It is vital to refresh your musical palate once in a while, a process akin to sniffing coffee beans in the perfume department. The best way is to head out to a band you’ve never heard of before, preferably one that comes with no preconceptions attached and purely based on word of mouth. It’s a hit and miss process, but stumbling upon My Latest Novel proved the theory correct.
The crowd patiently weathered Home Video (with, you guessed it, a video backdrop of rolling landscape scenery), a somber New York band mining the vein of Radiohead a little too deeply. It was well and truly make or break time by 11.30 on a Thursday night when the headliners took up their positions on stage.
My Latest Novel look like any number of local indie hipster bands, but luckily the international homogenization of fashion hasn’t infiltrated the Glaswegians’ genre defying sound. They wear their hearts of their sleeves with the kind of sensitivity a mother loves, but high school bullies find simply irresistible. The five piece, Chris Deveney (vocals, guitar, bass), his brother Gary (vocals, guitar), Paul McGeachy (vocals, guitar, xylophone), Laura McFarlane (vocals, violin, piano) and Ryan King (drums, percussion) somehow survived the gauntlet in tact. Together they make music that encapsulates the unexpected grace punctuating adolescent awkwardness far better than any Sofia Coppola vehicle.
There’s definitely a traditional Scottish folk influence running through the set, never quite reaching bagpipe proportions, but unmistakable in the violin solos, steady marching drums and building crescendo of When We Were Wolves. Three ply harmonies lend the songs an impressive resonance, building to an intimidating barking chorus on The Reputation of Ross Francis. Their more stripped back moments, such as the vocals on Learning Lego, remind me of earlier Gomez releases.
A baby blue xylophone receives dutiful care and attention as the boys take turns to tap out the accompaniment. The band also experiments with the melodica, guiro and various percussion instruments throughout the set. The instrumentation crashes and flows together in a way that invites comparisons with The Arcade Fire, but lyrically it’s a far more literary affair that invites closer inspection.
Deveney engages in friendly banter with the crowd, and mutual misunderstanding of the various thick accents floating around sees “I wish you were here longer” translate into “I wish your hair was longer”, prompting the singer to confess that he often has the same conversation with his mother back home. There’s plenty of other more boisterous banter going on, but alas, I’ve never been very good at translating Scottish accents.
The music needs no translation and speaks to the audience in a way that has grown men swaying and doing interesting, hip flexing shimmy-shuffles. Perhaps they’ll start a whole new movement. For those who didn’t attend the gig, start your Santa letters now and hope My Latest Novel are getting accustomed to long-haul travel.
