Ten essential Edinburgh bands (not including us)
I just wrote a magazine feature for the Scotsman about Edinburgh’s burgeoning music scene. It’s struck me for a while now that Edinburgh is an exciting place to be at the moment in terms of pop music, thanks to bands like Found in particular, nights like Limbo, and Born to Be Wide, and supportive venues like the Voodoo Rooms, Cabaret Voltaire and the GRV. I’m struggling to keep track of the number of new bands starting up from week to week, and there’s a new level of camaraderie, friendly competition and general sociability amongst these bands that feels much more like Glasgow than Edinburgh, where I’ve long been used to bands basically hiding away, keeping themselves to themselves, and grumbling about how Glasgow bands have it easier. Collectives are forming, which then become labels, which then inspires other people to do the same. It’s lovely to see.
I’m certainly not the first music writer to notice this. The Skinny and The List have been making noises about the Edinburgh scene for some time now, as has Matthew James Young in his Song by Toad blog, which now includes podcasts and live sessions and has recently become a record label too (as has fellow Edinburgh blog 17Seconds, which has said very nice things about us in the past but which I forgot to mention in the piece, sorry Ed). Here’s a Song by Toad recording of my second favourite Edinburgh band (after Found), Meursault, playing an acoustic version of one of the best songs, The Furnace.
The Scotsman has been playing a part in all of this too, giving a lot of space to Edinburgh bands like Found, Meursault, Come On Gang!, Broken Records, Young Fathers and others, in features either written by me or others enthusiastic about what they’re hearing. So I thought it was about time the paper made a big thing out of it, and it was a good excuse to give Found their first (but not, I’m sure, their last) magazine cover. Anyone who knows me will know how often I bang on about how much I love Found - their attention to detail, their innovation, their funny lyrics and the fact that they’re as steeped in visual art as they are in music, having met at art school, and often combine both worlds in really interesting ways. Here’s Found performing their song When You Fall at a gig in Edinburgh last year - there’s lots more to look at and listen to at Found’s website.
Of course, there is one band conspicuous by their absence from this weekend’s Scotsman feature, and the accompanying ‘ten essential Edinburgh bands’ list. They’re a band who have played in all the venues mentioned above, who have had rave reviews in the Skinny and The List, who have shared a stage with Meursault and are about to play at the Tigerfest festival with Found. No, it’s not Saint Jude’s Infirmary or The Magnificents, bands I like very much but forgot to mention in the feature because they haven’t released anything for a while so had slipped off my radar. I mean little old us.
I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has said to me: ‘you should write a big feature about your band’. Usually it’s a joke, but sometimes it’s meant seriously. Some people genuinely can’t understand why I’m not using my day job to plug Swimmer One at every opportunity. The answer is hopefully obvious - it wouldn’t feel ethical. It would also be counterproductive - who would take a feature about how great the Edinburgh music scene is seriously if they think the writer is just doing it as an excuse to plug their own band? The downside of this, of course, is that there’s now a big national newspaper feature about Edinburgh’s music scene, in which Swimmer One are effectively written out of a story we should arguably be in.
Ho hum. Perhaps if I write the words ‘Critique’, ‘Andrew Eaton’ and ‘Edinburgh music scene’ into this last paragraph, any wealthy benefactors who are Googling the feature will stumble across this page and read about us too. Hello. We’re Swimmer One. We’re a band from Edinburgh who have won much praise for our melancholy, euphoric pop. You’ll find some of our music here, some short films here and a biog here. Enjoy.
Andrew
