Scottish New Music Round-Up: June 2021

It’s set to be a big month for music lovers all across the UK as the first of two Record Store Day drops lands on 12 June. Drop one includes a smattering of Scottish releases from Primal Scream, Mogwai, Garbage, Baby Strange, Django Django, Belle & Sebastian and Texas, whose Wu-Tang Clan collaboration Hi gets a 12" release with a B-side remix from Unkle. Sadly RSD won’t be the usual day of in-stores and street parties that we’d become accustomed to in a pre-pandemic world, but with Scottish shops having recently reopened, they’re looking forward to welcoming you back – read our extensive Record Store Day feature here, where stores from across Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee give us their top #RSD21 picks. 

But there’s a lot more going on this month besides Record Store Day. Producer and DJ Rebecca Vasmant recently launched her own label – Rebecca’s Records – and this month she releases her debut record, With Love, From Glasgow. Vasmant talks us through the album track-by-track in this month's issue; read our review of the album here.

“Love is absolutely fucking mental," says Adam Hunter, one half of Glasgow pop duo HYYTS. "When it’s good, it’s a hell of a time and when it’s bad it’s hell.” Their new EP, helluvatime, reverse-charts the heartbreak and euphoria of a relationship, unexpectedly starting on post-breakup song Outro, and ending on the falling madly in love Intro. Across its seven tracks, you can really hear that lived experience; the EP was written while Adam was falling in love and bandmate Sam Hunter was going through a breakup. Set for release on 11 June via Warner Brothers, helluvatime further cements HYYTS as ones to watch and features some of the most gleaming pop we’ve heard this year; the choruses on Bad Tattoo and Kinda Need You Here Tonight are festival-singalong-ready – perfect pop for belting out at the top of your lungs.

A song called Living It, Loving It, Larging It is the sort of thing we’d usually avoid – it reads as very #LadsLadsLads – but in the hands of Glasgow band Ace City Racers, it’s about as far away from that hashtag as you can get. Living It... is such an addictive 80s-indebted earworm, and a great snapshot of the band's new album Citalodisco (Last Night from Glasgow, 6 Jun). We're inclined to agree with the band's own side smirk description of the track – “like Vince Clarke and New Order attending a party organised by Soccer AM that’s just been gatecrashed by the Happy Mondays.”

Recorded at Glasgow’s Green Door Studio, elements of no wave, art-rock and post-disco can be found all over Citalodisco, Ace City Racers at times bringing to mind the likes of Devo, A Certain Ratio, 80s New Yorkers’ ESG and Liquid Liquid, and, from a bit closer to home, Franz Ferdinand. Additional vocals throughout the album from Grace Barrett (whose backing singer credits include Little Boots and Deaf Havana) are a stroke of genius, as her soulful stylings beautifully complement those of the band’s James Barker. Across its ten tracks, Citalodisco rarely lets up and is awash with pleasing electronics, an abundance of disco drums, cowbells aplenty, and has us pining for an indie disco.

In Edinburgh, S!nk – the band behind the playable sculpture and performance space Pianodrome – release their latest album PopUpOcalypse this month (25 Jun). All songs found on the record were part of the band’s 2018 and 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, so it’s nice they’re finally getting a proper release. Experimental and truly cacophonous at points, PopUpOcalypse starts in an almost klezmer vein on Sound of Muesli, while the end of Planet Carousel could soundtrack a dance scene in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. The second half of the record is particularly beautiful where Thing King and VeLo satisfyingly arrive one after the other; it’s on these two tracks that the impressive falsetto of Tim Vincent-Smith truly gets to shine.

Elsewhere, Adam Stafford releases his new single Threnody for February Swallows on 11 June; described as “a lament for the environment,” it's taken from his new album, Trophic Asynchrony, due next month on Song, by Toad. Relative newcomers Amy Papiransky releases the emotional-fueled, piano-led Summertime Blues (4 Jun); DAHLIA's Spiralling (4 Jun), inspired by 90s trance synths, trip-hop beats and witch house, is full-bodied and soaring; and Edinburgh/Glasgow band waverley. release the “quietly contemplative” Missing Thing (11 Jun), where droning EBows, jangling guitars and heartfelt vocals combine for a euphoric crescendo.

May releases you may have missed...

May was a wee smasher of a month with releases coming left, right and centre, so rather than write about what you missed, we thought you could listen instead with our ICYMI May playlist.

The Spotify playlist includes tracks from Swim School, Bemz x Vagrant Real Estate, Oyakhire, MALKA, Declan Welsh and the Decadent West, Linzi Clark, Uninvited, The Riot Vans, PERMO, Hannah Slavin, Nicola Taylor and Eyes of Others whose delightfully baggy and laidback record of woozy electronica, Elevenses, came out right at the end of the month via Global Warming Records. Not on the playlist, you'll find Free Love's digital only release, Love Is Love, over on Bandcamp, with all profits going to GiveIndia to help those most affected by the second wave of COVID in India.