Singles and EPs – December 2014

David Pollock
9 January 2015

Hector Bizerk – The Bird That Never Flew EP

Featuring Jacques Greene, Tuff Love, Simple Minds and Hector Bizerk

Jacques Greene – After Life, After Party

(LuckyMe) ●●●
Now a staple of the LuckyMe stable, young Montreal producer Jacques Greene here delivers another EP led by a track with an unmistakably upbeat tone. It rests first upon a swirling, welcoming house riff which reminds of none other than steel pans being bashed out, before hitting an insistent synth sound which is lovely and expansive, although maybe a little lightweight. The sparse, beautifully broken funk of ‘1 4 Me’ suggests a full album of Greene’s work would be useful context.

Tuff Love – Dross

(Lost Map) ●●●●
In a year when the Vaselines returned to the fray, it’s interesting to note that Glasgow finally appears to have alighted upon their closest musical descendants in female duo Tuff Love. Following their excellent ‘Junk’ EP earlier in the year, the pair are here in delivery of a five-track mini album which features a sublime piece of Californian psych-pop in the already-released ‘Slammer’, the loose punk-pop of ‘That’s Right’ and ‘Cum’s lazy grunge drawl.
Tuff Love launch the ‘Dross EP’ at Nice ’n’ Sleazy, Glasgow, Fri 6 Feb.

Simple Minds – Let the Day Begin

(Sony) ●●●
Taken from the recent 16th album Big Music, this cover is a tribute to the late Michael Been, the original composer of the song for his band the Call in 1989. It’s a prime stadium anthem of the kind the Minds used to belt out at the dusk of the 1980s, soaring along on Jim Kerr’s raw tub-thump of a vocal, although those who have recently rediscovered this group’s sublime earliest years won’t find them recreated here.
Simple Minds play the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 7 Apr.

Hector Bizerk – The Bird That Never Flew

(Self-released) ●●●●●
In the year Scottish hip hop came of age, this five-track EP is lyrically razor-sharp and musically interesting, from the tenderness of the Indian-influenced title track and ‘A Pearl Paints a Thousand Pictures’, the crunching state-of-the-city polemic ‘People Make Glasgow’ and a cappella Referendum post-mortem ‘Eton Feast’. Yet it’s Liz Lochhead’s presence on ‘Trouble is Not a Place’ which deserves headlines, the song’s crunching industrial tone dedicated acidically to those who were ‘programmed not to gie fucks.’
*10soundcloud.com/hector-bizerk