I'm gonna try and get through 2, possibly 3 albums today as I narrow down my longlist and prepare for the Best of 2025 show.
As I'm working, today's planned albums are
CMAT - Euro Country. A classic. I saw CMAT live. She's brilliant. She got my city's famously dead crowd dancing like someone had passed an electric current through them. Had us two-stepping. The album is great and comes at an interesting time where (American) country music is on the rise again, and there are elements of country music culture that CMAT has railed against in the past. Incidentally though, her attempt to invoke the imagery of European folk tales on the album cover comes alongside her least country-sounding album. It's CMAT's bold reach for pop stardom this album, and I mean that as a positive thing: I mean musically, this is her most ambitious album yet.
I've listened to it of course, but I also get through a lot of albums for radio reasons, so while I know what's good on this album, I feel I haven't given Lord Let That Tesla Crash its full due for emotional heft. So I'm gonna listen to it in full today again, more carefully. And I know a good few of my guests will want to talk about it, so I'm gonna be ready to meet them where they are!
Dove Ellis - Blizzard. This one's a new, late entrant for me. The album came out on Friday, but I've seen press and praise for it in passing and I want to give a proper listen. It's his debut album, a bit folk-rock, he's a solo singer songwriter. As I'm listening right now, I'm hearing songs like Pale Song and already thinking the Cameron Winter fans will love this one. He's got a relaxed vibe, lyrics like about love being a second chance, a voice a bit like Rufus Wainwright. A tiny bit alt country, possibly.
Mudi Sama - Will I Make It Out Alive? Debut album by the alt rock musician, and the shortest album on this list. 7 songs, 18 minutes. I might be able to squeeze in another album too. They're anthemic, energetic, lyrically hiding some contradictions and that always makes for interesting listening. I listened to a bit of it last night while getting ready for bed, but I was so sleepy that I don't think I have the best idea of the album yet. I've played singles like Jealous Type on the show before though, so I'm not unfamiliar.
VLURE - Escalate. Glasgow industrial dance music. I had honestly thought Show Me How To Live was their debut album a couple of years ago, but it looks like that has been demoted to an EP? I haven't fully followed along, but I think VLURE signed to a label last year and wanted to do a release properly. I've been following them since their big-on-Bandcamp days. I've listened to most of this album, all of it is not for me admittedly. Some of it is a bit too EDM for my liking. But there are songs like Better Days. It's the lyrics. The band say it's their love letter to Glasgow and its underground rave scene, and I really hear that.
There's been a genre name floating about that a friend introduced me to last year: “IDM” or a sort of ‘intelligent’ dance music, where the lyrics are meant to be paid attention to and are more than just another instrument. Barry Can't Swim, another absolute favourite pick of mine for album of the year is another artist (and Glaswegian) doing that sort of thing, where his poet friends do spoken-word poetry to his textured live-instrument dance music. And it works: I've raved in a summer field to Barry Can't Swim and loved every minute of it. I
I haven't had a chance to see VLURE live, but I hear from all reviews that they're an exceptional live act. So I'll stick the album on today. Oh, and Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream guests on the album closer. Who's more Glasgow than that?
VLURE playing at Les Docks in Lausanne, through my good old Nikon.
Back in June the great VLURE from Glasgow were playing at Les Docks in Switzerland while touring with Primal Scream. I had been listening to the band for a while, so I was really looking forward to watching them play live. And they put on an amazing show, playing confidently in front of a crowd who discovered them live.
On my way to the venue before the show, I bumped into Hamish, who was working on a picnic table. He told me the band got stopped at the border by Swiss authorities and barely made it on time, which made me ashamed at my own country's welcome. The band took it really well though, and just laughed about it.
Join us as Hamish, Conor, Niall and Carlo tell me about their lives in Glasgow, the way the city influences their work as a whole and their next record, Escalate. They also give great recommendations for anyone planning to visit their hometown.
Many thanks to Les Docks and VLURE for their time and kindness!
Could you tell me about about your lives in Glasgow?
Conor: We all work full-time. We go to the studio after work, and then we come home to our partners.
Hamish: And sometimes we go to the pub and get a few pints.
Niall: Actually I don't have a job anymore, I lost my job because of this tour! They couldn't give me the time off so they just said ‘you don't have a job anymore if you go on this tour’. I think it's fine, there'll be another job. If anyone in Glasgow is hiring, I do need a job!
Hamish: If anyone in Glasgow is hiring, Niall needs a job (laughs)
Conor: We see our friends a lot, that's something that's very important to us. We always make an effort in between work and band, multiple times a week, to hang out with our friends.
Hamish: When the weather's good, which isn't often in Glasgow, there's a big park that we'll go to and hang out with our friends, have a few beers and see everyone. Our friends are also in bands, so we go and see their gigs, which is good fun.
Do you guys have any recommendations for someone who’s never been to Glasgow?
Hamish: McChuills, that's my favourite bar.
Niall: Best thing to do in Glasgow is go out and drink. There is some cultural stuff to do as well, maybe the gallery of modern art, Kelvin Grove Art Gallery and Necropolis, which is a big old graveyard that overlooks the city, you can get a good view of the city there.
Conor: I'd recommend going down to Barras Market as well. There's a kind of hole in the wall booth where lots of DJs play. It's a small radio station in Glasgow called Clyde Built Radio, which is really good. You can always go down and check out who's playing outside. There's loads of good spots to have a coffee or buy magazines and just generally see what people are selling. There's amazing venues and clubs in Glasgow as well. Berkeley Suite is probably the best place for a night out in Glasgow as far as I'm concerned.
Niall: And if you can get to a gig at the Barrowland, it's probably one of the most famous venues in Britain.
Hamish: The Barrowland is on the top, and then underneath, on Saturdays and Sundays, they have their market with lots of different vintage and art sellers. Recently, they lowered their prices for having stalls, which brought a lot of young artists and creatives in. It's a really cool place to go on a Saturday and a Sunday. I think it's good to go see Glasgow Green as well. There's lots of really good parks in Glasgow. Glasgow Green, Queen's Park, even Alexander Parade Park are quite nice. and even when you're in Glasgow, within an hour you can be out in the countryside and go to Loch Lomond. Or to the Highlands – that takes a couple hours, but you can get there on train really easily and see a bit more of the lovely nature that Scotland has to offer.
Niall: And support the small venues. There's not a lot left in Glasgow, but the ones that are still there are amazing.
Let’s talk about your music. When Hamish is singing, it sounds like poetry. When you are writing songs, do you write the poetry and the music together or separately?
Hamish: Well, I think whatever inspires. Sometimes there'll be a line that someone has said and everyone goes, ‘cool, let's make something around that’, or a vocal hook. Personally, I'm always writing poems, I have done for a long time. The way I would write is the guys give us a song instrumentally. If it's me that's writing the lyrics, depending on how that song make me feel, I'll find one or a few poems that match, or write one up on the spot. But I think it's different every time. Whatever's best for the song.
Niall: A lot of time there's produced tracks that will come into the studio and then Hamish will go through his book and be like ‘I think this one really fits the kind of emotion of the song’, and he'll do that.
In terms of percentage, how much would you say Glasgow influences your music?
Hamish: 100% (laughs). Glasgow is everything.
Conor: It's probably the main protagonist in our music. It's the carrying theme throughout everything that we've always done on any level, whether it's sonically, whether it's to do with the way that the words are presented, the way that the inflexions in the vocals are presented, the way the artworks or the music videos are made. Everything always ties back to Glasgow.
Hamish: Well, there's an old folk song from Glasgow called ‘I Wish I Was In Glasgow’. And one of the lines which I always think of is, ‘Glasgow gave me more, so much more than it ever took away’. And for me, that's what that city is. I think that's why it rings true in a lot of the stuff that we do.
Maybe it’s because I am a foreigner, but I can also feel like there is some pride in it. Hamish doesn’t change his accent, and you guys sometimes wear kilts on stage or in music videos.
Conor: Traditionally, we are quite self-deprecating people, the Scottish. Glaswegians more so, to be honest, just with the way the city's been built. We find it quite hard to put ourselves out there without the kind of the backhanded critique of ourselves at the same time, and trying to make humour out of that. So I think, in a very intentful way, we just wanted to be proud of being Glaswegian, and in a broader scope, Scottish.
Niall: That's all we've got.
Conor: We're not very good at sports because we're really good at music (laughs).
I also feel like there is a contrast between your music and the lyrics. The music sounds kind of tough, with the industrial influences that are also in your videos. But at the same time, the lyrics are hopeful.
Hamish: Yeah, a lot of the time when we think about lyrics, it's about bringing a vulnerability to them and being honest. Sometimes life isn't great, but you can find light in any dark and try and navigate your way through a situation by honestly saying how you feel. And then go ‘well, actually I have all these wonderful people around me, I'm very lucky to be alive and around them, and there's a joy to know that there's a way out.’ You have to go through the bad to get the good.
Conor: A big thing that I've personally always had an issue with, or something I've always wanted to steer away from, is the concept of being hyper-masculine in the music. I think that's incredibly unhelpful and I don't think that's what anyone needs to hear. In terms of the lyrics, whether it was Ham or myself with Better Days or Niall contributing, I think being vulnerable is a thing that we've always been conscious of.
Niall: It also helps that we started as a post-punk band. There were big influences at the very beginning. Obviously the quintessential post-punk band is Joy Division. Their lyrics are really heartfelt, heavy and deep, so when the instrumentation evolved to go in the direction we wanted to go in, we found out that the lyrics didn't actually need to go to a different place. It actually fitted well and I think it meant there was something a wee bit different about it as well.
Carlo: I've always liked people talking about their lives in a really open, honest and transparent manner, without standing on some strange ego or something. I think the best record The Streets ever made is ‘Original Pirate Material’. It was just Mike Skinner talking about his life and coming of age. I think that's just a beautiful record and it's been a massive influence on us as a band.
Niall: I think you also feel comfortable with the lyrics. It comes across as more genuine, and people engage with it more because that's genuinely you.
Hamish: When I'm writing lyrics, I try not to be ambiguous. It's straight to the point, but I hope it can mean a load of different things to a load of different people. I’m saying ‘this is how I feel, and I think I feel like this because of this, or I can't explain why this is how I feel but I feel like this, and I just need to tell someone I feel like this because me telling someone I feel like this makes me feel a bit better.’
The covers of your singles are very 90s techno influenced. Was this idea clear from the start?
Conor: Yeah. Couldn't have got more obvious with a big acid yellow. (laughs)
Hamish : Shattered Faith was straight out of a flyer.
Conor: I had a book at my coffee table that I still have. It was just old 90s rave flyers, and that influences a lot of the font work and the colour contrasting work.
Niall: The markings you see on the album cover are like ordinance points that you find on a map. It relates to the kind of hills and mountains in Glasgow. So we've made it look like a rave, but that relates to the hills in Glasgow and the mountains in Scotland. Warriors, who are a Glasgow-based design company, helped us out with the records and the eye.
Conor: Yeah, it was quite serendipitous. We'd reached out to Warriors and I hadn't realised that James – who ran Warriors and worked on our debut record – and I had known each other for years, just for partying when we were kids in Glasgow. And a lot of that record is referencing those times, so he immediately got exactly what we were on about. There's intent behind all of it, definitely.
Could you tell me more about your next record?
Carlo: The album shows a maturity from ourselves. In the press release, we've said it's the most purest form of who we are. It's a snapshot of who we are at this moment in time, which I believe is what an album should be. I think we all believe that.
Hamish: It’s something that we've all worked really hard on and are excited to share. There's parts in the album where you can reference older tracks and older songs from, but it’s actually the most modern and actual version of who we are now.
I've noticed a difference in the production in the new songs, too. It's more ‘in your face’, in a good way.
Hamish: Yeah, we teamed up with our producer for the first time, who's a guy called Manny D. He is a techno producer.
Conor: He's great. He's quite a legendary name over the years in the underground techno scene. He's had an amazing career. More recently, he's worked on Daniel Avery records and a million other amazing things that he's constantly up to. He doesn't really live in band world, so it was quite an interesting way to go about it – to re-approach a record that we'd already recorded with somebody who doesn't really have preconceived ideas of what you're supposed to do with live guitar recordings, but instead kind of treats it like a dance production. I think a lot of bands and dance artists get stuck in their own lane entirely, so it's cool to bring those two worlds together.
Hamish: Our mixing engineer has done a really great job, too, in terms of the arrangement.
Carlo: It was an eye-opening experience. Sitting in the studio with Manny, his approach to music and any other kind of work we wouldn't have done that way ourselves. It was really fun.
Here are the amazing VLURE opening for Primal Scream at Les Docks! What a joy to finally watch them perform live after listening to them for a few years! Many thanks to VLURE for their kindness!!
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Usher Hall share intense yet intimate VLURE virtual concert
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30th August – Fergus McCreadie
6th September – SILVI
20th September – Hamish Hawk
27th September – Anna B Savage
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