As if from nowhere, One Little Indian seem to have become synonymous with quality Alt.Country, releasing brilliant albums from Jesse Malin, Jeff Klein and Matthew Ryan over the past twelve months.
All of these have been enough to (rightly) send Whisperin' & Holleri' into raptures, but there's always a danger of taking your eye off the ball back home, so Black Box Recorder's delightfully subversive "Passionoia" was an important reality slap back in March. Now, to again set us straight on a few points regarding ace, homegrown talent come canny Scots GRIM NORTHERN SOCIAL and their eponymous debut.
And the great news is that it demands to be regarded in the same higher echelon as the aforementioned illustrious company. Indeed, while all five members of the band have spent time with also-ran outfits in and around Glasgow, as GNS they have sourced a mightily volatile chemistry and smash into our consciousness sounding fully-formed and bloody fabulous here.
If you're a regular here, you'll have caught us gushing about the addictively joyous kicks of the band's two singles, "Honey" and "Urban Pressure" (both included here), and in the confident, Glam-my flailings of "Myabe It's Time" and the hilarous, materialism-chewing "Money" they have a couple more top-drawer anthems to deliver to radio in the future. I'd cautiously add "Favourite Girl" (with its' Blondie-baiting "Hurry up and wait" yelping on the intro) to this list if it wasn't so damn wilfully deranged.
However, both "Honey" and "Urban Pressure" sported B-sides dripping with clues that GNS harboured much more ambitious schemes and with their album some of these dreams are realised. You can bang on all you like about supposed 'Proggy tenencies' and such shite, but the bottom line remains that GNS are a superb unit with loads of ideas and the innate ability to collectively carry them out.
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To this end, witness he carnival bounce, Beatlesque pianos and ace disco drumming framing "Star"; the swirling string section and fascinating commentary of the slow-burning "Clash Of The Social Titans" ("What's with the attitude? What's with the hand grenade? What's with the poison tongue?") or singer/ songwriter Ewan McFarlane's vividly affecting tribute to his wife Jo on the brilliant ballad "Gasoline Queen". Intensely personal it may be, but it's anything but mawkish.
All of these songs feature sterling performances from the entire band (though if pushed I'd have to single out Andy "Wee Man" Cowan's ever-inventive keyboards) and make it patently obvious what a talented songwriter Ewan McFarlane is. However, the crowning glory is surely the sombre urban drama that is "Snap The Imposters". Drifting in on languid, Floydian atmospherics, its' stark anti-heroin lyrical content is just devastating. "I can't leave my Mother with TVs and stereos, she can't protect my guitar", gasps McFarlane as the music ebbs and swells, bringing the reality into sharp relief. It's angry, hearbreaking and elegiac all at once.
"Grim Northern Social" is a uniformly impressive debut from a distinctive bunch keen to grab the future by the lapels and give it a bloody good shaking. Tune in and listen: maybe it's not all that grim up north after all.
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