Scottish New Music Round-up: February 2023

If we hit the rewind button for a sec, and skip all the way back to December, we somehow managed to miss $1000 wallet's "I Like Art" Type Girls EP, as well as collaborative single Faking It from Asha Bee and Nathaniel Carter. Then came January, a cold and miserable month made more palatable by the sheer number of new releases and forthcoming album announcements, which seemed to come quicker than you could say Happy New Year. 

Glasgow indie-rock duo Low Light Listening Lounge released their self-titled debut album on 6 January. A record started, like so many in the past few years, with the pair working on ideas in different locations due to the constraints of lockdown, it features some really lovely compositional ideas and we couldn’t let it pass by without at least a mention. A few days later, Belle and Sebastian finally went public with news of their new album, with Late Developers landing an impressive double axel a few days later on the 13th, featuring the Wuh Oh-produced Eurovision-ready banger I Don’t Know What You See In Me. On the same day, BMX Bandits released Music from the film Dreaded Light.

Low Light Listening Lounge

The month also saw new EPs arriving from the likes of Glasgow alt-duo Saint Sappho and Andrew Eaton Lewis (formerly of Swimmer One), with Edinburgh outfit Redolent sharing their make big money fast online now EP on 26 January via Columbia Records. Of the release, singer Robin Herbert says: “We tried to be honest about some difficult times with the lyrics, whilst keeping the vibe positive overall, which turned out to be quite tricky.” Combining topics like grief and generational anxieties with their unique brand of emo-tinged electronica, with colourful synths, scuttling drums and upbeat tempos we'd say they achieved what they set out to and more. 

A flurry of excellent singles managed to warm an otherwise chilly month too, with new music from philomenah (Vacant Moments), Rosie H Sullivan (Expectations), Pearling (Swan Tooth), Lichen Slow (Pick Over the Bones), Health and Beauty (I Am Not On the Wall), Tommy Ashby (When Love Goes Dark), Steve Mason (The People Say), The XCERTS (GIMME) and Supermann on da beat remixing Kapil Seshasayee’s Rupture of the Wheel.

Due in May via FatCat, Glasgow brother and sister duo Comfort announced What's Bad Enough with the politically charged Real Woman, while Cloth – also a pair of siblings from Glasgow – announced Secret Measure. Releasing its lead single Pigeon, accompanied by a music video featuring a pigeon in a wig singing next to a discoball, their album is also due in May via Rock Action Records. Lovely stuff. Keeping it in the family, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite and Elisabeth Elektra announced Black Bay, their debut album together as part of supergroup Silver Moth with the tantalisingly atmospheric Mother Tongue. And the inaugural Sound of Young Scotland winner LVRA returned with anxiety, the lead single for her new seven-track project Soft Like Steel, due in March. 

When it comes to February, elsewhere on the site you’ll find in-depth reviews for four of the big records coming out in Scotland this month. Cover stars and issue co-curators Young Fathers’ fourth record Heavy Heavy comes via Ninja Tune (3 Feb), while on the same day Hamish Hawk releases Angel Numbers, the follow-up to 2021’s Heavy Elevator. Later in the month, relative newcomer Rianne Downey releases her second EP via Modern Sky UK (17 Feb), while the last Friday of the month brings us the latest offering from Glasgow's Free Love, the unsurprisingly dancefloor-ready INSIDE. What’s particularly exciting about these four records is that they’re all completely different from one another, showing the breadth of influence and styles being explored and created in Scotland right now.

Kim Edgar

Wait, there's more. Acclaimed songwriter and pianist Kim Edgar finally releases her fifth album CONSEQUENCES (3 Feb), a collaborative record she’s been teasing over the past year or so. Including works with the likes of Rachel Sermanni, Admiral Fallow’s Louis Abbott and Goodnight Louisa, it’s an accomplished collection of songs that beautifully explores the personal, social and environmental consequences of human behaviour. Inspired by the East Lothian coastline, singer-songwriter Lindsey Black releases her second album FLIGHT (3 Feb), her storytelling focusing on the emotion of life, love and landscape, and two-time SAY Award-shortlisted nominee AiiTee makes her grand return this month with the stunning The Water (26 Feb), a beautiful collaborative EP with fellow Aberdeen native Chef.

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of singles due this month too from the likes of Acolyte (Memory & Make Believe), Grace & The Flatboys (Sometimes), brownbear (All I Want), Maz & The Phantasms (Psychosomatic), Locked Hands (Into the Puzzle (Shortcut)), Sonotto (INFINITE YOU (I lost myself)), Kohla (Sweetest Love), Kleo (Things we don't need (TWDN)) as well as probably loads more that we didn’t find out about in time, such is life.