Gavin Gordon: No rent-a-quote required

Are you familiar with the 'rent-a-quote'? You know, when a lazy, narcissistic tabloid hack plonks meaningless hyperbole into his (or her) half-baked review, in the hope of being name-checked on the side of a few buses? Well we're not normally in the business of rent-a-quoting, but here's one exception to the style guide: Gavin Gordon is the most talented singer-songwriter to emerge from Scotland this year. There you go. Take note, poster designers. Except this one's not meaningless, and, admittedly, it's unlikely to appear on any buses any time soon.

When Gordon entered our competition for a showcase gig back in January, his MySpace tracks stood out from a long list dominated by indie bands. But it wasn't the mere fact that he performs solo that won him a set at Cabaret Voltaire: it was the lived-in, expansive, bluesy quality of his music.

Listen and you can picture Gordon as a weather-beaten, guitar-slinging troubadour pacing the harsh highway of life. But, in reality, the 26-year-old from Glasgow has only been writing songs for a few years. He did play guitar in bands before this but became, in his own words, “frustrated with the usual band nonsense, all the bickering and politics”. So where does his music's timeless authenticity stem from? Gordon admits that he was a latecomer to songwriting, but thinks that, conversely, his leaving it late could be the answer to the question: “Maybe that has meant I could write from experience, rather than make stuff up. You can usually tell if something is insincere I think.”

Or maybe it's just that Gordon is Glaswegian, and therefore - to stereotype shamelessly - tough-minded, realistic and unpretentious: “I grew up in the usual Glasgow working-class environment, in Knightswood, where there wasn't much to do for kids, especially teenagers. It was either drinking cheap cider, getting stoned or playing guitar. I'm glad I concentrated on the latter.”

While he was honing his impressive fretboard skills, Gordon was also imbibing the music of some exemplary forebears. “Major influences for me through the years have been Neil Young, Tim Buckley, John Martyn, The Beta Band, and the old classics like Floyd and Led Zeppelin,” he says. “Then I went through a big Warp Records phase, and didn't touch a guitar for a couple of years! I like anything which sounds nice, but with an edge. Boards of Canada are masters at that, they lull you into this nice tune but hidden beneath is something weird and familiar, nostalgic even.”

Unlike your dyed-in-the-wool acoustic singer-songwriters, Gordon incorporates electronica into his live set with an effects pedal, and he makes techno under the alias of Aeons. “I tend not to record any one style exclusively. As long as it sounds good, I'll use either electric or acoustic.”

It may well have been this approach that led to his collaboration with London dance duo Mock & Toof. "I did vocals for a couple of their tracks and the next one is due to be released on DFA Records as a single, which I'm excited about. DFA are also talking about us doing an album. So hopefully that will be a step towards getting a small solo deal or something at some point, even though the style of music is far removed from what I do myself."

But for now Gordon is focussed on building his own raw material into a more substantial, more coherent work: “I'm slowly but surely recording an album at home. I have a decent home studio set-up and a degree in audio technology, so I know how to produce music to a reasonable standard. I'm looking to have it finished by September, and then self-release it initially. It's all song-based, but I'm using drums, bass, samples, guitars, keyboards. Anything to make it sound decent.”

Let's avoid the rent-a-quote and end on this modest note: it will be better than decent.