Scottish New Music Round-up: June 2022

June is as busy as ever for new Scottish music – we take a look at releases from Susan Bear, Katherine Aly, racecar, Becca Starr, Elizabeth Fraser and more

Feature by Tallah Brash | 01 Jun 2022
  • Susan Bear

Wow. May was the month that kept giving, with new music from Glasgow’s Medicine Cabinet, The Plastic Youth, Shears and AMUNDA; I Solar released their North Sea Jupiter EP via Paradise Palms and Poster Paints, the pairing of Carla J. Easton and Simon Liddell, surprise-released their debut EP, Blood Orange

Moving into June, no stranger to these pages, Susan Bear has stepped out from behind the guise of their Good Dog moniker. If that's gone over your head, then maybe you'd recognise Bear from behind the keyboard of Pictish Trail’s live band, or as a member of duo Tuff Love, or maybe even from behind the drum kit of Cora Bisset’s play What Girls Are Made Of; she’s also been busy producing various music of late for Hen Hoose, and when we last spoke with them it was about an 8-bit-inspired soundtrack for Journey to the End of the Jelly World, a computer game she’d been working on alongside Faith Eliott. Needless to say, Bear is something of a musical chameleon, and their latest musical move, Alter, due via Lost Map Records on 10 June, sees them wearing their heart on their sleeve more than ever before.

Given what you now know of Bear, it should come as no surprise that from their Glasgow studio, she wrote, recorded and mixed the entirety of Alter. Describing the album as a journal, Alter was written from a point of reflection and covers a period in Bear’s life from around 2017-2020. As Bear puts it, she’s “observing the past from a safe place in the present” on Alter, a record that is lo-fi, woozy and soft around the edges. Its compositions come from Bear’s thoughtful introspection and their questioning of past decisions, and what she's created is altogether a tender and soothing balm for anyone who wants to find the courage to embrace change.


Katherine Aly | image: Marilena Vlachopoulou 

From Glasgow to the other end of the M8, Greece-born, Edinburgh-based genre-defying artist Katherine Aly releases Shadows Are Made of Light Too on 10 June. Working tirelessly over the past few years to get to this point, Aly’s debut album goes full throttle from the off, opening with the explosive Glow & Ignite, with her gorgeous vocal over fizzing synths before its delightfully infectious 60s girl band-indebted chorus comes into view. It’s a single that lights the way for the rest of the record which explores every nook, cranny and decade of pop, as Aly embraces “diversity, collective pain and trauma and turning them into empowerment.” It’s a real joy to behold and a thrill to see an artist fully come into her own.

Just as Aly is refusing to be bound by genre, so too are East Lothian’s racecar, made up of childhood friends Izzy Flower, Robin Brill and Calum Mason. Mining from every corner of contemporary pop, the three-piece self-release their debut album Orange Car on 10 June. Across its 11 tracks' rubbery basslines and thick grooves collide with fast-paced synthpop, glitchy manipulated backing vocals and Flower’s bright and unwavering lead. There’s also sniffs of classic guitar rock, techno, PC music, jazz, funk and more to be found here. And while some would perhaps struggle to combine all these influences into one cohesive sound, racecar make it sound almost effortless, leading us to question why anyone would constrict themselves to just one style or genre anyway.


racecar

Another one worth wrapping your ears around this month is Speak No Evil, the new album from Paisley-based Becca Starr, which sees her combining spoken word poetry and snarling rap bars – 'truth bombs' – with the kind of vocal acrobatics any diva would be proud of. Due on 25 June, Speak No Evil covers everything from falling in and out of love to comments on the political landscape, fears of death, gentrification and more. Starr always knows exactly when to unleash each facet of her vocal ability.

Elsewhere, the sublime and unmatched vocals of Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser can be found this month on Sun’s Signature, her collaborative EP with her life and musical partner Damon Reece, and Rachel Sermanni is back this month too with her latest EP, Every Swimming Pool Runs to the Sea, which you can read more about in this month's mag. More albums come from Edinburgh-based collective Atom Eyes who release their debut album Blue Into Gold (3 Jun), Baby Strange return with World Below (17 Jun), electro-trad duo Valtos release their self-titled debut (10 Jun) and Dundee punks ALLDEEPEND release Throwing a Pit to Nothing via Make-That-a-Take Records. 

When it comes to singles, there's the delightfully glitchy new one (The Soft) from Edinburgh duo Slim Wrist (24 Jun), Ask Alice releases the dark and menacing Demonia (10 Jun) and Jack Brotherhood release their "queer scream into the void" – Heteronormativity (8 Jun). Finally, if you give a fuck about the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, there's also Erland Cooper's curious royal commission Music for Growing Flowers (1 Jun), created as part of the bio-diverse superbloom event set to take place at the Tower of London.