Scotland's New Music

Suspend from your mind a moment the pipes-and-pies clichés that come to mind when considering Scottish culture, and open your eyes to the glorious rebirth of Scottish music. Of course, recent decades have seen the steady emergence of many a household name, but over the last five years in particular our diminutive country has transformed into one of the most vibrant and varied incubators of publicly recognised new musical talent in Europe.

The Fratellis may have played their part in bringing post-noughties Scottish music to a mass audience, but in this 21st century resurgence they were just the warm-up act. For the uninitiated, then, consider this a patented Skinny crash-course in the finest emerging acts to have caught our ear north of the border over the last year or so.

Folk music has a certain pride of place in Scotland’s music scene, and recent years have seen a welcome surge of artists pursuing a more unorthodox sound. Enter Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, whose debut album Home and the Wildhunt landed earlier this year. With their lively brass section and an obvious affection for Americana, it’s a small miracle that they managed to avoid unwittingly creating a new pseudo-genre – ‘spaghetti folk’ perhaps, or ‘Morricore’. The Seventeenth Century move in much the same circles, all sparse instrumentation and ultra-melodic vocals, though they take things at a markedly gentler pace.

This is not to say that there’s no one left plying the more conventional folk trade. Edinburgh’s Withered Hand offer a compelling reminder of why we enjoy the genre in the first place, blending intricate acoustic guitars with Dan Willson’s trademark falsetto and unabashedly evocative song writing.

Electronica duo Silver Columns – a collaboration between Domino disciple Adem and Fence Collective stalwart Pictish Trail – successfully put the kibosh on any question of a lack of versatility among Scottish folk artists with the release of cerebral electro-pop album Yes And Dance earlier this year. Edinburgh duo Conquering Animal Sound have carved a lovely niche for themselves with their heavily loop and sample-based pop, and component member James Scott's side project The Japanese War Effort is a definite recommendation for fans of fun, emotive and highly atmospheric electronica.

And while we're in this synthetic sphere, an honourable mention must go to Glasgow art student and master beatmaker Dam Mantle, whose ambient electronic weirdness has been gathering all sorts of momentum in recent months. He's still very much on the way up since his first gig back in February, so pay attention now because he's set to go far.

Elsewhere in the world of Glasgow scene risers, with debut album The Peters Port Memorial Service recent Skinny cover stars Mitchell Museum built an uplifting racket which caters to those in need of a distinctly Scottish brand of pop-tinged indie rock, an affectation mirrored by Ross Clark’s apparently innumerate quartet Three Blind Wolves. The latter band are also making a lot of headway since the release of their mini album The Sound of the Storm earlier this year, and their incorporation of alt-country influences into the standard indie equation forms one of the more diverse musical offerings of 2010 thus far.

At the louder end of the aural spectrum, Divorce’s righteous punk rock cacophony offers one of the more vigorous moshpit workouts available in Scotland; a similar experience to that available from thunderous post-punk brigade United Fruit, proving that the snarling spirit of Mclusky is alive and well with their recent Mistress, Reptile Mistress! EP. Inventive math rockers VCheka – named after an early Soviet secret police organisation, in case you're wondering – bring a healthy dose of cerebral depth to the national table, with a generous hat-tip to progressive forebears Battles.

All of which brings us to the end of this whistle-stop tour through just a handful of recent additions to our record box. So, next time someone tries to tell you Scottish music is just Runrig and Paolo Nutini, refrain from punching them in the face and remember what you read today. Then punch them in the face for us.