Could Glasgow have it even better still?

Published on Saturday 18 March 2006 00:31

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, MANY Scottish bands have found themselves sucked into the wake of Franz Ferdinand. The feeling, however, is that they've mostly been shoehorned into the role of "the next Franz Ferdinand". Sons and Daughters are perhaps the most obvious example. Label-mates of Alex Kapranos, they are musically their complete opposites, yet commentators keen to discover the next big Caledonian thing are constantly comparing them.

Recently, though, something seems to have changed. With Franz having established their sound and their position in the rock firmament, new Glasgow bands are emerging who are unafraid to take Franz's "music for girls to dance to" manifesto literally, while adding their own spin. Currently, the two most notable are Bricolage and 1990s, bands whose sound is aimed at the feet just as much as the head.

Franz Ferdinand clearly know a good thing when they see it, because they've given both bands the Franz stamp of approval. Bricolage explicitly adopt the same influences as their more experienced counterparts (Kapranos hit the nail on the head when he advertised them as being "like Postcard-era Orange Juice with a real dark twisty edge"), while the more rock-focused 1990s have already gone one better and supported Franz at one of their SECC dates last year.

"It was a ridiculous experience," recalls 1990s singer John McKeown fondly. "They take you up the stairs on to the stage, and there are 10,000 people screaming at you. You just think, 'woah, check this out!' Everyone's seen 10,000 people standing in a group at some point in their life, but it's pretty freaky when they're all looking at you. Yet they were great, really up for it, people were singing songs by the second chorus."

The 1990s are now signed to Rough Trade, and their debut single You Made Me Like It (produced by Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake, a fellow devotee of artists like the Rolling Stones and Alex Chilton) is released at the end of April. Yet despite McKeown's old band, The Yummy Fur, having once included Franz members Kapranos and Paul Thomson, he doesn't see their patronage as a passport to success.

"I know doing those gigs looked like a huge kickstart for us, but things were going along fine without them, and I honestly think we would have gone down the exact same path either way," he says. "What it does is alert a lot of people to you very quickly - but I think the ones who were ever possibly going to sign us would have known about us anyway."

Bricolage guitarist and singer Wallace Meek reacts with a similar mixture of gratitude and diplomatic defensiveness. "Obviously it's great for someone like that to say they like the band, but people are now always mentioning that each time they write about us, and you do kind of wonder how people would react if he hadn't said anything.

"I mean, it's good that he's trying to help us and that he's still aware of what's going on in Glasgow when he's away touring the world, but I don't want people to think we're mates with him or anything. It's not nepotism. I think the songs are good enough to stand up in their own right - maybe what he said will turn people on to us, but they'll make up their own minds when they listen to us, which is all we can ask for."

Bricolage themselves have also been signed, to Edinburgh's Creeping Bent Records, although the release of their single Footsteps/Flowers Of Deceit is as much a calling card for bigger labels devised by their manager and label boss Douglas McIntyre. Amusingly, Meek seems more excited that he shares management with the Fire Engines than the fact Franz Ferdinand like his band.

Yet the Franz effect has paved the way for a slew of good new Glaswegian (and Scottish) bands. The desire to make it on their own merits is a particularly Scottish attitude, and it's one that will hopefully stand talented bands like Bricolage and 1990s in good stead in the future.

"I think Franz Ferdinand were left-field and interesting enough to make people realise you could get things like that in the charts," says McKeown. "I think it energised people in Glasgow to think, 'if people will buy that, what else will they like?' Bands like Bricolage and ourselves probably couldn't get arrested five years ago, and now Franz have paved the way a bit, they've made other bands think, 'wait a minute, if we really put a bit of effort into this..?'"

• Bricolage and 1990s play St Vincent's Bowling Club, Glasgow, on Friday and both play the Triptych Festival in April. The 1990s support The Long Blondes (Mono, Glasgow, 28 April; Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, 29 April; The Tunnels, Aberdeen, 30 April). Bricolage play the Liquid Room, Edinburgh, 28 April, and Mono, Glasgow, 30 April. www.triptychfestival.com