Sharp as well as gifted

Published on Thursday 22 January 2004 00:00

What do Michelle McManus and Franz Ferdinand have in common? Almost nothing, except that both are Scottish, and both are in the top three of the British singles chart this week. If Kelis hadn’t pipped Franz Ferdinand to number two, a record would have been set - the first time ever that Scottish acts had been at one and two in the chart.

Such is life. A few weeks ago Franz Ferdinand were due to play to 100,000 people at Edinburgh’s infamously cancelled Hogmanay street party. The extra sales generated by that night could have secured them a place in Scottish pop history.

As it is, we’ll have to settle for a good week for Scottish pop music. And, many believe, a good year. There was much to celebrate as 2004 began. In 2003 a new wave of Scottish bands got record deals while older names dramatically raised their profile. The MTV Europe awards came to Edinburgh. T in the Park, now respected internationally as one of the UK’s best pop festivals (David Bowie is coming this year), marked its tenth anniversary. All of these are separate phenomena, but are connected in the sense that they focus attention and send a message that Scotland is "where it’s at". That the Brit Awards are now set to come to Glasgow suggests the message is getting across.

While Travis, Texas and Primal Scream continue to keep Scotland on the pop map, the new wave of talent is at the heart of the current buzz. And, before you ask, I don’t mean McManus, who has little to do with any Scottish "scene" and whose career will develop (or not) according to the whims of a London record company. Instead, leading the pack are her chart companions Franz Ferdinand, an effortlessly cool young Glasgow band who, like the Strokes, seemed to emerge fully formed from nowhere to find a nation falling at their feet.

Rather less cool, but potentially lucrative, are Speedway, who have already blown all their musical credibility by touring with boy band Blue, but have Smash Hits and a hit single on their side so probably don’t care. Also getting radio play and growing crowds are Dogs Die in Hot Cars (think XTC meets Madness) and Sluts of Trust (the White Stripes meet the Darkness). Many others - Grim Northern Social, Half Cousin, Mylo, Sons and Daughters - could follow in their wake.

Meanwhile, older bands are raising their game. Snow Patrol, familiar faces on the Glasgow music scene for years, have signed to a major label, Polydor, and are being touted as "this year’s Coldplay" (this may hang on whether their anthemic and fiercely promoted new single, Run, has the impact of Coldplay’s Yellow). Even Belle & Sebastian, who for years have rejected the mainstream to do things their own idiosyncratic way, have developed a taste for fame, bringing in Trevor Horn, the producer behind ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Seal and Tatu, for their new album.

Why now? Ask around and you get more half-formed theories than convincing answers. Graeme Beattie of respected Glasgow label Chemikal Underground, which signed Sluts of Trust, suggests the scene that formed in Glasgow a decade ago around bands such as Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai and Arab Strap - which attracted a lot of media attention without ever translating into world-conquering sales - has simply grown up. "People have got a bit more savvy in Glasgow and Scotland as a whole," he says. "They’ve been around a bit longer and know what they’re doing." Indeed, Franz Ferdinand’s singer, Alex Kapranos, has been a key figure in Glasgow’s music scene for a decade.

"Success breeds confidence in other people," adds Alec Downie of New Music in Scotland (NEMIS), a Scottish Arts Council funded project designed to nurture Scottish pop music. "You’ve got kids who grew up listening to Mogwai and Belle & Sebastian, who are now making music with a strong Scottish identity."

Others are bewildered. Writer Stuart McHugh last year launched a Scottish music magazine, isthismusic, frustrated that the London media was ignoring Scottish talent. While he wishes the new bands success (and, in fact, helped champion many of them) he insists there were as many bands worthy of attention two years ago, and seems slightly disgruntled - understandably, if ironically - that the London media is now muscling in on his territory.

Whatever the reasons for Scottish pop’s new fashionableness, word is spreading far beyond the UK. This year 17 Scottish acts have been invited to play at South by Southwest in Texas, a major international talent showcase that is pop’s equivalent of Cannes or the Venice Biennale. To put this into perspective, last year only one Scottish band played at the event, Idlewild. The result was an appearance on the David Letterman show, which helped break the band in America.

That Scotland will be so well represented this year has a lot to do with Ronnie Gurr, a veteran A&R man who, in the 1980s, discovered Scottish talent such as the Blue Nile, and is now working with the Scottish Arts Council to get bands to Texas. "It’s a fantastic opportunity to open up your business in North America," he says. And it’s not easy to get in, he points out. This year around 3000 bands from across the world applied; two thirds were rejected.

But let’s not break out the Champagne yet. It’s less than a year since Scottish Enterprise published what was seen as a damning report on the state of Scotland’s pop music industry, which pointed out that during the 1980s around 45 Scotland-based pop acts were signed to major labels, compared with ten in 2003. It added that those who have achieved major success in recent years, such as Travis, had to leave Scotland to do it, so their success left "no positive impact on the Scottish music economy".

While it’s hard to argue with the findings, they paint an unfair picture. Gurr says: "The 1980s was a time when there was a lot of money in the industry and big cheques could be waved. The industry has had to pare down, which means less risk-taking. The small labels are the risk takers." In other words, while major labels panic over lost revenue from internet file sharing, and throw money at TV talent show winners with short shelf lives, smaller labels are breathing life into the industry. Gurr reserves special praise for Chemikal Underground; formed by Glasgow band the Delgados in the mid-1990s partly to put out their own records, it is now taking its own showcase to South by Southwest (the first Scottish label ever to do so) to expand its American business. "They’ve been an inspiration to smaller bands to get on with it themselves," says Gurr. "I don’t think bands are chasing after record deals now, largely because those big deals aren’t around anymore." Alec Downie believes Scotland may actually benefit from this. "There’s no need to stay in London anymore. You can operate from Glasgow as a band, thanks to the rise in cheap air fares, and the internet’s changed how people hear about bands."

As much as bands, he suggests, Scotland’s new success stories are post-Chemikal Underground independent labels such as KFM, Benbecula, SL, Lost Dog and the Fence Collective. None has created a mainstream hit yet but, as has been proved before - the Darkness being a recent example - a band doesn’t need to be signed to a major label to cross over.

Gill Mills, presenter of Radio One’s Session in Scotland, agrees: "The kids are more cynical now, and more prepared to look at their bands almost like a business. They know it’s pointless to club in all your wages to travel to London for a showcase gig no one will go to. So instead they create their own scene and people get interested." Franz Ferdinand, she points out, did exactly this with the help of friends at Glasgow School of Art - and 40 record company talent scouts came to Scotland to see them. Where Travis had to move to London to get noticed, a few years on Franz Ferdinand are in the top ten and still living in Glasgow - firmly against the grain of Scottish Enterprise’s report. Admittedly, Franz Ferdinand and the bands following in their wake are mostly signed to labels based outside Scotland but if, as those in the know seem to agree, Scottish bands and labels are becoming more commercially aware and ambitious, it may only be a matter of time before a wholly Scottish mainstream success story emerges.

"I think we need to be careful not to sit on our laurels," warns Mills. "Scottish bands need to stick to their guns, continue doing things their own way. That will keep the scene fresh and keep people interested."

Downie feels his work is far from done: "We’ve been here before but we’ve never sustained it, whether it was in the 1970s with Frankie Miller and the Alex Harvey Band, or in the 1980s with Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. NEMIS was built in order to ask, why aren’t we sustaining this? Why can’t people live and work here? The MTV awards coming to Edinburgh is culturally significant. And it’s a long time since we’ve had a number one and a number three in the charts. The Brit awards should be in Glasgow."