Scottish New Music Round-up: February 2022

First up, Savage Mansion’s third album Golden Mountain, Here I Come arrives this month via Lost Map (25 Feb). “It could be our first record as a band,” says Savage Mansion frontman Craig Angus. “In many ways it is, to the extent that we toyed with changing the name of the band. But you forget it's a fucking pain naming a band in the first place, so we stuck with it.” So while it's not quite their first album, it is their first with Beth Chalmers enlisted on keys, and their first that wasn’t almost fully realised before going into the rehearsal room. “We reworked a lot of the songs beyond recognition this time,” says Angus. “I had to let go of a lot of the expectations I had, and it’s a stronger body of work as a consequence, more adventurous.”

From the moment opening track Life More Abundant bursts into view with its twisted clarinet melodies (courtesy of Sweet Baboo’s Stephen Black) we are on board, even more so when the hyperactive handclaps, thick sax and delightful harmonies raise their hand. Tying the whole thing together is the titular ‘golden mountain’ motif, found in the lyrics of a few tracks. Bookending the album, its appearance on the opening track feels determined, while towards the end of the closing, much more subdued On Golden Mountain, the sung refrain feels like a huge sigh of relief, a breath of fresh air, a moment of clarity.

Angus’s distinct drawl is still placed front and centre across the record, but it and everything around it sounds crisper and more considered this time; instrumental definition across the record is sublime with punchy basslines, guitar melodies, clarinet, sax and more given space to pleasantly bob to the surface at just the right moments. Golden Mountain, Here I Come is full of songs you’ll be singing for days.

Further proof that not all things that happened during the multiple lockdowns of the past two years were bad comes from Glasgow’s excellently named new old kids on the block Count Florida. Describing themselves as “old friends but a new band”, on Choose Your Own it’s clear this queer indie-pop trio was always meant to be making music together, specifically this music, and making it now. “We played together nearly 20 years ago,” says drummer Argo Scott. “But we couldn’t have made this album then. We didn’t have the language for half the ideas that shape who we now know we are. We were too anxious, lost and sometimes on too many hallucinogens.”

Arriving on 2 February, Choose Your Own tackles “lockdown horniness and bad jobs, queer romance and finding power, transition and transformation, chasing joy and big ginger cats.” These songs are painfully catchy, razor-sharp indie-pop morsels that demand your attention and we genuinely can't stop listening; the perfect accompaniment to the shortest month of the year, they're sure to help lift the fug of a never-ending January.

We last featured the ambient/musique concrète work of twin brothers Mike and Andy Truscott, aka Kinbrae, in these pages when they were exploring the landscape surrounding the Tay Bridge on their 2019 record Landforms. Now, working alongside writer and artist Clare Archibald, they’re tackling a different landform, this time in West Fife, currently known as St. Ninians. A former opencast mine, the area was also once home to the mining village Lassodie and most recently was the not quite fully-realised living art work by landscape architect and cultural theorist Charles Jencks.

Due on 11 February, Birl of Unmap is a fascinating collaboration that tells the story of a place from different times and perspectives. Featuring a whole host of field recordings from the site as well as oral histories and experiences of other Fife residents and former miners, it’s a mesmerising record, which digs deep into the concept of time and space asking: ‘What is immigration and what is home? / …Are we immigrating or are we simply in constant movement? / Concepts of time and space will define the answer’.

On the same day, Edinburgh’s Paradise Palms’ in-house label put out their sixth compilation album, Bonnie Tropical 6, taking their tally up to 32 releases since their inaugural 2016 release. Sticking to the usual format, the latest Bonnie Tropical is a great way to discover lots of new talent coming up in Scotland, whether that be producers or bands. Glasgow’s Nightshift make an appearance here with the excellent Make Kin taken from their 2021 debut album Zöe, while old hats Numbers Are Futile make a very long overdue and welcome return with Euphoria Comes. There are straight up hypnotic dance cuts to be found too from the likes of Stockholm Syndrome AU and U Diddy, while Nina Stanger and Ritchie Muir’s glitchy breakbeat track Neek offers a mid-album highlight.

Following a slew of well-received singles in the last two years, relative newcomer Dahlia is striding into 2022 with her debut EP, AIRMID (25 Feb), a collection of witchy electronic alt-pop with a trip-hop edge sung in both English and Gaelic. There’s sublime production to be found across its five tracks, with Dahlia’s vocals beautifully haunting yet satisfyingly crisp. It’s a great debut and we can’t wait to hear more from this Edinburgh artist in the future.

The ever-prolific Modern Studies are back this month too with We Are There arriving on 18 February via Fire Records. Another beautiful collection of chamber pop, the album is filled with intricate little flourishes meaning there's something new to discover on each listen. And as ever, it’s a thrill to hear the seemingly effortless vocals of Emily Scott coupled with the chocolate rich baritone of Rob St. John – something we’ll never tire of. 

Elsewhere, Glasgow-based three-piece Fatherson release Normal Fears on 25 February via Easy Life Records (turn the page for our full review); songwriter, poet and post-punk spoken word artist Stephen Durkan releases his gritty debut EP, The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves (18 Feb); producer Ewan McVicar releases his hotly anticipated Movin’ On Over EP via Optimo Music Digital Danceforce (11 Feb); Berta Kennedy releases her latest R’n’B cut i’m good (14 Feb) and The Wife Guys of Reddit release the meaty Pig Fat (25 Feb).