Malcolm Jack

Ultravox - Brilliant

Dull and pompous record from the no-longer-relevant Ure and co

22 May 2012

Does the world really need another album, the first in 26 years, from the ‘classic’ Midge Ure-era Ultravox – a group of negligible lasting impact on music even at their mid-80s arena synth-pop zenith? The Trade Descriptions Act-violating Brilliant is…

Dexys - One Day I’m Going To Soar

Full of wit, panache, brutal self-examination and abundant tunefulness

21 May 2012

The title alone gives you a tingling feeling that something glorious and redemptive lies within: and so it proves on Dexys’ – formerly Dexys Midnight Runners – first new album in 27 years. Following the young soul rebels’ disastrous plunge in fortunes…

Summer Festivals 2012: Music

T in the Park, Wickerman and Belladrum among the music fests pleasing your ears this summer

25 May 2012

T in the Park Basics: Balado by Kinross, Fri 6–Sun 8 Jul, tinthepark.com Price: Weekend: £179 (campsite tickets available separately). Day: £70–£77.50. Line-up: The Stone Roses, Snow Patrol, Kasabian, New Order, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds…

Summer Festivals 2012: Death in Vegas - interview

A chat with Richard Fearless ahead of his RockNess performance

25 May 2012

As British music finally dragged itself out of a post-Britpop hangover around the turn of the century, Death in Vegas were among the most quintessential of festival bands. 1999’s The Contino Sessions and 2002’s Scorpio Rising were staples of any…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Foe play - Class Enemy

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

In times of both war and peace, Haris Pasovic has created crucial theatre. Malcolm Jack speaks to him about taking a story set in 1970s Brixton and plunging it into contemporary Sarajevo.

The best Scottish websites

The top 30 websites made for and by Scots

21 Jul 2011

When putting together this list, we weren’t necessarily looking for the biggest or the best-known cultural websites in Scotland. We were looking for unique and interesting ideas, cleverly realised and lovingly maintained on the web. This might mean that…

Colette Thurlow of 2:54 - interview

The indie singer/guitarist discusses sibling bandmates and significant influences

27 Mar 2012

Like a louchely worn black leather jacket, moody guitar music will never go out of fashion – see 2:54 for proof on both counts. Having toured with Warpaint and The Big Pink since emerging a year ago, the London four-piece based around sisters Colette…

Alex McBride - Defending the Guilty

19 Mar 2010

(Viking) They might have a public image problem, but when a lawyer is the difference to you between freedom and incarceration, they can suddenly become closer than any family member or friend. In Defending the Guilty, criminal barrister Alex McBride…

New Scottish bands

15 Nov 2007

Over the last couple of years, it has sometimes seemed like the end of an era for Scottish indie music. Starting with the amicable split of the seminal Delgados, and, more recently, the demise of Falkirk’s Arab Strap and underrated noiseniks…

Brandi Carlile

13 Mar 2008

COUNTRY ROCK Barrowland, Glasgow, Thu 28 Feb It’s fairly rare to see a support act who will easily outlast a headliner, and even if the main attraction on this occasion was Newton Faulkner – an artist with all the staying power (and strangely the…

Exposure: Friends

The Brooklyn hipster quintet make disgustingly cool indie post-punk-funk

25 Apr 2012

The List makes two predictions with regards to this fresh Brooklyn indie post-punk-funk ensemble. 1) They’re going to be the sound of many people’s summer, and 2) they’re going to have music journos punning furiously on their sitcom namesake. They’re…

Official Secrets Act

14 May 2009

Jerky English indie quartet Official Secrets Act’s debut album Understanding Electricity is suggestive of a band with intelligence and melodies to burn – like The Futureheads or Bloc Party, or Razorlight with their brains in the right place rather than…

Sorren Maclean

19 Mar 2009

FOLK POP 19-year-old Isle of Mull singer songwriter Sorren Maclean is a well-connected young chap who has worked with or supported such respected names as Michael Marra, James Yorkston and the late Martyn Bennett. It helps that his father Gordon is a…

Exposure: Jesse Malin

10 Dec 2008

A grizzled ex-punk turned down-at-heel, heart-on-sleeve troubadour of a sort that only the US of A could produce, New Yorker Jesse Malin is the rock and roller’s rock and roller, and counts Bruce Springsteen and Ryan Adams amongst his closest musical…

Musicians' guide: How to make it in the music industry

27 Nov 2008

Want to make it in music? Fancy yourself as The Next Big Thing? Claire Sawers and Malcolm Jack track down nine very different people currently working in the industry and quiz them on just what they do and how they do it In addition, for detailed…

Bobby Gillespie

23 Aug 2007

Fire Engines ‘I’m a big Fire Engines Fan. They were a big influence on us: fifteen minute sets, very intense. ‘Get Up and Use Me’ – their single. ‘Candy Skin’, ‘Meat Whiplash’, ‘Sympathetic Anaesthetic’, you know? Big fan of the Fire Engines…

Austra set for UK tour

Toronto electro-goth-pop six-piece take Feel It Break on the road

22 May 2012

Having rated spine-tingling coldwave-disco banger ‘Lose It’ as one of our favourite songs of 2011, The List are big fans of this Toronto electro-goth-pop six-piece based around one-of-a-kind Latvian-Canadian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist…

Friendly Fires - Barrowland, Glasgow, Tue 20 Dec 2011

Triumphant end of year show from the St Albans indie-ravers

6 Jan 2012

2011 didn’t quite belong to Friendly Fires, as some had predicted it might, but they owned significant parts of it off the back of their euphoric second album Pala – not least the flying feet and skyward waving arms of a few summer festival crowds. The…

Jonny - Jonny

Radiant pop songs from ex-Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci man Euros Childs and Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake

14 Jan 2011

(Alsatian) Incredibly, this long-threatened collaboration between ex-Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci man Euros Childs and Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake yields zero sunshiny melodies, no gorgeous harmonies and not a trace of heartwarming quirk. None at all.

The Amphetameanies

11 Jun 2009

SKA PUNK Cult Glasgow ska punk veterans The Amphetameanies’ line-up, past and present, includes members of Bis, Belle and Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand. Bassist Gordon Davidson refutes the suggestion that it must be frustrating being in all these…

Annie Lennox

Festival of Politics

22 Jul 2008

Ex-Eurythmics leader raises the often neglected issue of HIV and AIDS. With a comfortable haul of 80 million album sales to her name so far, Annie Lennox has recently turned her voice from pop music to hollering in support of a far nobler cause: that of…

Beach House - Bloom

Fourth album sticks to style favouring atmosphere over structure

18 Apr 2012

(Bella Union) With 2010’s totally immersive Teen Dream, Baltimore two-piece Beach House – France-born vocalist/keyboardist Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally – went from American indie try-hards to one of the most critically-acclaimed bands of…

Jesus H. Foxx - Endless Knocking

Long-awaited debut admirable in perfectionism, but feels laboured

18 Apr 2012

(Song, by Toad) ‘I’ve waited two bloody years for these muppets to finish this album,’ writes Song, by Toad boss Matthew Young in an amusingly frank note accompanying Edinburgh seven-piece Jesus H. Foxx’s debut. We’ve shared his frustration in…

Exposure: Gotye

An introduction to the YouTube-conquering ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ singer

29 Feb 2012

Meet 31-year-old Wouter ‘Wally’ De Backer, aka Gotye, a Belgium-born, Melbourne-raised singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose inescapable international super-hit ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ (featuring Kimbra) possesses an almost…