Jamie Scott – Glasgow Garden Festival '18

Do you remember Glasgow in 1988? If you were born around this time, the answer will be a resounding no. And while Jamie Scott (MC Almond Milk, CARBS, Conquering Animal Sound) is around the same age, his latest work – the first under his real name – sees him take the listener down a highly annotated history lesson looking at the 30th anniversary of the Glasgow Garden Festival, a summer which promised so much but ended up delivering so little, in a pretty characteristic turn of events for Scotland's largest city.

Scott is not a born Glaswegian but has resided there for almost a decade, and in this album, he sheds the "characters" of his previous works and sings and raps in his own voice. In Make Scotland Shite Again Scott directly speaks of his relationship with Glasgow and Scotland as a whole with 'the name my mother gave me,' while later in Cathedral asks the question 'do I love you?' to the city as if a former lover.

And throughout, the album serves as both a celebration and critique of the industrial capital of the country. In The Tower, Scott details the various failed attempts to build something that gives Glaswegians the opportunity to see their city from above, including the current Science Centre built on the grounds of the former Garden Festival, which is regularly closed to the public, and sees it as a metaphor for how the public are consistently kept down. Meanwhile, Another World explores the city's violent colonial history which still to this day goes largely unaccounted for. So while Glasgow Garden Festival '18 finds some light, this is a tough but ultimately rewarding listen into questioning the much beloved yet problematic, crazy city of Glasgow through some characteristically excellent production and words.

Listen to: The Tower, Another World, Cathedral