Subscribe

Search



Edinburgh, London, Stoneybridge…

Thanks to everyone who came to see our live shows in Edinburgh and London last week (especially the people who came all the way to London from Bristol; sorry we didn’t play your favourite song). There are pictures of the Edinburgh show here and pictures of the London show here.

Here’s the Independent‘s review of the London show…

“Who mentioned Stoneybridge?” asks Swimmer One’s snappily waistcoated singer with a laugh after opening this short but persuasive appearance with Largs Hum, a pumping, soaring electro anthem about a mysterious low-frequency noise that has plagued the inhabitants of a small Strathclyde town for more than 20 years. The song begins with the Edinburgh poet Rodney Relax enumerating the names of various rain-lashed Scottish coastal towns - Rothsay, Dunoon, Campbelltown… but not, tellingly, Stoneybridge, the town that became a byword for Caledonian parochialism in the early 1990s thanks to the Channel 4 sketch-show series Absolutely.

Andrew Eaton and Hamish Brown make their angsty but uplifting electronic pop in a small attic by the sea just north of the Scottish capital, and their songs often evoke the wind-blown expanses of the Scottish countryside and coastline. But there’s little narrow-minded or hidebound about their exhilarating debut, The Regional Variations, one of the finest of this year’s freshman efforts. It is, indeed, an “attempt”, they say, “to describe the fascinating differences between people”. The album draws on some of the best elements of Scottish pop over the past 20 years (the Blue Nile, The Associates, Belle and Sebastian) and some of the best elements of English pop over the past 20 years (Pulp, The Pet Shop Boys, Kitchens of Distinction) to create something stirringly fresh and smart.

The endearingly camp Eaton, with his tousled, Bryan Ferry looks and jokes about his unlikely penchant for Strongbow, makes for an engaging frontman. Brown, meanwhile, is a synth-pop boffin as imagined by Charles Schulz. The actress Laura Cameron Lewis, who as part of the Edinburgh theatre collective Highway Diner has worked with, among others, Franz Ferdinand, cuts a commanding dash in Debbie Harry monochrome stripes and is a striking keyboard player, singer and tambourine shaker.

National Theatre and The Balance Company both sound like killer hit singles - beefier, more erudite takes on the kind of now deeply unfashionable dance-pop essayed by Jon Marsh’s somewhat unfairly derided Balearic outfit The Beloved. National Theatre - “a love song for shy people” - chews over the lack of privacy in modern relationships, while The Balance Company, based in part on Wings of Desire, steps inside the mind of a disaffected guardian angel and features the excellent line: “Keep singing the first part, and you will be fine/ The company disco will teach you to dance in time”. The title of the set closer, We Just Make Music for Ourselves, smacks of Stoneybridge insularity, but as Eaton steps off the stage into the crowd to sing, the warmth and inclusiveness of their music becomes crystal clear. It’d be a shame if this clever band remain a purely provincial concern.

Permalink • Save in De.li.cious

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


<< Back to main