SCOTLAND's greatest lost bands? Crumbs, where to start? My thoughts turned to this matter as I was alphabetising my vinyl the other night, as one must in the dead of winter. I came across loads of contenders. The Right Stuff. The Painted Word. His Latest Flame. The Indian Givers. Slice. Slide. Syndicate. The River Detectives. Wild River Apples. The Apples. Other bands using permutations of the words river and apples.
Other bands who emerged in the mid-1980s to early 1990s gold rush for Scottish bands. Acts who, usually, signed a nominally big deal with a major label, got one album away, then split after coming up against a label suddenly desperate to recoup their outlay while simultaneously facing indifference anywhere outside the Central Belt.
Loads of bands, all lost. Many of them doing that bloody Celtic rock thing. None of them very good, far less great. As happy coincidence has it, though, this week brings exciting news of the return of The Two That Got Away: Ayrshire's The Trashcan Sinatras and Edinburgh's The Lost Soul Band, in the shape of their core singer-songwriter Gordon Grahame.
On the basis set out above, neither band can really be described as lost. Neither signed for big money to a big label. Partly because they were on smaller labels, partly because they were self-sufficient little units, but mainly because they were proper bands rather than the wee indulgences of hobbyists, both managed to get three albums out before, respectively, their label went tits up or they themselves split up. But theyíre lost insofar as theyíre not now popular and huge. Because the Trashcans and Grahame have struggled for ages. Because they disappeared from view even though their music, unlike that of most of their peers, lives on, great and inspirational and vital.
What Roddy Frame's Aztec Camera were in the early 1980s, The Trashcan Sinatras were in the early 1990s. Melodic, inventive, literate, heartfelt music, built from traditional tools - the jangly guitar and the soaring voice - but somehow alchemising precious new strains of pop.
The Lost Soul Band, meanwhile, were a band out of time. They, too, were using a tried-and-tested formula, that of Bob Dylan-tinged, Gram Parsons-ish, folky, rootsy rock. But they were doing this in 1992 and 1993, before that brief time when Gomez were dead cool. Before "Americana", as now typified by Ryan Adams and newer bands like My Morning Jacket, was hip. Even before "alt-country", as heard in Uncle Tupelo and later Wilco, was The Thing in the UK. When The Jayhawks signed to Rick Rubinís edgy Def American label, and released the album Hollywood Town Hall to enthusiastic praise in the NME, they supported the Edinburghers at Londonís Mean Fiddler. That was how happeniní The Lost Soul Band were. |
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I should declare an interest here. I worked for The Lost Soul Band for a while. But I wouldn't have worked for them if I didn't think they were brilliant. Anyway, both are back. The Trashcan Sinatras are playing King Tut's in Glasgow tomorrow night. It's to tee up the release of Zebra Of The Family, a collection of 41 - count 'em - B-sides, demos and unreleased songs spanning the period 1986 to 1997, available via their website. Later this year will come a "proper" new album called Weightlifting. It features Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake on one song and has been part-funded by the Scottish Arts Council. While previously lumbered with something of an antipathy towards the necessary evil of doing interviews and stuff, the band intend to fully push this new one, honest guv.
Through my letterbox this week popped a CD in a funny cardboard box. It was from a Brighton company, Red Design, who had set up their own label. It was a bit fiddly, and I'd never heard of them, and the accompanying bumf made no mention of what was on the CD. I shoved it to one side. Two days later I was looking for something to play and idly jemmied open the box. The CD was called Our Troubles End Tonight, credited to Lucky Jim, but the songwriting was ascribed to Gordon Grahame. Then that smoky voice, Penicuik via Minnesota, came out of the speakers. Grahame, having escaped the implosion of the LSB by busking through Amsterdam, Barcelona and San Francisco before settling in Brighton, is still singing of late nights, too much booze, "a skinful of dope" and an achey-breaky heart. Lovely stuff.
"The title Weightlifting sums up things for us," says Trashcans singer Frank Reader. "We've had a whole bunch of pressures - a load of songs, people's expectations, the financial problems. This record feels like a great hot air balloon journey into the sky. It's uplifting."
Scotland's greatest lost souls have found themselves again. And the wandering has done them good.
Originally appeared in the Scotsman.
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