Amazing Snakeheads taking fast track to late success

GLASGOW trio the Amazing Snakeheads made a short, sharp entrance to the wider world earlier this year with their 85-second debut single Testifying Time, a collision of indie rock ‘n’ roll and frenzied rockabilly which throws together, without subtelty or fear, those familiar tropes of religion and music.

Late bloomers The Amazing Snakeheads have landed a spot on the NME Radar Tour. Picture: Contributed

In this case where they were coming from was as notable as what they were saying – the record was released on Domino Records, home to Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand. This association surely means the world is the band’s oyster if they want it to be.

Already they’ve landed a slot on the annual NME Radar Tour, a fast track to success for late-twentysomething musicians who have never been in a band before. Or rather, Glasgow childhood friends Dale Barclay (guitarist and vocalist, 27) and William Coombe (bassist, 29) haven’t been in bands before – drummer Jordan Hutchison, 30, had dabbled in his native New Zealand.

“Leonard Cohen didn’t make his first album until he was 34,” cautions Barclay. “If you set a time limit on it, you’d give up. Where we come from we’ve always just worked since we were young, but I’ve played guitar and written songs all that time too.

“I met Jordan when he lived in the flat above me, so we decided to go and have a bit of fun in the practice room, to turn it up and play loud.”

Interestingly, Barclay speaks in those particular clichés which are only so because they ring with a certain kind of universal truth and honesty.

Like his love of classic rock ‘n’ roll music: “It saved my life. It gave me something to do and gave me a passion, so I feel very strongly about it. It took over when I was young.” The debut album, recorded at Glasgow’s Green Door Studios. is almost finished and due early next year.

“Doing it any other way wouldn’t work for us,” Barclay says, “but Laurence (Bell, Domino’s head) gets that.

“We need to do things our way and grow, and to see just where we can take this music.”

• The Amazing Snakeheads play the NME Radar Tour with Cerebral Ballzy and the Bohicas at Electric Circus, Edinburgh, tonight. The single Testifying Time is out now on Domino.