinitely better, do not.
It's your classic Keane and Trashcan Sinatras scenario innit?
However after 15 years of heroically not taking the hint - with three awesome albums in the 1990s winning them less and less of an audience and the small matter of bankruptcy, being made homeless etcetera - the Trashcans, a five piece from Ayrshire, only seem to be getting stronger.
New self-financed LP Weightlifting is a comeback like no other I can think of; in the truest sense of the word, it is a comeback from the brink.
A record of spectacular beauty spun from a simple two guitar, bass and drums line-up. No trickery, a splash of horns here, a dash of strings there.
Experience has also distilled singer Frank Reader's formerly canny and sometimes arch wordplay lyrics.
They used to sing things like "useless is just something beginning with U" and "Little bohemian lost his sheep" who turns out to be called "Clich?e Guevara."
But Weightlifting is more direct.
Reader, speaking before last week's gig at the city's Bar Academy, agreed.
"After the number of years we have been on the planet you would hope that a little bit of wisdom would rub off from somewhere.
"Me and John (Douglas, guitarist and one of four songwriters in the band) still like messing around with words and coming up with puns but this record, after everything we had gone through, just naturally came out more direct."
The band's troubles started in 1997 when their record label Go!Discs folded. Tragically, the band were on course to score an unlikely - and career saving - hit with a cover of To Sir With Love, which had been playlisted by Radio One.
From there, with no interest from other recording companies, the band began to run up huge debts with their studio and sometime home, Shabby Road in Kilmarnock.
In the end, the band had to throw in the financial towel.
"To be honest, declaring bankruptcy was a comfort," said Reader. "We had sunk so low that not having to hide from the doorbell and squirreling away our gear was quite a relief."
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Reader was even hounded by tabloid journalists who thought that - because he was travelling to the US to see his American girlfriend - he must be fleeing the country.
Of course, it might have had something to do with his sister being Eddi Reader of Fairground Attraction and Perfect fame.
The band regrouped and, with a strong fanbase in the US and Japan supplemented by an active website, managed to scrape together the money to record their new album - eight years after their third.
Critically it has been a hit and the signs are that, slowly but surely, people are discovering the band afresh.
"The thing that kept us going was the songs we had and wanting to get them recorded.
"The whole feeling behind the band is different now. I suppose it is like when your dad tells you to save up your pocket money and when you get the thing you really want, it will be all the sweeter.
"We are a lot closer as a band now and we feel stronger and defiant."
The album's clarion call of an opener Welcome Back says it all: "...everyone's alive, everyone survived; "are we so alone?" echoes down the hall."
The Bar Academy gig was a triumph. The band, unable to afford a press agent, managed to attract a better crowd than they could have seriously hoped for with hardly any pre-publicity at all.
The five, joined on keyboards by fine Glasgow singer-songwriter Roddy Hart, took a thrilling ride through their back catalogue but played surprisingly few songs from Weightlifting.
When they did though, Got Carried Away, All The Dark Horses, Freetime and the title track shone as brightly as they do on record.
Subdued slightly by the flu, the band reined in the volume slightly and opted for quieter versions of older songs - Hayfever and Only Tongue Can Tell the highlights.
Perhaps, just perhaps, luck is finally running with the Trashcans and eight years of refusing to bow to the inevitable (because it doesn't have to be inevitable) will pay off.
No band - and I really mean no band - could deserve it more.
Originally appeared in the Birmingham Post. |
