Radar recommends: 12 - 18 Dec

[The Twilight Sad: bringing the festive decibels to Edinburgh and Glasgow]

Status Quo are rocking all over Scotland this week (well, Aberdeen and Glasgow to be precise), so surely there's nothing more to be said for live music over the next seven days? What can possibly survive in the wake of the ponytailed rock gods, you ask?

Well, if Francis Rossi & co don't satisfy your cultural appetite (and what's wrong with you?), then you can at least take your pick from this lot...


Aberdeen
Luke Leighfield
Wednesday @ The Tunnels / 8pm / £5
Piano-based pop from the globe-trotting 22-year-old, in support of his recently release pay-what-you-like download album Have You Got Heart?
Also playing Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh on Thursday


Dundee
Findo Gask, Popolo
Saturday @ Dukes Corner / 8pm / £5
Glasgow's deranged electronic pop purveyors ply their trade at the Dukes on Saturday, with support from highly rated Popolo. Bring your dancing shoes.

Dividing the Line, Proceed, Paradian
Sunday @ Dexters / 8pm / £6
A night of screamo-emo action at Dexter's as part of the 'Fezant is Present Tour'. There will be shredding riffs (and shredded fringes).


Edinburgh
Trampoline All Day Event: Mitchell Museum, Lyons, Jonnie Common, Debutant, The Scottish Enlightenment, Jill Leighton, Esperi, Lady North, Conquering Animal Sound
Saturday @ Wee Red Bar / 2pm / £5 (£3)
Over the past few months we have recommended no fewer than six of the acts on this all-dayer from Trampoline, so all that's left to say is get down there if you want to hear some of the best new music in Scotland. Simple really.

Hey Enemy, Gatechien, The Fatalists
Monday @ Sneaky Petes / 7pm / £4
Post-punk beats from London's Hey Enemy on tour with twisted French duo Gatechien. Support from local noiseniks The Fatalists
Also at The Tunnels, Aberdeen on Sunday

The Pineapple Chunks, The Leg
Tuesday @ Wee Red Bar / 7pm / free
You'd be hard pressed to find a more gloriously ramshackle, insane gig than this eccentric pairing of Edinburgh bands.

**UtR's gig of the week**
The Twilight Sad
Tuesday @ Voodoo Rooms / 7.30pm / SOLD OUT
Fresh from taking on the USA yet again, the strangely uplifting home-grown miserablists play a pre-Christmas show. If you have a ticket, enjoy, if you don't, too bad.
Also playing Nice'n'Sleazy, Glasgow on Wednesday

Little Comets
Wednesday @ Cab Vol / 7pm / £7
Recent Columbia signings Little Comets bring their major label alt-pop up the road from Newcastle, with support from local indie-rockers The Debuts.

Pulled Apart By Horses, Taking Chase
Wednesday @ Sneaky Pete's / 7pm / £6
Energetic and highly-rated hardcore from Leeds' Pulled Apart By Horses with support from Edinburgh's own melodic rockers Taking Chase. Lots of ruckus in one very small room.

Hardcore Christmas Party: The Colour Pink Is Gay, Corpses, Shields Up, Hey Vampires, Fights & Fires
Friday @ Bannermans / 8pm / £6
Good value hardcore punk rock christmas bonanza featuring some of Scotland's freshest talent, plus Worcester's Fights and Fires.
Also at Nice N Sleazy in Glasgow on Thursday 17th


Glasgow
The Phantom Band, Lord Cutglass, Sparrow and the Workshop
Saturday @ The Arches / 7pm / £10
Chemikal Underground double whammy as the Phantom Band celebrate having one of the albums of 2009 in Checkmate Savage.

Remember Remember, Happy Particles, Cheer
Saturday @ CCA / 8pm / £4
The lovely Remember Remember wants to say Merry Christmas - and how better than to share beautiful looping tinkly tunes in a party with the equally pretty Happy Particles.

eagleowl, Woodenbox, Withered Hand
Monday @ 13th Note / 9pm / £tbc
E(e)agleowl have a very nice new single called 'Sleep the Winter' which they are launching in Glasgow on Monday. Dan of Withered Hand and Ali of Woodenbox are both keeping it solo in their support slots.

Paper Planes, Peter Parker, Symbolics
Thursday @ Pollokshields Burgh Hall / 8pm / £3
Lucky Number Nine and Say Dirty records team up for a Christmas piss-up in the southside - with UtR-loved Paper Planes and added DJ action from Chris 'Beans' Geddes and Andrew 'Divine' Symington.

Panda Su, Kid Canaveral, The Darien Venture, Tokyo Knife Attack
Thursday @ 13th Note / 9pm / £tbc
Those Glasgow PodcART chaps have good taste, eh? And not just because it's similar to ours. Proceeds from this festive frenzy go to the Yorkhill hospital Christmas fund - which should give you a warm seasonal glow.

Big Ned, Nacional, Black Jash, If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now
Friday @ Captain's Rest / 8pm / £1
"Doom'n'roll" Stooges-esque topless cowboy fun from Big Ned, for the Green Door studios birthday bash.

Words: Craig Dickson, Elaine Liddle

What have we missed? Tell us below, or add it to our gig guide by emailing utr.scotsman@gmail.com

UtR editorial: The sharp end of the hatchet job

In a recent On the Radar profile, Andrew Cowan of Glasgow band Lyons suggested a blanket of hyperbole is smothering Scotland's music scene. His gripe was that a lack of media criticism has spawned arrogant acts ill-equipped to do battle outside the country's forgiving climes. It was a fascinating point and one that’s had UtR towers reverberating to raised voices ever since.

In its short lifespan, UtR’s raison d'etre has been to provide a platform upon which the very best new music can be heard. Critique has never played a part in our remit; the focus gravitates towards up-and-coming artists gaining a voice in a medium increasingly interested in ABC fluctuations and advertising rates. Don’t get us wrong, we’re by no means a philanthropic entity, we’d just prefer to make like Dr. John and accentuate the positive rather than linger in a mire of doom and gloom.

But Cowan’s point has got us scratching our craniums while pondering the question: Is anyone really benefiting from this parochial trumpet-tooting?

Local media is full of well-intended sorts eager to give bands a foot into the music industry’s infuriatingly bolted door. Over the course of their [cough, splutter] careers every Scottish music hack will encounter an editorial mailshot commanding an agreeable stance on bands north of the border. Subsequently, every scribe will have the joy of turning out flabby, opinionless copy that says nothing and means even less.

In the short term, this localised back-scratching achieves its goal: stirring up ripples of interest across the blogosphere by gifting bands positive soundbites to plaster on posters, CDs and the social-network site of their choice. But once hoodwinked punters rip aside this facade to expose a sea of crookery, the game is up: reputations are tarnished, careers are tattered, mothers are weeping.

Now, your average human being would probably agree that a one-star hatchet job on the latest unsigned upstarts is an exercise in futility: it can do irreversible damage to a band's prospects, while making the writer, the editor and the magazine or blog in question public enemy number one in the local scene.

But it could also be argued that a well-reasoned, constructive piece of criticism, no matter how damning, might force a mediocre band to re-evaluate what they're doing, go away and come back making better music. OK, in some cases it might drive them to give up the music game altogether, but would that be such a tragedy if their output really was so bland/derivative/tiresome?

For us at UtR, critique v commendation is a stickler.

While we're constantly excited by an array of new acts, for every gem we uncover there are at least ten duds. The solution for us is to be as selective as possible when choosing the bands we feature. At the risk of coming across like pompous gits, we value our reputation and, more importantly, we value YOUR ability to sniff out the good from the cack. And while personal taste always plays a part in this debate, we would never promote an artist without agreeing (or at least having a good punch-up) about their worth.

The big question is: Are we doing the right thing?

Words: UtR

Debate: do you think unsigned bands are fair game for the critic, or should they be spared the media guillotine?

On the radar: Lyons

So rude is the Scottish music scene’s current health it’s difficult not to get carried away.

Local tunesters are being swept up by a trawl of salivating labels almost every week, while punters and promoters are involved in a mutually beneficial matrimony that spawns sardine-squashed gigs and a flu-like spread of buzz.

Of course, we in the media (hello – that’s us!) lap it up; Lego-blocking gushing adjectives upon even more gushing superlatives with the unwavering belief of a blind leper in the presence of his holiness. But does the enveloping hyperbole really equate to long-term prosperity? Lyons’ guitarist Andrew Cowan thinks not:

“The [Scottish music scene’s] reputation is there for good reason but I don't think it's healthy for a scene to exist for so long under a blanket of constant praise,” he explains. “It breeds complacency; a lot of bands include themselves in this ‘hot scene’ and pat each other on the back for being in it and pay no attention to the substance of what they're doing. You have to keep trying to improve your craft.”

Play: Fold


From any lesser act such cynicism would sound churlish; a mouth shooting rumble from an overlooked and under talented outfit. Yet from Lyons these words puncture like a warning shot through a scene that’s thus far been very good to Cowan and his drumming cohort Fhearghas Lyon.

“We've been together for two years,” says Cowan, recalling the group’s first steps. “We started jamming together during summer 2007, spent six months getting acquainted with each other's style and writing and then started gigging in early 2008... We both really liked the way our first few songs turned out. That was really encouraging so we raced to get a set written so we could start playing shows."

Slight in rhythm but vast in sound, Lyons forge overarching soundstacks via an achingly simple blueprint: drum, guitar, vocals. In this technologically advanced era, such puritanical methodology comes as a refreshing salve.

“We have a wide palette of sound for a two-piece,” says Cowan. “It’s not just a case of being as loud as we can, we try to make the songs as dynamic as possible. Both of us sing - it's melodic music. We'll always just naturally jam a riff and beat to begin with and keep everything loose and raw and creative as the song grows. But when we're finishing a song we get very particular about detail.”

It’s the finite attention and the subsequent execution that’s brought Lyons into the ears of the nation’s gig-goers, with the band recently stepping out with east-coast rabble-rousers We Were Promised Jetpacks. Not that Lyons are aiming to recreate the hype-drenched furore of the Fatcat band, of course:

“It’s not really about thinking in terms of achievements,” says Cowans. “ You just have to keep playing and writing and getting to new audiences. I hope that we can show as many people as possible our music in the time that we're given to do it.”

Words: Billy Hamilton

Catch Lyons at the following shows:

23 Jul @ Captains Rest, Glasgow
24 Oct @ Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh.

Are we too gushing in our praise of fledgling bands or does new music deserve to be lauded from the rafters? Let us know below...