Scottish New Music Round-up: November 2023
Winter is creeping in, but alongside some great releases – this month a creative coven of Scottish songwriters give us records exploring love, loss, reality, dreams, and even magick
October was surprisingly sunny, yet still gave us some terrible weather. It felt like it went on forever, and it seemed to fly right by. Scottish artists have been hard at work making a music scene as multifaceted as the season itself. Some of our favourite singles from last month came from Bottle Rockets (Limerence), Belly Rachel (Cynical), rEDOLENT (nothing bad will ever happen to me), Aino Elina (Hold On), Savage Mansion (There Goes My Habit), Kinbote (Rotate) and LAMAYA (COMING FOR UR <3).
November is a conflicting time of year – we’re still waiting to see the toll we’ll take as we slip into darker weather. Fortunately, there are some great rainy-day releases to bundle up and get wistful to, starting with In My Nature, by Rosie H Sullivan (10 Nov). Sullivan’s lyricism, grounded in lived experiences, will help bring you back down to Earth. She sings in the EP’s opener: 'Trading wildflowers and country roads for bus lanes and tramways and cobblestones / As long as I’m living my imperfect life, I’ll be happy and sad at the same time'. Simple, serene guitarwork complements her soothing voice, whereas tracks like Chapters boast a more full-bodied country sound, with an upbeat acoustic tempo, showing that Sullivan’s vocals and ideas work against a range of instrumental backdrops.
The following day, Glasgow’s Kim Grant, “a weaver of words and song” under the moniker Raveloe, gives us finely-tuned folk album Exit Light, her first full-length. The thunderous effect of the electric guitars on tracks like Countertop and Clouds Are Release are balanced by more pared-down songs – Rustle In the Leaves has an almost Arthurian aura about it, and on the mournful, melodic Ghost Beach, Raveloe sings: 'I don’t want to run / Keep seeing the exit light above every turn'. The allure of an escape from everyday life buzzes through the album, just as its title describes, but ideas of nature, loss and love are threaded through its lyrics to create a work where reality, however painful, triumphs. Read our full interview with Grant in the November issue.
Rosie H Sullivan. Credit: Marc Sharp
Not all of November’s records are best enjoyed from the mounting pile of blankets on your sofa – Broken Promises, by Elisabeth Elektra (16 Nov), is the high-octane EP needed to power through the last week of Scorpio season. Aesthetically shifting from the icy-coloured psychedelia presented in 2020's Mercurial, Elektra’s recent work sees them rise as a high priestess of goth-pop, summoning the technical skills of Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite, CHVRCHES' Jonny Scott, and Blanck Mass's Benjamin John Power to appear across the record. Elektra's vocals echo around the sonic geometry they have concocted with their masterful collaborators, their ruminations on dreams and magick dancing in the very centre.
Other releases worth looking out for this month include Super Sonic, the sticky-sweet dreampop EP from Alex Amor, and the gorgeously crafted piano version of Erland Cooper’s Folded Landscapes, both of which drop on the 3rd. Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gate Lockpickers return with Murder 24/7 (17 Nov), the first offering from new record label Errol’s Hot Wax, which runs out of the Victoria Road eatery Errol’s Hot Pizza. Inspired by the BBC crime documentary of the same name, this exercise in noir intertextuality is eerie, atmospheric, and delivered with the same plinking strings and dreary vocals as Nick Cave at his best.
Scotland’s musicians are so prolific this month that all their works can’t fit on one page. But don’t worry, if you pick up the November issue, you'll find our responses to Summer Moon (3 Nov), the first album by There Will Be Fireworks in a decade, as well as I DES by King Creosote (3 Nov) and Belterz by Conscious Route (10 Nov). Plus, later in the month we shine a spotlight on Edwin R Stevens (fka Irma Vep), who gives us God On All Fours on 10 November.
Our local record shops and labels have been hard at work too. Monorail Music give us The Glasgow School edition of Mogwai’s Ten Rapid recording sessions (17 Nov), and Last Night From Glasgow release False Highs, True Lows by The Kundalini Genie (24 Nov), as well as a live version of the record’s launch party. For singles that hit right this month, see Honey by Elephant in Red (1 Nov), Fragmented In Time by The Dazed Digital Age (3 Nov), Um, Indecisive by EYVE (4 Nov), Make it Real Good (feat. Roisin McCarney) by Disco Mary (7 Nov), and Cold Star (feat. Aortarota) by Outblinker (16 Nov).
Follow Music Now, our new Scottish music playlist on Spotify – 30 of the best new tracks from some of our favourite artists from across Scotland. Listen to Music Now in the player below...