Various Artists - The Tolbooth Sessions

Did the Large Hadron Collider trigger some kind of quantum boson explosion while we weren't looking? Has some mad scientist retrofitted a DeLorean with a flux capacitor again? Because the ten tracks found on this CD sound like we've been sent hurtling back to 2002, only to find that everything's significantly duller. An admirably altruistic joint project between Stirling's premier music venue the Tolbooth and Forth Valley College, The Tolbooth Sessions aims to compile the best of a fledgling independent scene within Stirling and its satellites, and pair them with some excellent local producers (Norman Blake, Barry Burns) – but the fact of the matter is the contributions range from the winsomely vibrant to the violently woeful.

Chief among the charming are Jack Butler and The French Quarter, who both embody opposite ends of the Scottish pop spectrum, inflecting it with their afro rhythms and post-rock atmospherics respectively. But letting the side down are the other eight, who seem to take a willfully anti-progressive stance with their art and insist on regurgitating everything from Biffy Clyro (Lions. Chase. Tigers – they read and sound like a Blackened Sky throwaway), Garden State soundtrack singer-songwriters (Matt Johnston, Must Be Something), and flaccid wallpaper indie (Little Eskimos, Jack Vampire).

All council funded initiatives to get fledgling bands like The French Quarter and Jack Butler on the wider musical map are certainly to be applauded, and they are presenting the argument for more attention to be paid to Scotland's smaller central belt – but if this kind of gutless, backwards-looking indie pop is the best their fellow ambassadors can muster, we will always be inclined to look further afield.