Amundsen 's/t' (Bauta Records)
Wannabe epic rock from members of Gluecifer, Kaada and Locomotives. The most interesting thing about this record is the Op-Art sleeve. Might pick up later on but to be honest I couldn't be bothered to listen beyond the first ten minutes. Buy OK Computer instead.

Ship's A Going Down 'May She Marry A Ghost And Bear Him A Kitten EP' (Vacuous Pop Recordings)
Tedious post-rock nonsense from barely-out-of-teens trio. 'Fucking Rubbish' isn't a strong enough description for this beard stroking slop. Cross the road if you see them coming the other way.

Various 'Left Out - The Album' (Burning Haggis Records)

In which 15 bands with mostly crap names (Pink Monkey Bird anyone?) write 15 songs all called 'Left Out'. The Amphetameanies take the biscuit for worst thing here by dropping a full on horn-attack ska-turd on the careless listener (though Dexter make a good fist of raping the ears) while Amanda Brown with her glitching acoustic interpretation of the title is the high point. The rest is fairly perfunctory pubrock, nondescript indie and the kind of thing the producers of Taggart would think cutting edge. Dispensible.

The Chymes 'Written In Squares' (Monophonic Recordings)

We have two ears. It seems fairly obvious to state this but I think it needs to be said. Certainly not enough bands remember this rather essential detail. Monophonic Recordings could not be a less appropriate label name for a band putting out album after album of heavily panned machine-psyche rock as The Chymes have been doing for a couple of years now. Soft vocals drift over the top of relentless yet lazy beats while digital crunch and grind attacks you from all sides.....find this album, slap on a pair of headphones and remember how great it is to be able to hear in stereo.

Various - No Sales: No Sellout (Artists Against Success)

Bargain compilation celebrating 5 years of one of the great independent UK labels. All the 'hits' are here 'Currently Everything Is Of Good Quality' by Stumble, 'Hey Hey 16k' by Mark Hibett and the Validators and 'Ricky and Fred' by Johnny Domino along with literally 17 others. Highlight is the birth to death epic 'Born WIth The Century' by the aforementioned Mark Hibertt - one of the most touching songs about growing old ever written. Stick it in your PC and there are a wealth of extras, just like on a DVD....but cheaper.

Erase Errata - At Crystal Palace (Blast First)

Crang! Sqwonk! Thwank! YES! Fucking A! Erase Errata are the band you always wished your girlfriend was in. The songs are short and sharp, the playing spiky and spindly like spiders legs. New Wave? Yes. Clichéd? Never.
Recommended.

My Legendary Girlfriend/Germlin/Gerils
Drouthy Neebors, Dundee
18th October 2003

There is no other way to say this. Gerils should be massive, I mean REALLY massive. This may sound like hyperbole but to my mind Gerils are one of the best bands in the world, a band that would be an important and influential as Sonic Youth if only they were known outside the confines of Dundee.
Playing a short set of new songs they open with an almost Stereolab-esque groove that sees them as a quartet for the first time in a couple of years due to the late arrival of saxophonist Derek.
It is a great opener as vocalist Jimmy Kane, looking healthy and tanned in a cream suit, reads his lyrics from the back of a Job Centre Plus letter.
Though the natural frontmen of the band are Jimmy and his guitar abusing uncle (and Dundee legend) Mike Kane, it is the rhythm section of drummer John Weir and bassist Scott that holds the whole thing together - without their absolutely solid krautrock pulse the almost freeform meanderings of the three melodic players could almost certainly lose focus.
They finish with a dark almost folk number with the sax cutting through the airthickening intensity like a ray of sunlight through smog. It is amazing and sets the stage perfectly for Germlin.
Sitting on his own behind a laptop and keyboard Jo Germlin spins out his mix of squelching sub-bass, rapid fire percussion and Acid House bleeps like a sweeter Aphex Twin. He even sings in a high reedy voice that just adds an endearingly human edge to the car factory robot beep and grind. The music is warped but lovely and there is a real melodic talent hiding beneath the electronic buzz.
Last up are Glasgow's My Legendary Girlfriend, without a drummer but with a handy rhythm providing minidisc player. Initial sound problems are soon set aside as the band powers through a harder edged, more new wave selection of songs than I have previously heard from them. Highlights include 'Renaissance Man' with its sly steal from Wet Wet Wet and 'Lifestyle Film', a song built around the 'buy the soundtrack and t-shirt' marketing of films like Trainspotting.
Like Gerils, My Legendary Girlfriend are a band deserving of far more success than they have. If they were from London frontman Paul McGazz would have been on the cover of the NME and on the panel of Never Mind The Buzzcocks several times by now....it is a crime that being from Glasgow prevents such a talented band from reaching the audience they deserve. But then that is a problem that bands from north of the border have suffered from for decades.

Le Reno Amps
Drouthy Neebors, Dundee
25^th July 2003

What happens when one member of Maple (Scott – short, playing a Fender) and one member of Nero (Al – tall, playing a Gibson) get together? Extreme noise terror? College rock like your ‘cool’ uncle from Boston used to play in the early nineties? You’d think…..you’d be wrong though.
Le Reno Amps (surely that should be Les Reno Amps?) don’t feel the need for a rhythm section, instead coming on like a post-grunge Simon and Garfunkel. Their strumming is almost choreographed and their harmonies spot on….yet something is not quite right.
Don’t get me wrong, the thrill (if that is the right word) of hearing a couple of singers who can actually sing cannot be underplayed in this era of tone deaf fuckwads fronting bands, and the two of them can certainly play. However hard I try though I cannot fully enjoy them.
Maybe it is the lack of variety in the sound of those furiously scrubbed guitars laying down a metallic gauze of brushed chrome underneath each song. Maybe it is the way the tunes reference so many ‘classics’ that it is hard to figure out whether they are playing covers half the time. Maybe it is the unfortunate way that the harmonies begin to sound like Green Day after a couple of numbers……or maybe it is down to Le Reno Amps not really seeming to know what they want to be.
One minute they will be playing a note perfect tribute to sixties beatpop, the next a country lament that would have any cowboy in a twenty acre radius weeping into his Stetson. Less welcome are their forays into (what I hope is) ‘comedy’ misogyny – if they thought singing about how they would like to demean women in an ‘ironic’ punk number is funny then they are very very wrong. If they think doing this twice would be a good idea they are on extremely thin ice.
The biggest problem is that Le Reno Amps obviously have bucket loads of songwriting talent and more than most bands’ ability to play. If only they could decide what they wanted to be they could be very special indeed, until then they are perhaps doomed to leave audiences wondering whether what they have just witnessed was supposed to be comedy.

Troika, Boss Star and Andy McGarry
Drouthy Neebors, Dundee
17^th July 2003

Perhaps I should move in upstairs. I spend so much of my time (seemingly anyway) in Drouthy Neebors that it would make a lot of sense just to live there. Ah well, I suppose the exercise from walking a couple of miles practically every day is doing me some good…
Also feeling the benefit of doing something good is Mercury Tilt Switch frontman Andy McGarry. His band are riding the deserved waves of success that fanned out from the release of their Brundle Kid LP last year yet here he is with just an acoustic guitar previewing some of their forthcoming second album.
Stripped of the electric fury of the ‘Tilt Switch noise division, Andy is revealed as a very capable songwriter as he pours his heart out to a silent audience over a mixture of new songs and old favourites. It is the new songs that really make their mark, more melodic and personal than the Brundle Kid material, Andy’s latest creations show someone moving forward will little regard for what might be considered ‘marketable’ by record companies. He finishes to thunderous applause.
I have never seen Boss Star before, in fact all I know of them is that ex-She Kills For Kicks man Michael Lambert thinks they sound like Weezer and that they spent a small fortune recording their last demo. Within seconds of them slamming into their first number I am a convert to the way of the Star.
Fronted by a bass playing Hyde from ‘That 70’s Show’ flanked by Buddy Holly and Kevin Shields on guitar and backed up ably by Louis Theroux on drums, Boss Star are a fantastic fuzz-rush of pure pop. They look great, they sound great and they have the songs to make it all worthwhile.
And what songs they are! HUGE choruses, sugar coated verses, three part harmonies and guitar solos that obviously insisted they be invited to the party. They sound like the perfect mixture of every great powerpop band there has ever been.
Match the above to a genuinely likeable stage presence and you have a band that is very much worth checking out as soon as possible. If there is any justice in the world Boss Star will be signed before the end of the summer.
Last up are headliners Troika, fresh from a show in Edinburgh the previous night.
I am not going to beat about the bush here – I love Troika. I think they are some of the finest songwriters currently deafening gig-goers in the Scottish underground and they just keep getting better and better.
Which is why I am a little disappointed that they don’t play more of their excellent songs tonight. Granted they are very adept at playing their Aereogramme influenced instrumentals but I can’t help but think of them as snacks between the main courses of the ‘proper’ songs. In Andy Bonar they have a remarkable vocalist who has a real presence, yet they under use him to a shocking degree tonight and for at least half the set he is left to just strum away at his guitar when he should be drawing us all into Troika’s world like the bastard offspring of Julian Cope and Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowyn that he is.
For every ‘Catkin’ or ‘Don’t Try to Wave’ there is a deftly played yet ultimately pointless instrumental just begging to have lyrics and melodies written for it. Troika are a brilliant band – I just wish they would allow themselves to develop their obvious potential instead of looking up the road to see what Craig B is doing.

The Chymes ‘Analogue Resonance-Part 2’
(Monophonic)

What are they putting in the water in Aberdeen? After years of shite like the Needles and Lift there are finally some good bands coming from the Granite City – the twisted audio of Hookers Green, the right/wrongness of Saint Maybe and now The Chymes.
Despite a name that brings to mind dodgy early 90s covers of U2 songs The Chymes create some pretty great distorted machine music.
Where ‘Collide and Divide’ might sound like the theme tune to an evil remake of Knight Rider (possibly a KARR based spin off) ‘Electraglide’ is a blissful slice of gentle pop, soft vocals singing a delicate melody over frantically fuzzing keyboards.
Elsewhere vicious feedback rubs shoulders with more squarewave modulated keyboard grinds – notable is ‘In Negative’, the kind of thing that would have been dubbed ‘shoegazing’ 10 years ago, though that has negative connotations when none are implied….the track is wonderful.
One last thing, it is a joy to listen to a record that has clearly been mixed with headphones in mind – not enough bands make use of the fact we have two ears.

Conblue
Drouthy Neebors, Dundee
7^th June 2003

It has been 5 long years since the band formerly known as Condition Blue first played their spiky powerpop to Dundee audiences and 4 since I last saw them. For the last couple of those years they have been almost entirely silent – so silent in fact that I assumed they had broken up.
But here they are in exactly the same place as I left them.
The Dundee scene that they were part of has vanished, this is a band that used to play with the Candystore Prophets, Maps Of Jupiter and Sour Red – bands all consigned to the dustbin of history, yet Conblue seem to feel that they have something to add to the current musical climate.
Opening with a shimmering riff they quickly stumble into technical problems which render the vocals of frontman Adam absolutely inaudible. For a return (of sorts) this is hardly an auspicious start.
A lengthy delay whilst equipment is fiddled with doesn’t do much to maintain the momentum but the band are soon back in the saddle and pumping out some jaunty pop….the same jaunty pop that they were pumping out half a decade ago – musical development does not seem to have been on the agenda during their time away.
The next couple of songs flash past in a flurry of D-A-G chord progressions and high vocals before the first surprise of the evening…..a drum machine.
Not just any old drum machine mind, this one is pounding out a basic disco beat that serves as the foundation for a rather drab two chord vamp. After the whole thing stumbles to a halt the floundering quartet return to the safety of their powerpop roots.
Then comes the second surprise of the evening, well, more a shock. It is the exact same drum machine beat as before, this time with a slightly different tune….some of the audience look at each other in mild bemusement, wondering if they really are hearing the same thing again.
Final confirmation that Conblue are creatively bankrupt comes with their last song of the evening which, unbelievably, uses that same tempo disco beat again. I actually hear audience members laughing in disbelief.
Perhaps they should take another couple of years off and have a really good think about what they are doing.

Eat Yer Greens/The 44’s/Mexico
Drouthy Neebors, Dundee
4^th June 2003

It is two days since I experienced Eat Yer Greens and I am sitting looking at my notes trying to make some sense of phrases such as ‘lost for words’, ‘Claire Grogan’ and ‘something is very wrong’. Eat Yer Greens are a band that I can’t really explain in words…..but I will try.
Take one really fast, spiky punk outfit, front it with a shrieking harridan and Cedric from ATD-I wearing a sailor suit and you have a rough impression of Eat Yer Greens. At their worst (most of the show) they sound like my nightmares (the ones that feature tuneless faux-punks), at their best they sound (accidentally I can only assume) like Melt Banana. I remain utterly bemused throughout the 15 minutes they play.
At least they are bringing something to their chosen genre; the same cannot be said of the 44’s. Why people are still playing Ska-Punk is beyond me. Why people are still listening to Ska-Punk is baffling beyond words and gives me a headache if I think about it for too long. Horns parp, rhythms skank, and I gradually lose the will to live. I am about to slip into a Madness haunted coma when they, thankfully, honk their last.
Mexico have been talked up by the local paper on the day of the gig so expectations are high. Those expectations are dashed within moments of the so-hip-it-hurts guitar/drums duo striking up. Undeniably commercial and with the potential to sell a great many records Mexico sadly just don’t do it for me with their Black Sabbath fronted by Andy McLusky (Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, 80’s fans) sound. Others will love them, but I don’t.

Miss Missile
13^th Note Café, Glasgow
27^th May 2003

Busted. Trio. Keyboards. Graham ‘Fucking’ Peel. Reserve Du Lac. Junior Jo. High vocals. Fuzz. Danelectro. Paying for a bottle of wine with a cheque. Singing Paul McCartney lyrics over GRNR. ‘Spies Like Us’. ‘I got bummed last night’. Graham ‘FUCKING’ Peel. Sane Prof and more wine. My new favourite band. Graham ‘fucking’ Peel. Star on the ascent. Miss Missile. Pop! POP! POP!! Eurovision? Miss Missile would win.

Policechief
Reading Rooms, Dundee, 2^nd May 2003

Brought to Dundee as part of the regular Lemuria club night at the Reading Rooms, Policechief arrive onstage just after 1 a.m. and launch into a turgid rock/dance crossover. They may have got their Big Beats in tow but they’ve disastrously left all the tunes at home.
‘Are ye allreet, Dundee?’ yells the ‘singer’ before they plunge into another Prodigy b-side, causing mass dancing in the (inexplicably) appreciative audience. And so it goes on….and on……..and on.
By the end they have managed to loot the musical kitbags of everyone from EMF to Jesus Jones via the Chemical Brothers, and have done it will all the charm and subtlety of the brothers Gallagher.
One of the people near the top of the Policechief camp apparently thinks I am the most ‘evil man in Scotland’, even if he thought I was a ‘great chap’ I would still have given this crock of shite the kicking it so richly deserves.

See Saw ‘Violent Elegance’
(Transformed Dreams)

Whoever writes the press releases for Netherlanders See Saw should be given a medal. Gems such as ‘Guitars are sometimes rude and destructive, but mostly played in a delicate and slightly wringing (sic) repetitive way’ and ‘they nowadays incorporate British influences…into their music which leads to a rarely heard combination of both intense and lush sound’ make the band sound infinitely less interesting that I think was the intention.
So the label is trying to push them as something edgy and new that much is clear, but what are they actually like?
Well, I have a problem here.
It’s like this. When reviewing music it is very difficult not to compare what one is hearing to what one has heard before. Example; ‘Band X sounds like a cross between bands Y and T’ – see? I have been as guilty of this as the next man but I am trying very hard not to do it. This means I am fucked writing this review.
It is impossible to listen to See Saw without thinking of Belly, Throwing Muses, Bettie Severt, The Breeders, Lush…..the list goes on and on. Think vague indie strumming, think Kim Deal on vocals….think See Saw.
From the out of focus ‘arty’ sleeve to the mid-90’s indie rock of the songs See Saw are a band so desperate to be on 4AD that it hurts.
Thing is I can’t be damning about this record – it is pleasant, tuneful and well played…..but is that enough?

Clambake ‘Gator In The Pool’
(Gringo Records)

Why the début album by Clambake has been sitting on the shelf since 2001 is beyond me. Opening with some great crunchy Dick Dale-isms the two Barker brothers show that you don’t need any of those fancy ‘overdubs’ or ‘bassplayers’ to play scuzzed up rock and roll.
Recorded live to a vintage Revox 2 track reel to reel Clambake have created an authentically retro sounding skrang of dirty riffs and frantic drumming.
Sadly authentic does not automatically mean interesting…..what sounds great for the first couple of tracks soon becomes tiresome and difficult to listen to as each song blends into the last. By ‘Do The Rubber Neck’ I find myself wishing that they would add some more colours to their musical pallet. A couple more numbers in and I am using the skip button on Realplayer…..a sad indictment of an album that has songs no longer than 2 minutes in most cases.
Then, just as I am giving up altogether ‘Everybody C’mon’ starts with a deliciously fuzzed up backwards riff……before turning into a carbon copy of the rest of the album…..oh well.
Clambake – band with ugly name makes ugly album, who’d have thought it?

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